No Series: Poetry Workstations

Poetry Workstations

Lesson Objective: Students analyze and explore poetry through a class blog and podcasting

Grades 4-8 / ELA / Technology

5 MIN

ELA.RL.6.4 | ELA.RL.6.7 | ELA.SL.6.5

Discussion
Supporting Materials

Thought starters

How do the "guiding reflection questions" support students' thinking?
What skills are students practicing as they create their podcast?
How did the class blog contribute to collaboration among students?

134 Comments

David Alford Jan 22, 2024 10:00pm

I do not feel that this video reflects the learning environment that am faced with on a daily basis the words used by the teacher were far beyond my students current level of ability based on reading ability and vocabulary alone not to mention the resulting behavior issues that flow out of those issues. I sometimes use a similar strategy of providing options for student learning experience that still accomplish the learning objectives.

Recommended (0)

Michael Daigre Sep 10, 2023 9:45pm

The "guiding reflection questions" help the students focus, while preparing, for the poetry assignment. The teacher used several creative stations during this assignment to help the students look at poetry from several view points. While the students worked on their podcast, they were able to discuss and provide their personal thoughts about the poems. Blogging also provided students the chance to use the same above skills, while also including communication with their classmates. They were able to give and receive feedback about their blog post, related to the poems.

Recommended (0)

LaBresha Small Aug 8, 2023 7:45pm

How do the "guiding reflection questions" support students' thinking? The "guiding reflection questions" supported students' thinking because they helped each studdent focus on what was important in the poetry. It really motivated their metacognition skills.
What skills are students practicing as they create their podcast? The skills the students are practicing as they create their podcast are studying, reading, analyzing, brainstorming, inference and listening to name some very important ones.
How did the class blog contribute to collaboration among students? The class blog contributed to collaboration among students because it required them to actively participate with one another. They could read one another's thoughts on the blog as well as comment on peers uploaded work and engage in collaborative conversation and discussion about said work. Great way to ask questions and answer questions.

Recommended (0)

DeAnna Granger Jul 29, 2023 3:08pm

How do the "guiding reflection questions" support students' thinking? The guiding reflection questions allowed the students to think critically about the poems.
What skills are students practicing as they create their podcast? Students are creating and reflecting in the podcast. Creating the podcast and reflecting on the poem, analyzing it and breaking it down as if they wrote it. Creating the podcast helped the students with their critical thinking skills and communication skills.
How did the class blog contribute to collaboration among students? Using the class blog, students reflected and discussed the poem with one another. This allowed a deeper understanding of the poem and also allowed the students to practice communication skills.

Recommended (0)

Avinus Calloway Jul 25, 2023 9:44pm

1. How do the "guiding reflection question" support students thinking? The guiding question supports student think because it helps to set the foundation or the core of the lesson, the teacher begins the lesson with a review of important information that the students will need to be familiar with in order to be able to make connections as the lesson progresses.

2. What skills are students practicing as they create their podcast? Some of the skills that the students are practicing are listening, visualization, and also cooperative learning.

3. How did the class blog contribute to collaboration among students? Collaboration among the students gave them the opportunity to share ideas with each other in a way that they might dive deeper into tanalyzing exactly what it is that the asssignment is requiring them to do.

Recommended (0)

Lesson Plans

Lesson Plan: Poetry Workstations

Materials

External Resource Materials

Transcripts

Great Lesson Ideas: Poetry Workstations with Keri McAllister

McAllister: [00:00:00] Hello, I’m Keri McAllister, and I teach elementary language arts at

View More

Great Lesson Ideas: Poetry Workstations with Keri McAllister

McAllister: [00:00:00] Hello, I’m Keri McAllister, and I teach elementary language arts at Bonnie Cole Elementary. This great lesson idea is called poetry workstations. [00:00:08]

[00:00:08] Today we are going to be focusing on poetry, and we’re going to be reflecting on it. We’re going to be using inferences. [00:00:17]

[00:00:17] Before going into workstations, I took the students through a process of reviewing what poetry is and what it means, and then actually doing and analyzing a poem with them so that they had a good background and foundation before they went to practice it on their own. [00:00:33]

[00:00:34] Poetry is an imaginative awareness of experience and—[00:00:39]

[00:00:39] This lesson I would use towards the center of a poetry unit where the students have a little bit of background knowledge about poetry. [00:00:48]

[00:00:48] What figurative language do you see in the poem? What figurative language? [00:00:54]

Child: [00:00:56] When the poem says the road was grassy and it wanted wear, I think that’s like personification because a road can’t want something because it’s not alive unless you think about the grass. So it’s just comparing it to what a human might say. [00:01:13]

McAllister: [00:01:14] So let’s take a look at your workstations that you’re going to be doing to practice using your inferences with poetry, bring your scheme of connections, asking questions about what you’re reading. [00:01:26]

[00:01:26] The three groups and three workstations were the iPod workstation, the techy workstation with blogging and podcasting workstations. [00:01:34]

[00:01:38] In the iPod workstation, I put some poetry in motion videos on there where the students were able to choose the poem to watch, and then they were using their poetry reflection questions and sticky notes to reflect on the poem and analyze and think about what the poem meant to them. [00:01:56]

Child: [00:01:56] You sort of get to visualize the poem in a different way. Like if you read it, you just read it. But if you actually see it happening, you can hear it and sometimes hearing poetry it’s more meaningful than just reading it. [00:02:13]

McAllister: [00:02:13] When the students were working on their podcast, they had previously done a poet study where they had analyzed a poet, read a bunch of his or her poems. In this station, they were trying to pretend to be this poet or put themselves in the shoes of the poet so that they could create a radio show or an interview or a video podcast or audio podcast. Basically, sharing their thoughts and reflections about the style of the poet and reflecting on their poetry. [00:02:43]

Child: [00:02:43] I’m recording my poem then I’m going to like talk about how I feel like Robert Frost felt when he wrote this poem. Then I’m probably going to do like a radio show. [00:02:57]

Child: [00:02:58] I’m going to like talk about it and say what’s some of the analogies or metaphors and stuff. [00:03:03]

Child: [00:03:03] Different people, poems can mean different things to every single person. [00:03:06]

McAllister: [00:03:07] In blogging workstation, the students were able to reflect on a poem. They had a choice between a humorous or serious poem, and they were commenting, once again using their guiding reflection questions. But not only giving their ideas, but once their classmates posted, they could go back and forth in an online discussion asking questions and commenting with each other. [00:03:29]

Child: [00:03:30] Which words feel important? Say if you were reading a poem about a dolphin. Say it was a happy poem about dolphins, you’d say this poem made me feel happy. Or this was enjoyable because dah, dah, dah, dah. Fill in the blank. [00:03:49]

McAllister: [00:03:50] I love it. Did you write those on? [00:03:53]

Child: [00:03:53] Yeah, those two. [00:03:54]

McAllister: [00:03:55] At this point, this lesson was really about giving them an opportunity to practice and analyze. [00:04:01]

[00:04:01] We’re going to kind of have a little bit of a refelction discussion.[00:04:05]

[00:04:05] So that you can implement this lesson in your classroom, I’m going to share my lesson plan, my presentation and resources with you. [00:04:12]

Child: [00:04:12] Join us next time for Spotlight on Poetry. [00:04:16]

View Less