Poetry stations

A snippet from students at different stations

I really hate delving into a unit immediately after break. I have foreign exchange students who usually miss the first week back, students transfer from other classes, and they aren't always back in the educational groove right away.

This year, before getting back into poetry, I spent a day helping students start their year with no regrets and learning about their poetic pasts.

Then we jump into poetic stations. I've done stations before but this time I set them up slightly differently than I normally did. Stations were throughout my classroom more or less in a circular arrangement. Students started at one station with a partner. After about seven minutes, students were able to move on. Before moving on, one student at each station moved to clockwise and the other counter-clockwise. This way they are able to work with different students throughout the day. It also meant for new students, they got a chance to meet everyone in the class (be it only for 5-7 minutes).

My poetic station this year varied a bit from last year because I built off of what they revealed in their poetic journeys.

Students racing with Quizlet!

1. Students expressed fear over needing to know literary terms. So, another Station was two of my yearbook computers set up with a Quizlet Figurative Language set. Students made note of words they didn't know, and raced their partner for the fastest time. Many students said that they were impressed by how many of these words they already knew. 
• This was effective because students expressed a fear of needing to remember all of the literary terms. This showed them that they already knew many of them as we'd used them the previous semester. The students that were less sure have access to this Quizlet and can practice on their own in free time or at home.
• This was hit or miss as far as enjoying it. Some students LOVED it because they races with their partners. If they weren't close with their partners then they enjoyed this station less. 
2. Several students said that poetry is old and no one talks like that anymore. So, one of the stations was "Hip-Hop or Shakespeare" inspired by Akala's TED Talk. Students looked at lines either from a song or Shakespeare and talked to their partner about which one was which and why. After writing down their guesses, they got to see the answers.  Then they wrote one more response about which one surprised them more and why. This helped students see that we still use vocabulary like this today and poets from the past discuss topics we find just as passionate now. 
• As I circulated the room I heard some great discussions here!
3. Another common thread was students said they didn't understand what made a poem good or bad, so at another station they watched a clip from the Dead Poet's Society. They summarized it, said what the teacher felt about poetry and stated if they agreed or disagreed. 
• This was a close second for their favorite station. Students thought the scene was very funny, and they agreed with the teacher.
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4. To get a little more non-fiction in, they answered questions from a non-fiction text about science and language arts being mutually exclusive. Not only did they practice SAT-like questions,  but they read more about the information emphasized in their textbook. 

There were a few other stations (based on the textbook and rhyme scheme) but these haven't changed in the past few years. The stations mentioned above were specifically added (or altered) based on students' poetic journeys. This was a great way to ease them into poetry and students could tell that I took time to cater to their needs, and that they appreciated.

Using Prism with Poetry

I teach "The Rubaiyat" to my World Literature class. I LOVE IT. I love introducing students to poetry from so far away and so long ago that still has messages for today.

However,  it is an older poem that takes a bit of work interpreting, and for many of my transfer and exchange students, it serves as their first official poetry lesson. So, before we jump into the world of Persian Poetry, we start with something a bit easier: Bon Jovi's, "It's My Life."

My class experiencing Bon Jovi.

Despite being so old there's a pager in the music video, students really like this song! Plus the message is very similar to The Rubaiyat, and it's filled with figurative language.

We start by watching the music video and talking about what the "plot" is. Then we review literary devices and on their own students find as many of them as they can. Ater five minutes I let them pair up to compare and share. Finally, ONE of them gets out a computer, and they head to Prism and create an account.

Then I share this link where I uploaded the lyrics to the song and picked three different categories. You could make these whatever you wanted. I've done this with connotation (positive, neutral, negative) and literal vs. figurative language.

After a quick demo, where I show students how to highlight, erase, and switch highlighters, they are on their own! I have them go through the poem. With a partner, they decide what color different sentences and phrases need to be highlighted.

In this case, I made it a little tricky. I didn't just mark things metaphors or similes I moved those into different categories (figurative language, clever writing, word choice). This meant with some things (like allusions) they had to figure out where it fit best. Once they finish they click "Save highlights."

