Tag Archives: public speaking

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Vote for the 2020 Barrow Peace Prize

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Each year our 2nd graders work on a project called the Barrow Peace Prize. Every student researches one of four people from black history and gathers facts from PebbleGo, Britannica, books, and a few other online resources. They use these facts to write a persuasive essay asking people to vote for their person to win the Barrow Peace Prize. The criteria for the prize is also determined by the students after learning about character traits. These essays are recorded in Flipgrid and are now ready for viewing. We ask people all over the world to watch these videos, listen to these student voices, and vote on which of the four people from Black History should win this year’s award: Jackie Robinson, Sojourner Truth, Martin Luther King Jr., or Harriet Tubman.

You can vote as many times as you like and you are welcome to share this link with everyone you know.  If you choose to tweet about our project and share pictures of you or your class of students watching our videos, we hope you will tag @plemmonsa in your tweets so they can be shared with our Barrow students. If you use Instagram, please tag @barrowmediacenter  We love to see how this project spreads around the world.

Voting is open now through March 13 at 12PM EST. Simply visit our Smore page, watch several videos, and then click the link to vote.  We can’t wait to see who will win this year’s award.

2020 Barrow Peace Prize Smore Newsletters for Education

Follow this link to vote!

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Poem In Your Pocket: Connecting Our Voices Through Poetry

For 2 solid days, students in every class have been visiting the library to share poetry into our open microphone for poem in your pocket day.  As always, this was a special day where every single student in our school had an opportunity to step up and share their voice through poetry that they carried in their pockets.  Many students shared original poems which ranged from silly to humorous to scary to sentimental to observant.  Many students also shared favorite poems that they copied from our large poetry collection in the library.  Sometimes it takes a lot to get up in front of your peers and read aloud, but I love the accessibility of poetry. It can be short but powerful.  It can give you a chance to shine before your nerves kick in.  It can quickly create reactions from your audience. It creates moments.

As usual, there were many special moments.  Teachers shared poems from their phones in their pockets.

A student who spoke limited English, broke out of her comfort zone to share a poem all in English with a friend standing by her side.  PreK poets recited their very first poems of their school career as their teachers whispered the words into their ears.

5th graders filled up their poetry slot by repeatedly going to the microphone to share poems from the books displayed on our poetry tables.  Families who couldn’t be here with us in the room were able to watch their children perform via our live Google Hangout.  Sweet poems about brothers were shared.

Tweets rolled in via our Twitterfall wall.

A retiring paraprofessional shared her final Poem In Your Pocket moment.

If you missed any of our poetry readings live, you can watch any of the archives by visiting our Smore.  Take a moment to look at all of the poets in the gallery below.

 

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Join Us for Poem In Your Pocket April 6 & 7, 2017

One of our newer traditions at Barrow is to participate each year in Poem In Your Pocket Day.  This national event takes place on April 27 this year, but due to our state testing, we will celebrate a bit early.

On these days, all students carry an original or favorite poem throughout the day and come to the library for a 20-30 minute slot to share poems on our open microphone. I setup a poetry atmosphere with decorations, and each student has a moment to share poems.  We celebrate with rounds of snaps and quiet claps.

We also broadcast this live on Youtube Live(Google Hangouts On Air) so that other schools, family, and community can join in the 2 days of fun.  If you watch live, you are highly encouraged to tweet your snaps of celebration for students so that they can see your tweets on our media center projector.  They love to get shout outs.

Visit our Smore page for a full schedule as well as links to every live feed.  As each feed ends, it is automatically archived to Youtube for your future enjoyment.

 

https://www.smore.com/x4hh5

It’s already amazing to see where in the world people are taking a look at our event.

 

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2016 Poem In Your Pocket Day 2

Today we wrapped up our 2016 Poem In Your Pocket poetry cafe with 13 more classes reading poetry into our open microphone. It was another day of many special moments.

5th graders wrote many original and powerful poems.

 

Students read poems written by other students.

 

Memorized Sylvia Plath

 

Awesome costumes were worn.

 

Teachers and families helped us document the day.

 

Take a moment to watch today’s archives.  You can still Tweet about our poems using the hashtag #barrowpoems

 

Here’s a collection of scenes from today:

Until next year…

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Poem in Your Pocket 2016 Day 1

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Day 1 of Poem In Your Pocket Day is a wrap. Fourteen classes came to the library for 20-30 minute sessions of poetry reading. Each student had an opportunity to step up to our open microphone and read an original or favorite poem. It is truly amazing to see some students step out of their comfort zone to speak in front of their peers for a very short amount of time. Poetry is so accessible to so many people. It opens opportunities for students that sometimes other kinds of writing can’t. As always, there were magical moments during the day.

A student folded his poem into a piece of origami.

View this post on Instagram

An origami poem in a pocket. #pocketpoem #barrowpoems

A post shared by Barrow Media Center (@barrowmediacenter) on

A student who wouldn’t read his poem on camera shared it with me instead, and it was a poem about me.

Ms. Kelly’s class created asemic writing and truly showed us what it means to perform and interpret poetry.

Take a look at some of the magical moments from today.

Also, take a look at Instagram and Twitter and search the hashtag #barrowpoems to see even more. We had several special posts and messages from people all over.

Finally, take some time to listen back to some of these amazing poets.

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Celebrate Poem In Your Pocket Day with Us!

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Poem in Your Pocket Day is a national celebration of poetry where everyone is encouraged to carry an original or a favorite poem in their pocket and share the poem with friends, family, and even strangers during the day. The official day is April 21 this year, but due to state testing we celebrate early and use this celebration to kickoff Poetry Month and National School Library Month.

