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
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
By combining the first line of Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’ and the Build Your Wild Self character generator you will get a great narrative starter or a launchpad into literary description.
The Story Starter
‘As (insert name) awoke one morning after disturbing dreams, he/she found himself/herself transformed into an enormous creature.’
For the last few weeks the blogs have been rather quiet as the kids really got into this rather open ended task I set them…
‘You must create a 2 minute video to showcase to the world how intelligent, articulate and creative you are. The video must not be contrary to school ethos and you are only able to use puppets.. What will you do?’
Needless to say we learnt HEAPS and I’m sure we’ll up the production values and refine the process over the coming weeks.
Since my last post I’ve been working a heap and having a little down time.
I’ve been updating the phonics poster site and am almost finished. Already the traffic has doubled since I made it look a little prettier I’ve put together this little flash animation that anyone can use to LINK to my pages.
Recently I spent 3 days at the Byron Bay Writers’ Festival just engaging with ideas. I’ve always found it funny that teachers have to ‘teach’ Writing but rarely are we what people would consider ‘writers’. So it was nice to attend forums by journalists, poets, activists, novelists and even bloggers.
There are many ways to say ’said’. Tonight I’ve put together a collection of writing activities/ideas to help children to rise above the mundane use of ’said’. On to the Writing Tips!
In my role as ICT Integration Guy, I get to work with some teachers who are truly ’switch on’.
This lady works in a school in Australia and is big time into thinking skills.
One of my dearest friends and I have been discussing (for almost 20 years now) the fact that teachers are required to teach ‘Writing’ to our classes, but seldom could we be classed as “writers” in any other sense than ‘functionally literate’ individuals. It is an interesting debate that I’m sure we will continue tomorrow night at his birthday party esp given that his dad (an ex-principal) will have more than just a little input.
Aside to Sean…So dear friend, happy birthday (it is just a number… albeit a large one) and I look forward to many other discussions that may arise from your birthday present from me. A 3 day pass to the Byron Writers’ Festival.
NB I’ve cleared it with your wife and you are free to attend the festival and then bunk down at my place.
Last night Ginsberg was reading Beat Poetry to a disinterested porcelain cat who wished only to be known as Bono while Tom Waits (who’d been drinking again) was smashing my dinner plates into the sink
I love having students keep a dream diary for a week or two as homework. The dream recordings can be used for song lyrics, poetry, art, creative writing or even just the discussion relating to Psychology, Science or even Dream Interpretation.
Give it a go as this task can generate a great deal of discussion.
Here’s an activity where I ask the children to become life coaches and produce a 5 panel comic strip of a fable that they think would be a valuable ‘life lesson’ for a member of our class. NB No one is allowed to mention names
Today I’ve put together a scaffold for people wishing to experiment and be a little more creative in the publishing of poetry.
esp given that his dad (an ex-principal) will have more than just a little input.