In the end, you can show the visual representation of what everyone marked. It highlights the words according to the majority. So you can see in the example that gonna is marked as figurative language by most students. However, some marked it for word choice and some clever writing.

This provides a great visualization and allows us to discuss this as a class, which we did. Students pointed out that gonna was a great example of informal diction making this a very informal.

Overall this is a very easy to use

Now, some teachers consider a flaw of PRISM to be that you can't see what each student did individually. That's true! If you really want to see what each student did you can have them screen shot their page and submit that to you, but I care more about the quality of conversations they have with their partner. So more than needing to see what they highlighted, I walk around and make note of their discussions.

Starting with students' poetic journeys

A big focus in my graduate classes this year, and the topic of several workshops I've attended has been on making sure lessons start with student as the center rather than the content as the center.

In my World Literature classes we are about to embark on studying "The Rubaiyat" which I really like. It's an area of literature that I don't feel we cover a lot, and the themes are very applicable today. Plus, it's chock-full of literary elements so students really can practice identifying those and more importantly why they feel those were used.

However keeping in mind my new mindset, I decided to start off by having students create their own poetic journey. 

To start I told them I wanted them to create their poetic journey and passed out paper and markers. Then we brainstormed what they may want to address in their journey. One class came up with:

• What do you know about poetry?
• What poems / poets do you like?
• What poems /poets do you hate?
• How have you been taught poetry?
• Can poetry really be analyzed or isn't all art beautiful in its own way?
• Does music count as poetry? What about movies?

We talked about how they did not need to answer all these questions and I again emphasized that I did not want essays. I wanted them to show me their journey with symbols, images or small words and phrases. They would be presenting these informally to the class.  

I kept it pretty loose for a lot of reasons.

First of all many of my students are exchange students so they actually spent the winter break back in their home countries so I wanted to give them a day to kind of just casually remember the expectations of my class before delving back into academic English.

Secondly, I really wanted students to have a chance to get creative with this. I did walk around and help or guide students that were really just wanting to write down answers.

Finally, students had a tendency to read when presenting so by removing the words from the paper it created a more natural "talking about" rather than "reading from" tone.

As they worked, I walked around to guide students. One student took this very literally and she drew a literal path. The start of the path included a snowflake (the first poem she remembered). Further down the path she had the word THOU in big block letters and then she crossed it out (when presenting she explained that she did not like Shakespeare and that type of poetry.

I had another student who was from China and said "You know, I think that my journey is more about discovering the difference between Chinese and American poetry, so is it okay if I sort of compare  them?"

Part of the Chinese s American poetry

Another student asked if he could write a poem that talks about his poetic journey, so we had a lot of different things going on.

In the end I feel like students walked away with a feeling of student voice that they had contributed to the lesson and learned a bit about other classmates. I walked away with a series of misconceptions about poetry that I would be sure to focus on. For example, many students said that poetry is filled with words they don't understand and that it has to rhyme. However, they also pointed out that poetry is subjective which I think was good but they recognize that different people can interpret things differently.

This gives me a great jumping off point. Next class we'll do stations on the background of the poem, and I'll have a chance to tweak my lessons with The Rubaiyat to address the concept and the misconceptions that were brought up today during class.

Would you be willing to try this in your class? Why or why not? Suggestions for how I could make it better? Share in the comments!

Understading Poetry by breaking down Stanzas

Understanding poetry can be tough for students. Understanding older poetry can be very difficult. The vocabulary tends to be antiquated and the examples no longer relevant to the lives students lead.

It doesn't need to be though!

Following is my four step method for helping students understand poetry, though you could also use it for other types of literature.

The examples used here are from Edward Fitzgerald's translation of "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam." You can find the worksheets I use with my class as well as detailed reactions available on Teachers Pay Teachers (or by clicking the product cover to the right.

On the other hand you can create your own. Just adapt the following to best suit the literature the needs of your students.

