The Teacher Toolbox

In schools a poem is often ‘finished’ when  it is ‘published’. Publishing often involves ‘typing it up’ ensuring the text is centred, has a lovely font (that usually takes ages to select), has a nice piece of clip art to support the text and some sort of clip art border.

The poem is then either added to a wall display for a few weeks or put into a display folder to be sent home at the end of the term. Oh, and it often has a shiny sticker on it. I guess what I’m trying to say here is that there are many other creative ways to celebrate poetry.

The poem above was a joint construction between my son and I using this poetry scaffold from my website. The audio production has been done with the free software  Audacity and using sounds from Soundsnap.com

…and if you are wondering, the spooky voice was achieved by dropping the pitch of my voice by -20.

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I find using scaffolds a great way to introduce children to alternative ways of writing poetry and exploring creative process.

Here is my lastest scaffold

The Haunted House
_______________s,
_______________s
___________
Door ____________ slowly open,
______________ them in
a ____________,
a ____________,
a distant _(animal) (noise it makes)
_________,
________,
_____________ comes to a _____________ halt
and ____________!
________(sound) __________(sound) _________(sound)
Door ___________s shut
Only to open when the next unsuspecting
______________ comes along.

And you can explore the who process with your students at this page The Haunted House Sound Poem.

Enjoy