Poetry Slam!

Have you ever hosted a poetry slam? I just LOVE them! It has been a while, but it makes sharing poetry so fun and so real. Adding parents in makes it even better and gives students the feeling of having a real audience. Their nerves are up just enough to make it feel like a big deal. Here's a look at how our poetry slam went. It is super basic and easy to put together. 

The Poetry Unit

First off, April is poetry month, so it was the perfect time to do a unit on poetry. We learned so much about how to put poetry together...that it takes something ordinary and makes it extraordinary. We learned about how poets use different types of figurative language and how they are used. 

*simile

*metaphor

*personification

*hyperbole

*onomatopoeia

We practiced writing different types of poetry. 

*bio poems

*haiku

*cinquain

*diamante

*acrostic

*rhyming

*free verse

*letter

*memory

*subject/predicate

and others

We practiced reading poetry and digging into the deeper meaning. 

Planning for the Poetry Slam

Once we had a good repertoire of poetry written, the students picked two poems to share at our poetry slam. I helped them to edit the poems and they published them. To publish, they simply followed the edits, making changes. They wrote the poem in their very best writing and made an illustration to go with it. Students were encouraged to reread their poems. We talked about how to speak before an audience...pausing, looking up, using an appropriate voice level, etc. 

I made a little paper program for our poetry slam to make it feel more real. The morning of the program we moved our desks to one side and set up chairs on the other. We added a stool for the poets to sit on. We had cookies laid out and some water bottles to enjoy afterwards.

The Poetry Slam

It was really very simple to host the slam. I started by welcoming any guests that came, which honestly were not a lot, but still enough to make it feel like we had a real audience. Once I welcomed guests, I explained that I would be announcing each poem and that it is a tradition at a poetry reading to applaud with snapping instead of clapping. Then one by one I had each poet come up to read. They read one poem and then sat back down. Later each poet presented another poem. It was that simple. After we were finished with the poetry, we enjoyed our cookies and water. 

Extending the Learning

This coming week we will be finishing our poetry unit. We will finish writing our poems and then each of the poets will publish each of their poems and we will create a small booklet of poems stapled together with a front cover. Each student will go home with a book of their own poetry to treasure for many years.  

Titanic in the Classroom

It's been a while since I have studied the Titanic with my classroom, but it is always a hit and something they enjoy. This year I decided to add it back into my curriculum. I pulled a lot of ideas from Teaching With a Mountain View. Her blog is amazing and full of inspiration! I am not sure what it is about the Titanic, even more than a hundred years later, students are still touched by this story. 

Titanic Reading

My first thought when planning this unit was to create a reading-heavy unit that also tied in other subject areas. I sat down to look for different book ideas for my readers. Since I have third through fifth graders, I decided to go with different books based on the needs of the readers. I settled on three different titles and split the students into groups based on those. These are the three books I settled on.

I loved that all of my readers could access this story no matter how high or low their level. They could all feel a part of the real learning we were doing. We practiced all sorts of reading strategies with these books. 

While learning about the same topic, it was important to me that all students, no matter their level, were able to feel apart of the whole class conversations about the historic event of the sinking of the Titanic. As we learned, we dug deep into the story through strategies like determining importance, inferring, making connections, visualizing, and numerous others.

Titanic Social Studies

As we went dove into social studies through the frame of the Titanic, we were able to study class in the early 1900's students were surprised to find that the classes were separated and that the classes had so much distance between them. We watched videos and read books that all pointed this out. We enjoyed trying out a third class tea and on our final day with the Titanic, we saw the huge discrepancy when we had a first class tea. We talked about etiquette and how the tables were set. They were shocked over all the different pieces of silverware a first class meal required. 

We also read books and learned about the human spirit. How people gave up their place on a lifeboat for others, how the ship officers went down with the ship, how the orchestra played until the ship's final moments. We heard about how the lifeboats could hear people calling for help, but how most were too afraid for their own safety to go back and rescue those freezing to death in the icy water. 