Step 1
Go over the first stanza in the poem. Read it out loud and highlight any words you need to look up. Look up the words and decide the definition that best fits Write that down, so you'll remember it later Now that you know all the words draw the best literal interpretation of the poem that you can. Stick figures are great!  Now that you have the literal meaning,

Step 2

Show you really understand your literal meaning by drawing out a representation of your text. Stick figures and labels are fine for the less artistically challenged. If there's a lot going on, break into into a four grid and draw it out like a comic strip.

This really helps the artistic students shine, and the less artistic still get a chance to really cement their  understanding. Plus, when this is done in groups the discussions are GREAT. Students give input to one another on making things bigger, or brighter, etc.

Step 3
Now that we've got literal in the bag, see if students can identify the big idea and theme of the story. Have students take a step back and see what the stanza is trying to tell them. In one or two sentences they write what they think the meaning is. To really drive it in, they also title their individual quatrain.

Step 4

An example using Canva and PhotosforClass

This is the fun part! Students create their own stanza embracing the meaning of the original work. They can practice mimicking the rhyme scheme of the Rubiayat and modernize the stanza.

No Tech: This can be done on paper, cardstock or anything really! Then you can post them around the classroom and see if students can identify the poem as an adaptation of the correct stanza.

Low Tech: Have students create their stanza on Paint,  PowerPoint, or online, consider using Canva. If they are cell phones and tablets they can use free apps like Canva or Phonto. If they get pictures online I STRONGLY encourage photosforclass.com. I am a big digital citizenship nerd, and this gives them pictures that are legal to use AND already cited. Students can print these and again post them around the room to other students to guess.

A not-student-made version that modernizes a stanza

High Tech: Have students create their images online (use the sites suggested in low-tech). Then post these online! I like having students use a Haiku discussion board for this. Students will need an html of their picture. They can get this if they use Canva, or they can upload it to TinyPic or PostImage. Students (in groups) can analyze the modern interpretations and try to guess which stanza it is based off of.

I usually follow this activity up with some traditional comprehension questions that students breeze through! Once they have analyzed a stanza and seen how other students modernize the other stanzas, it really makes understanding easier.

Want more to do with The Rubaiyat? One topic I really like delving into is the fact that in his time Khayyam was best known for his science not his art. Do students think art helps scientists be better? Here's a nonfiction text with multiple choice questions and a writing prompt.

Students tend to hold a bias that artists can't be scientifically smart and scientists can't be creatively skilled, so it is fun to really dive into this discussion with them and have them apply it to Khayyam's works.

August Writing Deadlines

For those of you unaware I am a BIG believer in allowing students to do assignments that LEAVE the classroom. The first of every month I try to post some opportunities for your students to show off their writing skills and maybe get some recognition. All of these deadlines are in August! If you start the school year this month, it could be a great way to start off the semester. If you don't start until September, consider including these with your "Welcome Letter" to the parents.

August has some GREAT writing opportunities for your students!!!!

1. Do you teach students between 6 and 14 years old? Have they read any of The Princess Diaries books?  Here's a contest that's perfect for your students! They just need to write an essay (500-1000 words) that answers the question "What would you do if you found out you were royalty?"  The grand prize winner receives a $2,500 Pottery Barn gift card and a signed copy of  From the Notebooks of a Middle School Princess. Deadline is August 31st

Guidelines and submission details are available here.

2. How many times have you heard your students talking about their pets? Mine seem to do it all the time! Before August 31st Chicken Soup for the Soul is accepting submissions on the topic of Cats or Dogs. They want to read about stories about people's cats or dogs (up to 12000 words). All tones are appropriate as long as they are inspirational! They are doing two different books, one about cats and one about dogs. Your students can submit to just one, or to both (depending on the furry stories they have to share). If a story is selected and published they will be paid $200 one month after the book is published. Plus, they get ten free copies of the book to show off as well (see if they'll give a signed set to your class library).

