Happy Poetry Month!

As most of you fellow teacher-istas are aware, April is nationally known as the month to recognize poetry. I've been looking forward to this unit for quite some time; my kids are top notch when it comes to thinking creatively, so I was anxious for their final products! In this unit: all three of my grades learned about different types of poem: Alliteration, Acrostic, Color, Cinquan, Haiku & the 5 W's. With my 3rd grade class, we learned about one style & constructed an example of one type of poem a day. 4th and 5th graders were more fast paced and learned about the different styles within 2 days, and then begin working on their Poetry Projects.

 In years past, Poetry Projects have always been books that published students' poetry into actual books. Its a very cute idea, and makes for a good keepsake, but not ideal for this 1st year's teacher budget at the time. That's when I decided to incorporate my technology skills, and have students make a PhotoStory with their poetry. Similar to the format of the content slide I made for ECT 510; students first typed their poems on PowerPoint, selected a design/theme and then saved them as individual photos. We then worked together to import the photos into PhotoStory, add voice narration, and I think their FAVORITE part was mixing the tunes for background music (who knew they were DJs, too?). To ensure parents still received their "keepsake" of this project, I burned each presentation onto a CD-Rom that they can play on a computer. 10 cents a CD is WAY more affordable than $3 a book! Here is a sample of one of my 5th grade student's presentation:

Only 4 weeks left of school, can you believe it? Its officailly down to the survival of the fittest!