Perfect poetry!
It is hard to believe that we are down to only a few short weeks left of school! As I reflect on the year it is AMAZING at how far these kiddos have come. In our first grade room we do LOTS of writing! We love to write! Most recently we’ve been learning about poetry. We actually spend time throughout the duration of the year reading different types of poems, but it just now that we are starting to look at it from a writer’s point of view.
We started our unit by studying what published authors do when they write poetry. Here are a few of the books that we read to help us get excited about poetry.
I picked these two books because they also are correlating with a special ‘readers celebration’ that we will be having very soon. (More so come about that later!) They are both very cleaver books, with cute poems in them. All of my kiddos got a good laugh out of them. :)
After seeing that poetry can be fun to read, we ventured into trying some of our own.
Poem # 1: I Am…
We started out by creating a list of all the different things that we are. For example: a son, daughter, sister, brother, soccer player, responsible, etc. By the time we were finished we had well over 50 different words! We talked about how we can all describe ourselves in different ways. We also talked about the pattern of this poem. The kiddos then created their own poems. Once they were finished with their words, they posted it on a white piece of construction paper, and then created a boarder of the different things they described themselves as. This poem is now proudly being displayed in our hallway! J
Poem #2: Acrostic
This poem is the type where the main idea goes vertically down the page. Then coming off each letter, you find a word, or phrase, that describes/tells about the main idea. We started this poem with me showing them an example of a poem that I’d written. We then created one together as a class. After that the kiddos had the opportunity to pick a topic they would like to try. Students were able to work with partners or small groups to discuss ideas with each other. At the end of Writer’s Workshop, we came back together and shared our perfect poems. The one below is a simple example that I did. The kids took their poems home before I had the chance to sneak a picture! To be honest, theirs far out did mine! Way to go my smarites!
Poem #3: Easter is…
As you might have guessed, not all the poems were about Easter. That is just what my example for the kids was about. I showed the kids how I thought about Easter and created a big list of ideas of what Easter reminded me of. As a class we then created a ‘School is…’ poem together on the white board. The students came up with AWESOME ways to describe school! Students then had a few options of different poems they could pick from. Here is a list of a few of the possible starters they used:
Spring is...
Family is...
Baseball is...
My Birthday is....
Students then worked in teams to create their poems.
My firsties came up with some great poems over the past week! I’m very proud of them all! Later this week students will learn how to incorporate onomatopoeias into their poems as well. I can’t wait to see all the creative ideas they come up with!
That’s all for now from first grade!
Take care,
~ Mrs. Christensen
Empathy –
Adaptability –
Communication –
Arranger –
Developer