Titanic Science

In science, we did a few activities. One of the activities was to become boat builders ourselves and engineer boats that could safely float while holding a heavy load. It was interesting to see the various boat designs that the students came up with. We noticed that the flat-bottomed boats seemed to work the best, especially those that had a very large, flat bottom.  

Another experiment we did was to freeze a water balloon to create an iceberg. Students were surprised when we popped the balloon and dropped the icy ball into the water to simulate an iceberg. They were shocked at how little peeked above the water and how much was below it. This helped them understand the important conversations about how the iceberg that was hit by the Titanic was so dangerous. Most of the iceberg could not even be seen.  

Titanic Writing

To connect writing, we did some subject/predicate poems. These were super powerful to me and easy for the kids. We practiced writing a poem together on the board. We chose the topic of playground and then wrote a bunch of subjects, or nouns, on the whiteboard. Afterwards, we went back through and gave each noun a predicate, or action verb. Then I read one of the Titanic poems that I had found so they could have the idea of how you could turn the poem into a story using two-word phrases. The results were amazing, and heartbreaking. 

Here are a couple of examples from my class. 

1

Titanic leaving

People cheering

Pool splashing

1st Class relaxing

2nd Class playing

3rd class immigrating

Lookout seeing

Passengers snoring

Iceberg hitting

Travelers rushing

Lifeboats going

Unsinkable sinking

#2

People swimming

Dining room stunning

Guards guarding

Maids cleaning

Boat bumped

Iceberg hits

People wondering

Swimming stops

People shake

Compartments fill

Water spills

Kids scream

Babies wail

Lifeboats fill

Lifeboats lower

Titanic snaps

Titanic sinks

Lives lost

People crying

Titanic passes

Titanic gone

I love how they turned out!

Titanic Class Projects

For a project, I sent instructions home with students about a month in advance. They were to create a diorama showing one part of the story of the Titanic. They had to write about the scene they chose and why they picked that one, and be ready to present it to the class. Originally, I scheduled the Titanic project presentations for April 15, the day the people were rescued, but I unknowingly scheduled it on Good Friday, which we had off. So We rescheduled it for April 19, our first day back from Easter break.

The students wowed me with their projects. Even many of the students who do not have much help at home came with beautiful versions of their chosen scenes. They were so proud to share and it was great to see their artistry. We created a small museum of projects down the hallway leading to our classroom so others passing by could also view the projects.

Classroom Transformation Angry Birds

I am obsessed with my latest mini classroom transformation! This Angry Birds transformation was an absolute show-stopper. My kids were beyond thrilled....while doing math!!! It's so fun to see them excited to do geometry and highly engaged. Here's a quick peek at how I pulled it all together for a day of learning fun.

The Back Story

I teach at a private school, always have...for 20+ years. We have a ton of 1/2 days. Students and parents have been known to blow these days off as if they aren't "real" school days. I mean, I am always shocked to get a phone call from a parent asking if we are doing anything on the 1/2 day. Ummm....yeah, we are doing school. Anyone else have these conversations? Anyway, so I started thinking about ways I could make students WANT to come to class on these short days. The most logical thing to me was to throw in active learning, a lot of fun paired with rigor, and TRANSFORMATIONS!! Transformations can really pack a punch and leave kids talking about the experience for years to come...."Remember when we had a Toy Story transformation? A Mario one? They are just so much fun, no matter the content you pair them with. Kids continue to talk about them for years to come because the magic of those days does not ever wear off. 

Last summer at the Get Your Teach On Conference, I was in a room that was decorated in an Angry Birds theme....it was awesome! I was thinking about how I could bring this theme into my own classroom and of course I had to rein myself in...I wanted all the things...the plushies, the slingshots, you name it, I wanted it if it was going to bring more Angry Birds vibes to my class. In the end, I decided to go the budget friendly route and I do not think my students could have been any more excited, even if I had spent a fortune. 

