Blackout Poems...found by 5th graders on the pages of some favorite books

Poetry Month always includes some time for my students to find poetry on the printed page. 

This is hard work. You have to read a few pages, choose one that speaks to you, and then find the poem within the text. I model starting a few with the students to demonstrate the process.

As if this isn't a challenging enough task on its own, this year I again encouraged my fifth graders to also create an image from their blackout poems that would help the reader better understand their poem. 

Here are a few examples of their work:

Poems about Ezra Jack Keats inspired by A Poem for Peter

A few weeks ago, the fourth graders and I read A Poem for Peter, written by Andrea Davis Pinkney and illustrated by Steve Johnson  and Lou Fancher.  You can read about the read aloud experience here. Seeing how moved the students were, I decided to turn it into a project about biographies and poetry. 

Step One:

The students began by exploring the Ezra Jack Keats Foundation webpage. 

They read about Ezra Jack Keats, they listened to people talking about the influence of his books, they explored the neighborhoods of and characters in his books. Embedded in the lesson was information on biographies and where and how to find them in our library.

Step Two:

Using A Poem for Peter for inspiration, the students used the information they gathered and their memories from the book to write poems about Ezra Jack Keats. This lesson also included a refresher on a few commons styles and forms of poetry. Having the dictionaries and thesauri in plain sight encouraged the students to dig a little deeper for juicy words.

Step Three:

The students decided how to illustrate the final draft of their poem. They could choose from collage, water color pencils, colored pencils, crayons, and markers. 

I will post the finished poems next week!

Finding Poetic Inspiration in a Photograph

The fourth graders have been exploring poetry all year. Most recently, they found poetry in the written word using the blackout poetry form. Last week, they used the skills they developed during work with a poet-in-residence to find poetic inspiration in a photograph.

The students used PicLits, a website for inspired picture writing. After finding a photograph that spoke to them, the students created a poem from the word bank or wrote their own. It's hard work, harder I think than sitting down and writing a poem. I was interested to see some repetition of photographs and themes, yet a unique approach to creating the poem.  Have a look: