The Teacher Toolbox » Poetry

Wordle & Poetry

Adrian — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 00:00:18 +0000

Today I’ve put together a scaffold for people wishing to experiment and be a little more creative in the publishing of poetry.

The poetry scaffold is a step by step guide to creating a verbal collage about each student. It encourages reflection and experimentation.

My son added a Wordle to his blog based on his blog tags and I made mine by ‘Pasting a heap of text’ into Wordle. We enjoyed playing with this tool and I think your students will also.

Have fun with Wordle

Adrian

PS Try performing this poem by readng it with a different volume and intonation for each word. Maybe even with a soundtrack behind it of Miles Davis

Getting Ready for the First Day of School

Adrian — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 19:45:09 +0000

In the last couple of days a lot of the messages I’ve received relate to getting ready to go back to school in the US.

So in response here is an activity that I find works well in the first couple of days to get to know a bit more about the kids. NB I also do a ‘teacher version’ so they get to know just a little about me. I also find it helps the parents know which presents to buy at the end of the year. hehehehe

NB The second line is an anagram of my name from this anagram generator

BIG HINT – do this yourself without kids – I once had a child come out as ‘Romance Gel’

Adrian B
Cured in a Bar
Greenish eyes
Black hair
Two sisters
One brother… (who is no longer with us)
Loves skydiving
Abhors sardines
Adores the three toed sloth
Dislikes PE
Worships cricket
Fancies baklava
Loathes reality TV
Enjoys Radiohead
Detests Country Music
Needs the surf
Fears burning
Giggles occassionally
Sniggers seldomly
Reads Artemis Fowl
Watches Myth Busters
Loves ICTs
Hangs with Mr White
Wears jeans and a T-shirt
Drinks Wild Turkey & Dry
Plays Real Time Strategy Games
Dreams of a fulfilling career
Guitar playing freak!

You can find the full scaffold of this poem which is ready to ‘copy & paste’ to a word processor or blog article in the poetry section of my website in the self-esteem area.

Have fun with this one.

Adrian

Hiroshima Day and Teaching Empathy

Adrian — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 12:20:42 +0000

Each year Hiroshima Day (August 6) just tends to slip under the radar in most schools. But I feel this day is so important that I spend the whole day on it in order to teach a little empathy.

One of the activities I do during the day is introduce ‘ecphrastic poetry’. This is a very powerful form that offers many opportunities to – ask questions, observe, interpret, infer, synthesize, hypothisise and, in this case, empathize.

Tonight I’ve put together a webpage of scaffolds that I’ve collected over the years that will help you on your way to adding ecphrastic poetry to your tool-box. I’ve also added a couple of teaching ideas and resources for Hiroshima Day. NB I’ve added a .bmp file of the parchment and Peace Park Dome from the poem above for you to download, drop into an image editor and publish the poetry you create.

Adrian

Podcast Hosting – Podomatic

Adrian — Sun, 06 May 2007 09:07:00 +0000

My son recently had a birthday and his aunt, who is very, very pregnant, forgot his special day. She then wrote him a poem. Samuel and I had a play with the free software Audacity to create an audio file of the poem. We had heaps of fun and learnt a lot. Tonight I started experimenting with podomatic.com as a way of hosting his audio file and perhaps a way of hosting class podcasts.

Click here to get your own player.

cheers

Adrian B

Online Magnetic Poetry

Adrian — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 09:04:00 +0000

You can get some really creative poetry results by using online magnetic poetry generating sites.

Check out my tips and tricks for using these magnetic poetry sites.

The students love them much more than you would imagine

Graduation Poetry

Adrian — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 11:58:00 +0000

Here is a poetry scaffold that you can use for the graduation ceremony of an elementary / primary school. Just take the poem and use it as a model and then ask the students to alter it to fit their school community. Add / Delete / Modify / find ‘better’ words / change the poetic devices etc, etc.

I’m thinking that this will save a heap of heartache as a poem like this can take ages to write from scratch.

Adrian

Happiness is…

Adrian — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 00:54:00 +0000

Here is an excellent poetry writing scaffold that I’ve used over the years. It can bring out all sorts of emotional intelligence stuff, heaps of thoughtful discussion, a fair amount of writing and in the end produce quite a nice poem that you can celebrate in many different ways.

Enjoy my ‘Happiness is…’ poetry writing scaffold.

Creating a Passion for Poetry in Your Students

Adrian — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 05:04:00 +0000

One of my mentors once asked me how I foster a love of poetry in my students. I had to get back to her as I knew I didn’t

After a bit of research, a bit of trial and error and a couple of years of teaching, I have created some excellent scaffolds that get great results.

Today I finally managed to get a couple of these poetry writing ideas online for anyone to use.

So feel free to rip over to my poetry writing page and check them out.

cheers

Adrian