Poetry Slam


One of my favorite things as a classroom teacher was teaching my students how to read and write poetry.  When I first arrived on the scene at my new school as a Library Media Specialist, the fourth grade asked me for the first two years to help them out with their poetry units during their kiddos'  scheduled Library Media time.  I was happy to oblige!  Because I have them for such a short period of time, I created a lesson that could be completed over 2-3 Library Media classes.

First, I chose three types of poetry that I felt really met the Library Media niche.  There was a choice that met a maker need, technical need, and those who love books.  I collected some examples of what they each look like and/or videos that would teach them how to create the forms.  I linked the videos in a QR Code that I then put into a poster / table handout for the kiddos to access.  They grabbed their iPads to scan the QR codes to learn about the poetry forms and then chose one to create.  Voila!  You can download the lesson below.


The Poetry Slam lesson comes with the handout that you can provide students which has the QR Codes already set up and linked!  It also comes with a complete lesson plan that you can use.  I don't typically include standards in my lesson plans, but you can absolutely connect this to CCCS Literacy Standards, ISTE Standards and AASL Standards because they are communicating their ideas in a variety of media formats while also making decisions about their learning and audience.

This lesson is PERFECT for Learner Led Libraries because of the choice it provides your Library Learners!  They get to choose the poetry form that they want to create.  In addition to that, we spend a lot of time at the beginning of the year learning how to access information in a variety of ways when in the Library Media Center and one of those ways happens to be QR Codes.  While teaching QR Codes, I teach them the different ways to scan a QR Code because not all QR Code scanners are created equal, we can only have particular QR Code scanners downloaded onto our iPads (before Apple updated the camera to scan QR Codes), and sometimes tech just glitches. While teaching them about QR Codes, I use this QR Code Anchor Chart that I created.  Because they have this background knowledge about QR Codes, they are independently working on the Poetry Slam activity!  And I am all about building independent Library Learners!



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