Get Hooked on Poetry

For National Poetry Month, my fifth graders created Animoto movies that captured and celebrated a poem they read, liked and chose. 

The tools and steps in this project are familiar to the students because they created book trailers during Picture Book Month. Picture Book Trailers I
Picture Book Trailers II. Picture Book Trailers III.

I start this project by sharing Emily Dickinson's poem, A Book with my fifth grade students.

With them, I create this storyboard for the poem, A Book storyboard.

They find a poem from our collection or find one on one of the online resources I have bookmarked.  They storyboard their poem.

The next class, I show them how to navigate to the resources on my Web page to find Creative Commons images.  I like FlickrCC, but also use Creative Commons and Pics4Learning. 

I demonstrate how to 
~search for and save images.
~create a word document to cite their sources.

They have another class to complete this part of the project, if they need it.

The next class, I review how to create an Animoto, including how to choose a theme, upload images, move slides around, add text and captions, change the music, slow down the transitions, preview their slide shows, make any changes and finally, publish.

I put up the start of an Animoto and then make changes with the students.  Here is the Animoto we created for A Book.

Here are the students' projects:
(There are a few typos, which the students will change when they review and evaluate their projects.)


The Dreamkeeper by Langston Hughes

Backwards Forwards Silly Poem by Jack Prelutsky


Love That Boy by Walter Dean Myers

or this link.

Do Whid It? by Shel Silverstein

 

I Wish My Father Wouldn't Fix Things by Shel Silverstein

 

Runny Babbit by Shel Silverstein
 

A Frog by Shel Silverstein


I Was Walking in a Circle by Jack Prelutsky


Nasty Little Dragonsong by Jack Prelutsky

Homework! Oh, Homework! by Jack Prelutsky

Come Skating by Shel Silverstein

 

Noisy Day by Jack Prelutsky

 

Passing the Refugee Camp by Naomi Shihab Nye

 

Speak to Me by Karen English

 

Horses by Maxine Kumin

 

Popcorn Yall

If You Don't Believe in Dragons by Jack Prelutsky

 

Isn't My Name Magical? by James Berry


If I Were an Egg by Joyce Sidman


Flying Pigs by Gemma Elizebeth Kavanagh


The Snowball by Shel Silverstein


Whale by Mary Ann Hoberman


When it is Snowing by Civ Cendering


Of Swirl By Swirl by Joyce Sidman