Guidelines and submission are details available here

3. The role of women has changed throughout the years and many would argue is still changing! Chatter House Press is holding a Mini-Memoir Essay contest for women called, "Biting the Bullet," about women who define courage. It is only for women who are residents in the US and over the age of 18, so sadly most high school students won't be able to enter, but I wanted to include it in case you teach older students.  Your students' essays should show how a woman (or women) demonstrate(s) courage in daily life, or regarding a specific event. The deadline is August 14th. Prizes include publication and copies of the book.

Guidelines and submission details are available here

The Farmer's Lad via AntiquePrints

4. Do your students ever get depressed because they don't think they can meet the 1,000 word count minimum some contests have? Here's the PERFECT competition for them.  They are looking for a short story told in ONLY 21 words. The theme is, "Backyards and Porch Swings." Chosen authors don't win a cash prize, but they do get bragging rights and possible publication in the literary journal From the Deaths.  This deadline is hard to pinpoint and it stops when they receive 200 submissions, so as soon as possible is best. 

Guidelines and submission details are available here.

A cover of one of the issues of The Blue Earth Review

5. The Blue Earth Review is part of Minnesota State University. From what I can tell this is open to anyone, but please evaluate the guidelines on your own. It has two opportunities to get writing recognized for free. The first is the creative nonfiction contest. The text cannot be over 750 words. Students may submit more than one piece, but they need to have them in the same document.

The  other option is their poetry contest. Students may submit up to three poems (again in a single file).

Both contests include publication in the Blue Earth Review and a $500 cash prize. The deadline to submit is August 14, 2015.

Guidelines and submission details are available here.

There you are five ways to get your students motivated to write for more than just a grade, get a chance to experience writing for a different audience, and see that writing isn't just for the classroom. If you know of any others or your students really have fun with one let me know in the comments. If you find one of these doesn't work, also let me know so I can update this list.

Youtube Playlists as Literary Tools

I like using music in the classroom, and students seem to be a fan too! I've posted about creating soundtracks for books before  This is similar, but uses YouTube as the medium.

Using YouTube students create Playlists that are meant to show that they understand the texts from class.

Example questions to create a playlist could be:

1. Create a playlist that shows a character developing throughout the novel
2. Create a playlist that you think a character in the story would have enjoyed.
3. Keeping in mind the theme and tone of the story, select 10 songs that accurately fit what you think the author wanted the readers to feel.
4. Create a playlist where each song represents a different character (or location) in the book.
5. Consider the story is turned into a musical. Find five songs that characters could sing at different points in the book.

This is very similar to other soundtrack assignments. There are some pros and cons to using YouTube

Pros

• Practice on the computer. I know it seems silly, but a lot of my students still need that.
• For some students it is faster to just do everything on the computer and on the same program (no switching to glogster to make a poster, you search for the song on YouTube, add it to the playlist on YouTube, add a description on Youtube, etc.)
• Some students are just more motivated to do an assignment using YouTube. To them YouTube is fun and they watch videos anyways, so this assignment sneaks in there being an assignment, but not entirely boring.

Cons

• Ads. Youtube is filled with ads.
• YouTube is often banned or limited at schools.

If anyone else has used YouTube playlists in class and would like to share their experience I'd love to hear about it! Drop a line in the comments to share your knowledge with the rest of us.

 For those of you new to using YouTube, I've included two tutorials below.  I personally don't like watching videos (I read faster) so below I've included a picture tutorial and a YouTube video walking you through how to make a playlist. Remember, clicking on any of the pictures will make it larger, so you can take a closer look.

Step 1 Adding to / Creating a playlist

Students find a song that they are interested in. At this point you may want to remind them that the songs need to be appropriate for school. Then they add it to their playlists. From the search displays sections, they click the three dots to the right of the video and description.  The first time they add a song, they will need to create a playlist.  They click, "Create New Playlist."

Step 2. Naming and Privacy

Name the Playlist and decide on the privacy settings. If students want anyone to be able to see their work, they want public. If they want to be the only ones that see their playlist, they want private. A happy medium is Unlisted. Playlists that are unlisted won't show up in a search, but people with a direct link can see them. This way you can check the playlist, but the student (and/or their parents) doesn't need to worry about privacy concerns.

Step 3 Playlist Information
This section is great for students to explain how they think the songs connect to one another the the book. They also have the chance to explain why they picked certain bands, or how they felt about this assignment. You may want to mandate that they write a paragraph, or let them use it as they wish.

Step 4 Song Information
In addition to writing about the whole playlist, students have the chance to quickly (in 150 characters or less) explain why they choose a song. I usually require my students use a quote here, but you could alter the requirements as you saw fit.


Song 5 Sharing
Your student has made a fantastic playlist...now how do they get it to you?! Just click the share button to get a link. They can also embed the playlist in a blog if you have students create blogs.




If you prefer videos check out the YouTube video:



Voila! If anything is unclear, or you aren't sure why it was done a certain way please ask me! I am happy to help you out so that you can try this out with your students!

Giggle Poetry: Book Review

I am a huge fan of humor in the classroom (reminder there's still 5 days to submit your blog for the ELT Blog Carnival on humor). I think that getting students to laugh lowers their inhibitions and makes them feel more comfortable. In addition to making class a happier place to be it also allows students to participate more.

I am also a fan of poetry. I like the dream flag project because it encourages students to participate in more figurative thinking, not worry so much about rules, and get interested in other parts of English (other than just short stories and novels).

Giggle Poetry Reading Lessons is a great book for teachers of hesitant learners (especially readers). It introduces new vocabulary in a fun way, and encourages fluency by having students present their poems in front of the class. Many of the poems also encourage motions and movement, making this a TPR expereince.

Approximately the first 10% of the book is helping teachers (or parents) learn how to navigate the book. It goes over studies (why they developed the book), methods (how they encourage the book to be used in class) and examples. You can (clearly) ignore this part if you just want the poems, but the content is pretty solid and helps you understand how you may best use the poems in your class.

Keep them smiling while reading!

Then, we have thirty-four different poems. Quite a few of these I like enough to use with my high school students! Several I didn't like at all (but I can see how students would), and the vast majority I found perfect for middle school or elementary students.

To give you an idea of the topics of poems here are some of the titles: Dirty Socks, What I found in my Desk, Bad Hair Day Rap, Ish!, Someone's Toes Are in My Nose, and How to Torture your Teacher.

The poems are usually 1-2 pages and divided into stanzas. Next to the poem there is often direction as to the desired motions or intonations (e.g. "Act stern. Wage your finger.") While the poems are fairly basic in terms of vocabulary there are some cases where rather advanced words are used. If you are dealing with EFL students, you may like to scaffold more than the book does. An alternative is to substitute advanced words with cognates or more basic synonyms. Most of the poems are written with a rhyme or meter that makes memorizing and reading them easier than a standard text.

After each poem the book provides a lesson plan. As with all prefabricated lesson plans, I suggest you make many adaptations to best suit your class. These ideas area great start! The objective for each poem;s lesson plan is more or less the same, "Objective: The student will read text fluenty, with attention to pace and expression and with a high level of accuracy, as a means of comprehending the text."

Then it walks you through the five steps they suggest you follow:

1. First activate background knowledge. The book provides sample questions to ask students to get them thinking of the topic. In an EFL environment some visuals would probably be helpful too!
2. Skim/Scan. Usually they advise students to underline any words they may don-t know without looking at the context or situation. There are other great skimming and scanning activities you could use here.
3. Modeled Reading. Usually this is set up for the teacher to read (and it gives guidance on how it should be read), but you could do this in many other ways as well.
4. Guided Reading. Students are given the chance to look at vocabulary, inference,  and practice reading as a class (echo reading and choral reading) or in pairs (buddy reading)
5. Finally students are given time to read on their own during Independent Reading.
6. The last step is to have a student present (the book emphasizes to encourage them heavilily and focus on their successes rather than failures).

Personally, I feel that after the third poem this lesson plan structure is BORING! It has a great structure, but repeating it again and again isn't very fun to read. Don't be afraid to vary it for your class. Use the skeleton but adapt the activities, or do your own thing!

