Poetry, Poetry, Poetry!

As I mentioned in my last post, we used the mentor text "Heartbeat" to start our poetry unit.  After we wrapped up that novel, we began our poem analysis and create our own poems!

Analyzing Poetry

Well, the biggest bummer in my classroom right now is that my Smart Board died (like at the beginning of January).  Yes, the fan failed....And, I'm still waiting for it to be fixed. So, luckily, I have a projector, but it's still not an ideal situation.  Anyways, when we began analyzing poetry, I created a booklet to use with my students (which I posted on TpT).  I projected the poem "Bliss" on the screen in my room, and we practiced going through the text dependent questions together.  I wanted to create free verse poems with rigorous questions to prepare my students for their state test! While we went over the answers as a class, students recorded them in their copy of their poetry books.

Each student had his/her own booklet to work in.  After the first day, students would go through the remaining poems with a partner, and later on their own.  We would always go over the correct answers as a class.

 Here is a sample of what a student's booklet looked like inside...

 One of my students brought in his favorite poetry book, Winter Woes.  With the weather lately, it was very timely!  I love when my students get excited about what we are learning and bring in items to share with the rest of the class! I had never heard of Winter Woes, but it was very cute!  It got some chuckles out of my 5th graders.

Note: The poem "Bliss" and a blank copy of a poetry book (see below) are a FREEBIE in my TpT store!

Writing Poetry

Now, I didn't want to kill my students' love of poetry by making them analyze poems 24/7.  So, we would analyze one to two poems a day.  The remaining class time was spent on creating our own poems!  I must say, I was SUPER impressed with my students' poems!  Since I taught them last year, I was able to comment on the progress they'd made as poets.  Here is a picture I posted on my Instagram account showing the hallway outside of my classroom.

I had a hard time selecting poems to include in this post.  I am not exaggerating (no hyperbole here)!  I just picked a few of the amazing poems my students created.  I was proud of their word choices, including their use of figurative language.  They did a nice job of incorporating repetition in their poems too.

The poem I wrote called "Down from the Sky" inspired a lot of my students to write poems from different perspectives (see the roller coaster poem at the end of this post).

Now that you've seen some of their work, can you tell why I'm such a proud teacher!?!?! :)