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On April 7th and 8th, every class in the school will come to the library for a special poetry cafe. We’ll have special seating, special lighting, an open microphone, and a poet’s stool.  Students and teachers are welcome to come to the open microphone during their time slot and share poetry until time runs out.  No one is forced to come to the microphone, but what we’ve found is that almost every students and teacher in the school shares a poem on this special day.

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Family and community are welcome to attend in person, but we know that not everyone can join us in person.  For the past several years, we have broadcast our poetry readings live and encouraged people to leave comments for the poets.  Last year, we tried Google Hangouts for our event and encouraged people to tweet comments to our poets using a hashtag.

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This year, we are once again broadcasting our poetry and we would love for it to be the best year yet.  We would love for you to tune in to any of our poetry readings taking place throughout the day on April 7 and 8.  You can even tune in late by watching the archives.  Everything you need to know is housed on a special Smore page.

Everything you need to know about our event is here!

During the event, I will have a special “wall of social” displayed on our projection screen so that students can see any comments that you leave for them on social media such as Twitter and Instagram.  Be sure to use the hashtag #barrowpoems so that we see your comments.

Happy Poetry Month and School Library Month!  We hope to see you online!

Schedule:

Thursday April 7, 2016

9:40 2nd grade- Brink

10:00 2nd grade – Yawn

10:20 2nd grade- VanderWall

10:40 2nd grade- Hutcherson

11:00 Lunch

11:20 PreK-Trina

11:40 PreK-Wisz

12:00 Kindergarten-Hocking

12:20 Kindergarten – Sandifer

12:40 Boyle

1:00 1st grade Skinner

1:20 1st grade Wyatt

1:40 1st grade Stuckey

2:00 1st grade Cunningham

2:20 1st grade Seeling

Friday April 8, 2016

8:00 2nd grade Ramseyer

8:30 5th grade language arts

9:00 3rd grade- Clarke

9:30 5th grade language arts

10:00 3rd grade- Haley

10:30 3rd grade- Hart

11:00 3rd grade – Em

11:30 5th grade language arts

12:00 Kindergarten- Ms. Choate

12:20 Kindergarten-Ms. Lauren

12:40 Lunch

1:00 4th grade Coleman

1:30 4th grade Tesler

2:00 4th grade Weaver

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2015 Poem In Your Pocket (Part 2)

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Our live poetry cafe continued today with 11 more sessions.  Again, we broadcast each reading through Google Hangouts and encouraged people to Tweet about our poetry using the hashtag #barrowpoems.  You can read about yesterday here.

I always love the surprises that come up from students: a student reading from a computer, a student who barely speaks who reads an incredibly descriptive poem, a student giving his teacher a standing ovation, a student who shared a poem in Chinese and then English, students encouraging their friends with a “you can do it”, a student sharing a poem about his home country, a student reading a poem for another student who was too shy to come up, and  a student handing me her poem to carry in my pocket.

Today I added a little sign to help with our traffic in and out of the library for checkout.

The energy of our students sharing poetry is simply amazing and inspiring.  Check out all these pictures of the students in action.

Our Twitter wall was very popular with students during the two days:

A few tweets from today:

Watch all of today’s archives:

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2015 Poem In Your Pocket Day (Part 1)

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Each year, Poem In Your Pocket Day morphs into something just a little bit new.  It’s always a day to come to the library and share poems into our open microphone, but we like to mix things up a bit each year.  This year, I put out soft seating instead of tables.  It allowed students to be a bit closer to the speaker and hopefully felt a bit more cozy.

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In the past, I’ve used Adobe Connect to broadcast our day.  While it is a great tool, it has some drawbacks.  I love that it is one room that our online guests can stay in all day long and I can communicate with them via chat.  However, I don’t love the way the archive is created.  I have to setup and name each recording right as I’m starting the recording.  It doesn’t take long, but it’s one more step I have to do.  Also, once all of the archives are done, I have to go in, change them to public, and copy the link to share in order for people to view them.

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This year, I decided to try Google Hangouts on Air.  We use this every day for our morning broadcast, so I’m very familiar with using it.  Ahead of our event, I setup a Google Hangout on Air for each session on our schedule.  Then, I opened each hangout and copied the Youtube link where the video would stream live.  I embedded these videos on one big Google site so that they were easily accessible in one spot.

Click to visit our Google Site

As each group came in, I opened the hangout, tested the sound, and pressed start.  Our guests could watch online, but as soon as I pressed stop the video was instantly archived on that same Google site.  It saved me the hassle of having to go back and find all of the videos in order to share them.  While it’s not huge, any amount of time I can save is valuable to me.

This year, to make up for the chat feature being taken away, we decided to use Twitter to talk about our poems.  We encourage our online guests and future viewers of our content to tweet using the hashtag #barrowpoems I used Tweet Beam to display the tweet on our projection board for students to see.  It was fun to see how this populated throughout the day and how much students smiled when they saw a tweet mentioning their poem.  Teachers even pulled out their phones and helped document the day through pictures, videos, and comments on Twitter.

Also, here’s a little look at what it’s like to be in the room.

This event always amazes me because pretty much every student in the school gets up in front of an audience and speaks.  It’s a small amount of speaking, but I love seeing students get used to speaking to an audience and seeing what that feels like.  This is a very positive and supportive atmosphere, so most students leave the reading feeling validated for their work.

I encourage you to listen to some of our archives and continue to tweet about #barrowpoems

Continue watching us live on April 10th!