Poetry… It's not always on the top of students’ lists of favourite topics to cover in school. Many students (AND Teachers) see poetry as difficult, confusing, and a bore to study. It doesn’t have to be that way, at all! As a self-proclaimed poetry nerd, I’m here to share some ways students (AND Teachers) can have fun with Poetry.
April is Poetry Month and there are many different ways to celebrate poetry with any grade. Through out the month of April, I want to share with you some ideas that I think would be fun to try and would introduce students to various poems and types of poetry they may not otherwise come across. The first idea I have to share is Push Pin Poetry.
A friend shared the idea of Push Pin Poetry with me the other night, and I immediately got excited and wanted to try it, but I don’t have a class. So, I hope someone reads this and decides it might be fun to try with their class, and then share all the fun of how it worked with me!
A Push Pin Poetry board is a bulletin board in the classroom with many words pinned all over it, with push pins. Students move the words around to write their own poetry.
If I did have a classroom, this is how I would use a Push Pin Poetry board.
I would set my board up much like the board pictured above. I would want very colourful words pinned to a bulletin board, and lots of them! I’ve seen some examples of Push Pin Poetry boards that have envelopes in the corner with all the verbs in one envelope, nouns in another, so on and so forth. I don’t think I like the idea of the envelopes because then the students need to search through the envelopes. Browsing the words in front of them may spark some ideas. If you wanted division between parts of speech, you could colour code the words, nouns = purple, verbs = yellow, adjectives = green, etc.
I would introduce the board to the students by first going over a few different, grade appropriate, types of poetry. For example, if you were doing this in a grade 4 class, you might look at a couple examples of Acrostic poems, ABC Poems, Cinquains, Couplets, Diamantes, and Colour poems, to name a few. Show the students plenty of examples; model writing poems (including showing how to write them using the board).
Once students are prepared with some knowledge on how to use the board and examples of types of poetry they could write, let them know when they can use the Push Pin Poetry board.
For example:
Set it up as a centre.
They have spare minutes at the beginning of the day, before class starts.
There is an indoor recess
They are done a certain activity/task/assignment early
When your class has time to use the board will differ from class to class, and be decided by the classroom teacher.
Along with words scattered all over the board, I would also put pieces of paper along the one side of the board with each student’s name. That way if they complete a poem on the board, they can sign their work.
If your class has access to a device, such as an ipad or ipod, I would make it available for students to take pictures of their Push Pin Poetry poems, as the poems won't last the whole time the board is up. Students will constantly be using words needed to create their poems. If you leave the board up for a month, and students capture their finished poems, you could have a whole book of class poems by the end of the month. At the end of the month you could print of the pictures of the poems written by your students and post a new bulletin board celebrating their original poetry and their learning.
If you don’t have access to a device to capture the poems in a photo, students could be encouraged to make a seperate copy of the Push Pin poem they composed.
Other things you could do with a Push Pin Poetry board
- Have spontaneous poetry readings. Tell the students that if they notice a new poem left on the board, they can let the class know and read the new piece out to the class.
- Have “guest poets” use the board. Ask other teachers and staff members in the school to come in and leave a poem on the board. You, as the classroom teacher can be a “guest poet” as well. Let students discover the poems and read them aloud. Take a few minutes as a class to discuss the poem, what it’s about, what type it is, and maybe take a guess as to who the guest poet could be? (If they haven’t signed their work).
- Leave “fill in the blank” poems for students to complete. Leave a poem with words missing and students can take turns filling in the blanks and making many poems from the outline you’ve left for them. This could be a good first activity; it may help students get comfortable and excited to use the board.
There are tons of fun things you could do with a Push Pin Poetry board in your classroom. If you choose to put one up in your class and have any further questions or need assistance, feel free to contact me. As well, if you end up trying it out, please let me know how it worked out! Send me an email, send pictures if you can too! bskene@kerc.ca
Happy Poetry Month, I’ll be posting more poetry ideas all month, so keep checking back!
Brooke