4th Grade Poetry Kickoff

National Poetry Month doesn't officially start until April, but we are kicking things off a little bit early; partly because I love poetry, and partly because we will just need the extra time to get things accomplished. But mostly, because I love poetry. We are working a little bit backwards, by designing our final product first, but that is so that they have some computer lab time to work on it in the next two weeks.

Our 4th graders will be designing their own poetry project. I have given them 8 different options, or allowed them to create their own project. I tried to incorporate as many different learning styles and interest areas as possible when offering project options. Poetry obviously lends well to writing, music, and art interests. However, I wanted a way to offer technology projects as well. Many of our 4th graders had been part of our coding club earlier this year. They made a lot of progress using Scratch, and I tried to brainstorm ways to use Scratch to have programming and poetry collide.




I talked through these different options, showed the linked examples, and shared this document with them so that they could look at them again if needed.




This is the beginning of the presentation that I showed the students. It will continue growing each week as we add more poetry terms and forms.

Finally, here is the project planning sheet that I asked students to fill out. They then shared that document with myself and with our computer lab instructor, Mrs. Brejcha. They will be working on the project in both places.





These forms will help me to see what resources I need to get for students and help them be successful! I can't wait to brag on student work in a few weeks time!