 DIYing the Transformation

I collected a bunch of different sized boxes...thanks to all my Amazon purchases the past few months...and also found some other boxes that I had at home or school. I went to Dollar Tree and found a few rolls of kraft wrapping paper (it looks like what a brown bag is made from). I also picked out some different colors of poster board and some white as well. At Walmart, I found some pompoms of a decent size in bright colors that matched the poster boards and I grabbed a new pack of Black Sharpies (which was the most expensive item I purchased for this transformation). 

At home, I wrapped the different boxes with the wrapping paper and used a Sharpie to give the boxes the look of being made from real wood. I used pieces of the brightly colored poster boards to write a letter on each box and also a point value. The smaller boxes were worth more points, like 5000 while most of the bigger boxes were lower values, maybe even in the hundreds. 

At first I thought about creating several items and purchasing some clipart to create with, but in the end I was running low on time, so I decided to just free-hand draw some of the characters to scatter around on the boxes and honestly, it turned out perfectly. 

My son had a slingshot that he got from his grandparents a few years ago so I did not need to buy one. At school, I had a red plastic tablecloth that I used to cover a table. I set the boxes on it and scattered the characters around them. Then I placed the pompoms and sling shot on the table, ready for the activities. I placed a line a few feet away from the boxes to mark where the students would have to stand while using the slingshot. 

Bringing the Rigor

Some people, mistakenly, believe that a room transformation is all about the fun and just full of fluff. Done correctly, nothing could be further from the truth. It is the perfect way to bring even more rigor that normal and can easily be done because when the stage is set to capture the attention of students, they will give 110%. You have them basically eating out of your hand, willing to listen more closely, dig deeper, and go farther to learn the content because they want to. 

I teach in a multi-grade situation with students from grades 3-5, so I always have to prep more than more level of an activity. I wanted to stick to math standards for this transformation and since it was only a 1/2 day, it was perfect to pair it down to include just one subject area. 

In math, third grade was learning the basics of area and perimeter. Fourth grade was also studying area and perimeter, but they were learning the formulas p=(2xl)+(2xw) and a=bxh. Fifth grade was not studying either area or perimeter, but were building on that same idea with finding volume, so they were not that far apart. 

I decided to create some rectangles from the poster board and used that to teach all the skills for both third grade and fourth grade, including finding unknown numbers. For the 5th grade, I gave them strips of paper that included details about the boxes that were wrapped up for our transformation. They had to use that information to find the volume of the boxes and also some had unknowns that they had to solve for. 

I created little booklets for students to record their answers in. I just quickly grabbed some free clipart off the web and added some boxes for their answers. There was space to show their work...super simple. 

Bringing the Fun

Students had between 10 and 13 questions to solve. I gave each group the activities that they could choose to do (individually) in any order. However, they did have to write the answer to the question in the corresponding box on their booklet. Students were given instructions to do just one problem at a time and then check in to see if they were correct. If they were correct, they were allowed to shoot the slingshot one time. They shot at the boxes, trying to get the highest amount of points possible. Whichever box they hit first with their pompom, represented the number of points they received. If they missed the boxes, they received zero points for that round. They wrote the points they earned in their booklets each time. The students were so excited to use the slingshot, they were highly engaged in finding the correct answer. Students who sometimes choose to not work carefully, were working carefully to make sure their answers were correct. If someone did miss an answer, they were given instructions to fix it before coming back to check again. 

To add an edge of competition, I told the students that anyone who finished their challenge would receive a Jolly Rancher, and the person in each grade level who got the most points would each receive two Jolly Ranchers. 

Final Thoughts on the Transformation

Overall, I thought this new transformation was a smashing success. The students were engaged. They had fun learning. There was rigor, and the environment was perfect. I would most definitely repeat this transformation. It was magic. 

Next time, I would begin working on the creating part several days before instead of just the afternoon and evening before. It was a lot of work to create everything by hand, but it was definitely worth it. 

What the Students said about It

It was fun!

A few days later, one of my students said to me, "I figured something out about you...." When I asked what they had figured out the student said, "I figured out that you just want us to have fun!" That was a huge compliment and one of my missions in teaching. I want students to realize that learning is fun! If they see how fun it is, they will be life-long learners as I am, and that is a win!