Poetry, Chromebooks, and Poet-Trees

This week, as a break from our constant work on paragraphs and essays, we took a departure in genre and switched to poetry.

The first poem that I had my students write was a figurative language poem, that I got from Panicked Teacher.  Using the various types of figurative language we have learned up to this point in the year, the students wrote a poem about one of their favorite aspects of school this year.  They had to write an alliteration sentence, a simile, metaphor, onomatopoeia, and more.  Seven sentences in all, all on the same topic.  Then each of those sentences was put together to create a figurative language poem.

Next, the students learned how to write a cinquain.  Again, they wrote about school.  These were a bit easier for them to write, since they were much shorter.  But I liked them because they employ parts of speech and synonyms to create.  I had the students break out the thesaurus for this one to get them away from simple words like "fun" and "exciting" and make it a bit more elaborate vocabularily. (I am not sure that is even a word ;))

The final poem we learned about was an "I Wish" poem.  This poem could be about anything they wanted, not necessarily school related.  The only stipulation I put on them was that it had to be about the future.  The verb tenses needed to be in the future tense.

You can see all of the slides with the students on them to the left

Once all of the poems were written and peer edited, I used the chromebooks and Google Classroom to help us publish.  I created ONE Slides presentation that I inserted 33 blank slides onto.  I attached it to my Google Classroom assignment, giving all of my students access.  They then opened the assignment and each of them was instructed to only type on the slide matching their classroom number.  What was fabulous about this was that once it was all done, I had ONE document to print instead of 33 separate ones that were shared with me at the end individually.  Everything was all together!

After they were printed, each student drew their poems into the shape of a leaf.  They cut the leaves out and, in groups, created a "Poet-Tree" out of a paper bag.  Now, I used this tutorial I found on pinterest and, while it was SUPER cute on Pinterest, it wasn't as super cute when we actually did it.  They came out fine, but it wasn't all I had hoped for.  Oh well!  Can't win the cute award for everything ;)

So there you have it.  We did some writing, some collaborating, some computering, and some art.  All in all, it turned out just fabulously.  Have you done anything in these areas this past week?  Please share!

I do have some more Poet-Trees if you would like to check them out.  :)  They are just some fun little poetry projects that the kids can do and enjoy.  (Plus, they look great on bulletin boards for, say, Open House ;))