Writing Poetry

Now that we have published our All-About books, we are moving on to Poetry.  I love teaching this unit, and the kids love the freedom they have as they write poetry. 

I use the poetry lessons from Lucy Calkin's Units of Study.

I created a few things to use during this unit that would go with the units of study lessons...just to make my life a little easier.

We started off with just talking about topics for poems.  To make it easy, we looked around the classroom and used objects in the room that we see everyday.  Lucy has a GREAT lesson over this in the book! I have the students add things to their list and glue the list into the writer's notebook.

Poet's Eyes-Topic List

After some practice, I gave each student an object from the classroom  to observe.  They wrote their "scientist" notes about the object.  They later translated the "scientist's" notes into "poet's" notes.  I was amazed at how creative they were...and we were just getting started with  this unit!

Scientis't Notes/Poet's Notes

The page above had an example for them to look back at as they started their own notes.  Most of the student's found this page very helpful and wanted to use it to help them plan their future poems, so I made another page without the example so they could use that in their future poetry planning. 

Scientist's Notes/Poets Notes

As we move through the unit, I am creating an anchor chart to list what we do as poets.  I wanted them to have this to refer to as they write.  I made the anchor chart into a small notes page, which they added to their writer's notebooks.

Strategies Poets Use

During the unit, the kids will learn how to turn some of their story ideas into poems.  We will create an anchor with the steps and add the anchor chart notes to the writer's notebooks.

Story Poems

We practice the strategy using the page below.

Story Poems

I am  planning to have each student publish a poetry book, not just one poem.  They are VERY excited about this.  As they choose the poems they want to publish in their book, they will use this checklist.

Poetry Checklist

Published poems will be graded using the rubric below.

Poetry Rubric

My plan is to add their favorite poems to the Book Creator app to create our own class book of poems.  They are so excited about this!

 Book Creator

$4.99

Research Fun!

We do a small research activity every 9 weeks and this time I wanted to make it a little more fun. I incorporated two iPad apps that the students used to create a final project.  They had a great time and it was simple! I did a VERY quick tutorial of how to use the apps... and they were on their own. 

I split the class into small groups to research a president.  Each student in the group was responsible for using the internet or books to find an IMPORTANT fact about their president and paraphrase that information. (This is something that we have worked on before.) 

 

We used these websites:

 

The White House

 

Pebble Go

(you need a subscription to use this site)

 

Each group used this form to paraphrase their facts and sketch a picture to go with it.

 

Research Page

 

 

These are the apps we used to create our final project.

 

Type Drawing

 

$2.99

 

 

Fotobabble

 

Free!

 

To create the final project:

 

1. We inserted a picture of the assigned president into Type Drawing. (I added these pictures to the camera roll ahead of time.)

2. The students typed in their facts.

3. They changed font, color, size, etc.

4. They added their facts to the president picture.

 

THEN....

 

1. We inserted the final Type Drawing picture into the Fotobabble app.

2.  Students took turns narrating their presidential facts.

3.  We played the final projects in class.

4. We added the final projects to our classroom blog for parents to see!

 

 

Here are a few of the finished projects!

(click the president's name to listen to the fotobabble.)

 

Abraham Lincoln

 

Franklin D. Roosevelt

 

 

 

John F. Kennedy

 

 

I used this rubric to grade the group research projects:

 

Research Rubric

 

The class had a great time with this and I really enjoyed the final projects!

 

Literature Circles

I have a few of my reading groups that are really ready to be more independent.  Right now they are meeting with me and then meeting as a book club group, but I really want them to have a specific goal and activity they can do without a lot of direction from me.  I also wanted them to really get into the text and have some deep discussions. 

I have done a little research on literature circles, but I have changed some things to customize it so it will work better for my 2nd graders.  Here's what I came up with:

Literature Circle Jobs:

View the pages below to see what each job is responsible for and the pages they will complete and discuss during their group meeting.

Discussion Director:

 

Summarizer:

 

Connector:

Illustrator:

 

Word Detective:

 

 

Character Captain:

 

 

Thinking About My Thinking (Journal Page):

 

You can download all of these pages HERE.

 

 

As I was researching, I came across a great site by Laura Candler with a lot of information on literature circles. The site includes helpful videos and a few free dowloads.  My favorite downloads were the question starters for group discussion as well as the guidelines and rules for polite conversation. 

 

Click HERE to visit her site!

 

Here are a couple other sites with some free literature circle downloads:

 

charmed in the 3rd grade

 

mrs. cowan

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Author Study #2

I just finished working on this author study for Patricia Polacco. It is very similar to the author study I did for Cynthia Rylant. At the end of this unit, I plan to compare the two authors.

 

Click below to download the lesson notes:

Patricia Polacco Author Study

 

 

I use the Patricia Polacco books shown below in the unit, but will have a basket full of her other titles for the students to explore during stations.

To keep track of all of our thoughts and new learning, we will create a foldable again.  The kids love it...and so do I!

 

Here is an example of mine:

 

 Front cover

 

Inside the left flap:

 

Inside the right flap:

 

The middle flap- inside:

 

Under the inside flap:

The back:

We add to our foldable or our journal daily during the unit.

 

In the unit, we read the story, The Keeping Quilt.  During this time, the students will create their own quilt square. Inside the quilt square they draw/write about something that is important to them. We will put the squares together to create a large class quilt. 

 

I plan to create a large quilt by using gallon size ziplock bags and taping them together with colored duct tape. The students can then slide their quilt square into the bag from the back.  Here's an example I found:

 

 

 

The unit download also includes the pages that go with the culminating acitivity.  The activities are the same as the Cynthia Rylant unit because I allow the class to choose which activity they want to complete.

 

Click below to download the pages that go with the unit.

 

Patricia Polacco Unit Pages

 

 

 

To end the unit, we will discuss how the Patricia Polacco stories are similar/different to the Cynthia Rylant stories and why. 

 

Here is a quiz for the end of the unit:

 

Patricia Polacco Quiz

 

I hope you find something useful here.  I would still like to create an author study unit for Eve Bunting as well (because I REALLY love her books too), but we'll see if I have time for that!

 

Author Study Ideas

I am excited to start our unit on author studies....one of my favorite things to teach! 

In this unit download, I just listed some ideas that I plan to do each day of our Cynthia Rylant unit.  I also created pages to go with most of the lessons.

 

These are the books we cover in this unit:

 

 

 

 

 

Click below to download the lesson ideas:

Author Study: Cynthia Rylant

 

 

 

 

As we go through the unit, I have the students add most of the activities we do to a foldable.  They love this, especially since they take the foldable home at the end of the unit!  I always add a small journal to the back of the foldable.  Here's an example of what my foldable looks like:

 

Front:

 

Inside the left flap:

Inside the right flap:

 

The inside flap:

Back: 

 

 

Click here to downlad the pages that go with the unit: 

 

Cynthia Rylant Unit

 

 Here's a quiz over the books and lessons covered in this unit:

 

Cynthia Rylant Quiz

 

 

For a culminating activity, the students will choose what they want to do.  These pages are also in the unit download. Here are a few examples:

 

 

 

 

I am also working on an author study unit for Patricia Polacco. I'm almost done... so check back soon if you want the lessons and downloads!

 

Thanks!