Poetry Assignment

Below is the poetry assignment I did with my kindergarten class. 

Insect I poem invitation

Title Page:

poetry-assignment

Assignment

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Analysis

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Student poetry rubric

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Examples of student poetry

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Mrs. Hand’s  kindergarten bulletin board of I Poem’s

 

 

 

Reflection of multigenres

I really enjoyed seeing and listening of multigenre projects. I have never seen so many different ideas and creativitiy capturing so many multigenres. I gathered so many ideas as to how to motivate students to write and read. I have implemented this in my classroom with “I” poems, wordless picture books, research,journals, and hands on activities. The thouroughness of the projects was awesome. By viewing everyones multigenre projects I feel that I  am better at my teaching techniques and have so many more ideas  as to how to motivate my students to become better readers and writers. The presentations were interesting and really enjoyable for listening. I have learned so much, another area I didn’t cover about my project was the fact that I have a student in my class who is diagnosed with lukemia. He just returned from Disney World through the make a wish foundation. This touches my heart because just last year, my daughter did an intern at Walt Disney World. A friend of ours had a 5 year old who was diagnosed with cancer. My daughter arranged for her to visit Disney at no cost. Make a wish is a wonderful assistance for sick children and Walt Disney would have loved to have seen these children’s faces as they attended the Magic Kingdom.

Getting back to multigenres, I saw examples of diaries, dialogues, journals, timelines,poetry,memoirs, biographies,dictionaries, and the list goes on. I think everyone did a great job implementing different sources and genres.I learned about Sarah Winchester, Paula Dean, obesity, mail order brides, civil war, civil rights, and so many I can’t count them all. I will remember what I saw and the multigenre is the way to go.

This has to be the most time consuming  project I have ever undertaken. I had intense moments to where I felt like crying but I would suck it up and continue. I planned, wrote, and revised so many times my head ran in circles. I am relieved this project is over. Now let’s get it on my blog. Great job everyone!!! A stressful job well done.

Chapter 3 Best Practices in Writing Instruction

It is true that children need motivational techniques in order to produce thoughts onto paper. After reading Chapter 3, I found that the stages children develop over the years can be bridged together through the elementary grades. I agree the children need to know their artisitic and language abilities in order to produce a well written paper. I need more detail as to reaching lower level writers. Being a kindergarten teacher, I feel I am the foundation that the later years are scaffolded upon. I agree that pictures are a necessity for all writings. I have found that my students who draw pictures first then label objects second then begin writing do a very nice job completing assisgnments. I would like more in depth lesson plans for delivering these objectives.

In reference to wordless picture books by Cassady and Reese,it’s nice to know that all objectives can be reached through wordless books. Wordless books gives the mind room to breathe and interpret ideas without being read the words in the book.This gives the students the opportunity to focus on language and not the content. I use “The Snowman” wordless book every year in my classroom. The students love this picture book and  when I show the movie they are interpreting the video in their own minds sharing ideas with each other. Callaboration is the key to motivating  students to produce what they are thinking. We all know without a strong reading environment children will not do as well. They are more reluctant to accomplish an objective due to frustration. These students need major support from peers and 1-1 tutors so they can accomplish writing techniques and feel comfortable in their environments. I agree that a wordless book can tell a story twenty different ways in a child’s mind. The art is for the teacher to get the objective accomplished no matter how difficult the diversity or language experience may be.

Kucan’s Article “I” Poems

I liked this article because students become the narrator, expressing thoughts and feelings from a narrators point of view.The “I” poems do not have to rhyme or have any formats to follow. Poetry is a way of transforming readings to the written form giving the students opportunities to express themselves from a perspective other than their own. I use a big poem for every month. The poem is on chart paper the size of a big book. Every morning we read this poem, then the line leader reads the poem by themselves. The poem for this month is an “I” poem. It’s repetitive and teaches book and print, punctuation, first word, last word on page, etc. I like the idea of reading a story and the students engaging in writing an “I” poem to enhance plot, characters, and setting. Today we read Froggy’s First Kiss and wrote our own Valentine poems and mailed them in our class mailbox. Since this is kindergarten, the poems where quite simple, but the feedback from the planning during group was wonderful letting me know they had captured Froggy’s feelings, emotions, and realized why he acted as he did. Again, this article helped me give other alternatives to writing.

Children Can Write Authentically

This article focuses on authenticity. Is the story real? Usually real life situations are interesting topics. It’s easier to stay on task and feel like a real author if the material being written is real. Topics need to be realistic and true to life if teachers expect their students to write the inevitable. For example, during class today I was reading a book about “needing attention.” When we finished the book, we were brainstorming incidences that we could relate to in our everyday life that coincided with the attention book. Talk about real, I had a kid tell of an unfortunate accident where his brother did not listen to his mother and circled behind the SUV as they were loading to go to a Crawdads game. The mother did not see the child go behind the SUV. She backed up and pinned her son between her SUV and the vehicle behind. Yes, the accident was fatal. The reason I told this is because students do relate to life. They express it verbally and produce it on paper. When this student recorded in his journal he drew a picture of heaven and older brother floating in the clouds. Talk about facts and relations to everyday happenings, this tore at my emotions and started a whole new wave of discussion in my classroom.