1st Poetry Class Reflections

We had a great time working on poetry last Thursday! The night before, I had the idea that a very simple way to bring a dash more theatricality into the classroom was to bring a beret and silk scarf for both myself and the teachers to wear. I thought that if we were going to have the kids wear berets and get into character, it would be great to have the teachers model that before hand! The kids loved seeing their teachers put on the beret and silk scarf and transform into a super cool poet - a little silly, and it gave them a bit more buy in.  It's these simple ways of incorporating theater and characterization for the teachers that I am trying to focus on more in this semester. I realize low pressure, creative, and exceedingly simple exercises/ costuming and modeling can in many ways be as, if not more, effective and useful to teachers who are already balancing a massive load of work.

I read some Shel Silverstein poems, using voice modulations to highlight the different poetic forms (aa bb or abab, etc)

Dramatic Poets Beret and Silk Scarf!

We then had the students pick an object from a bag, and, in pairs, come up with all of the words that they could that rhymed with that object. I added a challenge of trying to come up with words with more than one syllable (great one: Dice/Precise!)

Then, they had time to work together to write a poem about their object and use up the rhyming words they had come up with. This was a challenge, but many of the students really came up with some wonderful poems - I was very impressed... 

For their presentations, I had them wear a fancy scarf a'la their teacher and myself - as their first step in "poet-hood" I am really hoping we have our berets in time for this week!! 

It was great hearing them read the poems aloud - some of them were extremely enthusiastic, and others stood back and let their partners read. Even if they were not comfortable with reading their poetry aloud, they were proud of the poems they wrote.