Wow! In reading this article, I wish that I been given these choices in high school or even college. I agree with Moulton that typical research papers are so boring, but if I could have chosen other forms of writing (multigenre), I think that I would have gotten a better understanding of my subject. Looking at the list in Moulton’s article on p.531, I am excited to share this with my students. I am a little worried about all the research that has to go into this project only because this time of year is crunch time for EOG testing and I am not sure that I am going to be able to fully implement this project so that the students come away with a better understanding of writing across multiple genres. It definitely allows for creativity! Something that education needs more of.

In the article by Grierson, Anson, and Baird, I love the idea of mystery boxes. I really wish that I had this assignment at the beginning of the school year so that I would have more time for students to research. We do a week long multigenre study to get students ready for the EOG. We will do it the week after Spring break. I think this will help as I introduce this project to get students interested and excited. The article talked about how some writers need little guidance, but I think for fourth graders, they definitely need to be walked through the whole process. They know very little about organizing information so that the process has a beginning and end. I think that if several of these were done thoughout the year, that the students would become more independent by the last project. I think it will also be important to teach my students how to chose a genre and not just pick them randomly. They will need to look at their subject and pick genres that best convey the information that they have collected.

I like the idea of taking facts and writing them in verse. I loved “A Child Without a Mother”. I could feel the pain of the child as I read it, but also the things that might be going through a child’s mind who had just lost their mother. It was very moving. I can see how using it before reading could help students visualize a setting or build background such as the poem “Mojave” written about the desert. I think using it after reading gives them a chance to respond to what they have read. They can make a connection to their life and the lives of the characters. Writing “I poems” could definitely make students pay attention to details by listening more carefully, but also from their thoughts, choosing what is important to remember.

Thanks for all the great links. I especially like Gigglepoetry. I have used that site many times to find funny poems at the beginning and end of the year to share with my students. The links that had lesson plans on them were very easy to follow. We are beginning a novel study on “Love That Dog” on Monday (2/22) and all of these sites will be very helpful. We purchased a class set for each fourth grade of the novel last year and didn’t really know what to do with it. Thanks to your help, Crystal has planned a unit for us that I think our kids will enjoy. I have learned alot about poetry that I didn’t know and I am excited to share it with my students and see how they develop their own poems. I want to try and use the acrostic poem in science, too. I think that it is neat how important information is included in the poem. My kids love learn things by using music, but poems have a rhythm too so I think they will love it as well as benefit from it.

This is a great book of verse to do an ocean unit on. It has some great facts for my fourth graders, but it would also be great for younger grades who teach a unit on oceans. It was great the way it was filled with facts and the last page gave some awesome information for students.

The poems in this book were more like what I read as a child. It had some rhyming throughout. I love the one entitled “Dirty Laundry Pile”. That rings so true for my own grown kids! Loved “The Vacuum Cleaner’s Revenge” too! When I read poetry I feel like I am dancing inside my head to the rhythm of the words. All of these poems are so cute. My students are going to love them!

What a moving story about a beautiful girl who was chosen to be the wife of someone important and how she loved him. She missed her old life, but she knew her new life was good. Even after her death she saw how others adored her and respected her. Just as she was kept for her mate while she was alive, they also prepared her to spend eternity with him. Wow! This was a powerful poem!

I really like the “Untamed” poem when it talks about what interest do zebras have in tethers or saddle. since they can run free. Most of the acrostic poems I have ever written were just one to three words on each line and they described the subject more randomly. This is so cool! In the back of the book it also talked more about acrostics and how you can make the last letter in each line form a word or hide the first letter of each word on a slant in each line. Wow!

This book of acrostic poems was so cool. It was like a story, only each page was an acrostic poem. Sometimes acrostics are hard to write depending on what he word is that you are using for each first letter, but this was awesome!

In the article “Extending Acrostic Poetry…..Framework”, I thought it was very interesting how it described the acrostic structure along with teacher modeling as a way to show students how to think flexibly and develop ideas. In the past I have always kept poetry in a separate category and never really looked at it as developing meaningful content. It was more as entertainment. It really makes sense though to use it after teaching a unit to allow students to integrate what they have learned. I have used acrostic form in math teaching the order of operations: Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally (Parentheses, Exponents, Multiply, Divide, Add,
Subtract), but I never really took the time to use in subjects like science and social studies.

I love the way Graham writes her poems in the shape of what she is describing. This is a great way to catch the readers attention and help them see what the words are describing.

I agree with Lauterbach that poetry is often as much about the way language works as it is about the subject. When I read a poem to myself or to my class, I tend to try to put a beat or rhythm to my words. I do it without even thinking. I also love that she says it is not the worst thing in the world to be confused. I have read numerous poems in my childhood and adulthood that I am not sure if I understood the author’s meaning, but I loved the way the words worked together, and I made my own interpretation. Wow! Susan Wooldrige makes me feel better when she said that it is impossible to teach anyone to write a poem, but we can set up circumstances in which poems are likely to happen. I think I talked about before that I always thought that poems needed to rhyme and when I became a teacher assistant, I witnessed a teacher introducing cinquains and haikus to her students. Man, they came up with some great things! I really think that sometimes you could assess a students understanding of a topic much better if they wrote a poem about it rather than a story. If teachers can get their creative juices flowing by brainstorming words or phrases about a topic, they know how to put them together. They just need guidance and lots of opportunities to work on this way of writing. I love the “I Wish Poem”! It is so simple and to the point, but filled with emotion.

I also agree that we need to give children a diet of poetry. When they check out books in the library, they tend to get poetry books that are humerous. It is our responsibility to expose students to all types of literature, but when it comes to poetry we seem to have a one track mind. A few poems thrown in here and there and we think that we have introduced them to poetry.

In the book, “All the Small Poems and Fourteen More”, I loved the simlicity of the words, but the complexity of the message. On page 85 the poem titled “Soap Bubble” described a bubble in ways that I have never thought of – “rises, shivering, heavy”, when I read this, I could see a bubble floating in the air and the way it wobbles and floats along. I love the visuality of the poem. If I could only convey to my students how important it is to allow their readers to see what they are writing about, it just makes reading a poem or story so much more enjoyable.

In “Love That Dog” I loved the way the author wrote a whole novel in verse. I read this book last year with my students and I think the first thing they really liked that there weren’t many words on the page, but then as we read the book, they really enjoyed the story.

I only hope that I can feel confident enought to try allowing my students the opportunity to write poetry.

Paper clip: shiney, silver, sleek, bendy, curvy, slick, holds it together, clips, bounds

I found the readings to be very encouraging about teaching poetry. By using the techniques and showing children that poetry doesn’t have to rhyme, but it is a flow of language using rhythm and beat they can write a piece that is very interesting and creative.