“Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.” by Robert Frost
April is National Poetry month. I invite you to consider the possibilities of teaching with poetry. Poetry makes content come alive, because the poet has a deep connection with the subject matter. Poems can help students see what they consider a boring or tedious topic in a different light. Imagine students walking into math class and the teacher introducing long division with Bob Grumman’s long division Christmas poem. Imagine students learning about the food chain by hearing a reading of “Damselfly, Trout, Heron” by John Engels. Digital tools and apps can encourage our students to animate poetry and bring words to life with video, images, sound, and more. In the slide presentation and bookmarks below, I share ideas and resources for getting students to learn through poetry.
Lesson Ideas
Here are a few lesson ideas I talked about during my presentation. Students can:
- create digital poetry eportfolios with free web tools and apps like Pinterest, Educlipper, or Livebinder
- share their poetry in digital books with web tools and apps like Storybird, LittleBirdTales, and Book Creator (IOS / Android) app
- evaluate poetry or create a class poetry presentation with Voicethread web tool and IOS app
- watch poetry videos like To This Day and create poems about bullying and bring these poems to life with iMovie, Animoto, Magisto, or other video creation tools and apps
- view animated text poetry like Television is a Drug then create their own animated text poetry presentations with multimedia tools like Powtoon, Tapestry, Muzy’s Word Play, 30 Hands,Tell Me About This (IOS), Narrable (IOS), and Fotobabble
- create magnetic poetry online
Resources
Here are a few more resources:
- Join the Teacher Poetry Workshop Google Plus Community and create poetry with other teachers! Many tools are shared regularly.
- Here’s my poem, A Brown Cinderella, and lesson plans to go with it.
- The Poetry Idea Machine site walks students through each step in creating various forms of poetry.
- Poetry and Video Lesson Plans by Lesson Stream
- My webinar recording, slide presentation, and bookmarks for Teaching Poetry and Exploring Language Through Poetry
More Resources and Lesson Plans
Find many more ideas in my Pearltree bookmarks below. Click on the circle to make that resource appear.
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Challenge:
Try one of these tools or apps to get students interested in creating their own poems.
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