I am always on the look out for poetry lessons because I have not found a lesson that really interested the students, until now. On my newest addiction, Pinterest, I saw this link. Even though this lesson was originally for elementary age students I tweaked it a bit and my students loved it.
I had twelve stations and my 6th graders really enjoyed it. My descriptions would be so similar to the original site I'm going to list each station and just include the changes I made for middle school. I urge you to visit the site where she provides instructions and links that you will need.
List Poetry-Same as original
Poetry Tag on the Kindle-I brought my Kindle Fire from home because our school Kindles are used daily in our resource classrooms.
Poetry on the iPods: Students used the Poem Flow app and Verses magnetic poetry app. Both free!
Poetry Place Mats-instead of having students weave a placemat I printed a coloring sheet of a placemat for them to write their poems on.
Origami Poetry-Same as original
Shape Poems-This was the students favorite.
Songs- I didn't need the books here. I pulled up this Fun Clapping site and they took it from there. Warning: These are Youtube videos so I had to log into the computer as me so that they could view them. I was pleasantly surprised at the number of boys that enjoyed this station.
Fun With Words: Students ignored the books, but loved playing the game, Hink Pink.
Poetry Splatter: Same as original. They love anything that lets them play on the Smartboard.
Poetry With Friends: Same as original
Poetry Websites: I used three of our netbooks from a mobile cart for students to explore these websites.
Lemonade: I did have a magnetic board and letters, but I ended up using the tiles from Bananagrams (originally in Fun With Words) because there were more letters to choose from.
Items I had to purchase: red and white tablecloths, Bananagrams, Hink Pink
If I didn't already have the book I borrowed them from the public library until I knew this would be an activity that I would repeat. I plan on purchasing several titles to have available for the future.
I'm sorry if my explanations are vague, but I think it is best if you visit her site because she obviously put a lot of work and thought into organizing this.
If you are looking for a fun activity for Poetry Month I suggest giving this a try. The students and teachers had a ball.
LOVE this idea. I actually discovered your blog post by "googling" poetry picnic, because I am seriously looking at setting this up in my elementary school library. I was wondering ... How long did your sixth graders have in each center? Did they choose their center or did you have a rotation schedule? I am going to check out your link to your inspirational site now. Thanks for sharing! - Sonya (www.librarypatch.com)
ReplyDeleteI let them switch every five minutes. They didn't get through every station, but it kept them very busy and made the class go quickly. I put them in groups of two or three and rotated the groups around. Good luck with your picnic.
ReplyDeleteWe had a poetry picnic at our school today. It was a big hit! Thanks for sharing how you adapted it to middle school :)
ReplyDeleteI totally learned that these are ink pinks but the premise is exactly the same. I use them a lot for studying vocab words and reviewing their meanings. It gets really dynamic when students can make their own! http://eslcarissa.blogspot.mx/2012/07/rhyming-word-game.html Glad to see other people love them too! A great way to get even reluctant students involved in critical thinking, vocabulary practice and inferring.
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