After the poems, at the end of the book, there are rubrics and suggested assessment methods. Again, feel free to adapt these as needed to keep your class interesting and best suit your students needs. This is by far the best book I have read all year, and I suggest you look into purchasing it yourself. To read more about Giggle Poetry you can check out their website.

Interested in Making Dream Flags?

I am leaving ITESM in about a month!

As such I am putting together packets to pass onto teachers who will be teaching the levels I teach.

One of these packets is the Dream Flag Project!

I really think that the Dream Flag Project is an amazing opportunity to get your students connected internationally.

If you are interested in starting I am offering the packet for free! I believe that ANYONE who wants to should have the chance to be involved and this is my chance to help :)

You can download and view the packet below or download it from Teachers Pay Teachers (if you haven't registered yet you can do so here)

It contains too much information (some worksheets you can certainly skip) but it gives you plenty of options.

Dream flag 101 from Carissa Peck

I really hope you take part of this project and that your students enjoy it as much as mine have! 

Blackout Poetry / Found Poetry: A fun activity!

Have you ever made extra copies? Ended up with 25 worksheets you never got to do in class? Had a random flu bug hit your class and end up with 10 copies too many? With papers printed on only one side I usually just keep a stack and use them later when I am copying something new. However when they are double sided what can you do?

There is an activity I like to give my fast finishers, though sometimes we do this as a class when working on poetry. When someone finished early I give them an old worksheet and have them make a story or a poem out of it.

If we are studying a particular grammar point I may ask them to include that, but normally I don't.

It is basically a fun and pretty way to have students write without writing.



Optional (Pre Step):
The first time you do these in class you may want to show some examples first. One famous "blackout poet" is Austin Kleon. He has a book Newspaper Blackout available as a paper book or an ebook. You can also find his poems online (he's on Twitter and Instagram). His poetry is very simple, you essentially black out the words you don't want. He uses newspapers (which is also an option!), but you can apply the same concepts to old worksheets.

Unused Worksheet

Step 1. 
Give them an old worksheet. In this case it is a TOEFL diagnostic test. My school often asks me to give these workshops, but since I never know how many students will attend I normally have extras.

Step 2. 
Have students underline (in pencil) words that they know. The great thing about this task is even if they only understand 10% of the words that's fine! They don't need to understand everything.

Step 3. 
See if they can create a poem or story with the words they know.

OPTIONS!
For punctuation practice I like to have them re-write their poems and punctuate them properly in the margin. Punctuation often adds extra meaning to their words.

As far as appearances, you have some choices:

A. Students can black out the words they won't use. (or use any color they like!)

You need fun questions.

How can rhyme help you?

When poems work well.


Pictures must use your friends in public.

You can create, copy, open, clip, web, graph.

B. Students can draw lines connecting the words and decorate the page as they like.

We applauded, clapped.

The feeling destroyed.

The feeling should last: money, time.

C. Students can create art over the words.
Essentially, she creates a blank slate by having students paint white over the words they will not use. Once dried they draw a picture that they feel connects to the story. I do not do this in my class as I don't normally have access to paints, water, etc. However, if you are in an art friendly environment, it could be something to consider.

There are tons of ways to reuse old worksheets, but this is another one to add to your list. Plus, it is fun!

What's your favorite way to reuse paper?

2014 ITESM Dream Flag Video

The Dream Flag Celebration is this weekend!

My students and I aren't able to join (the 2,000 miles is a bit much for us), but we were able to send a video which will be shared during the celebration. Check it out!



The director of the dream flag project, Jeff Harlan, was kind enough to send us a thank you "Got the video. Awesome! We'll show it Saturday. Please tell your students that we really appreciate their effort. More than 500 people will attend Saturday and be inspired by your dreams, your energy, and your great work."

To look at all the other Dream Flags created this year by ITESM students you can go to the dream flag gallery.

Post by Melted ELT Activities.

ITESMs Inaugural Dream Flags

This is for the Reach To Teach Teach Abroad Blog Carnival, a monthly carnival focusing on providing blogs to ESL teachers around the globe. If you'd like to contribute to next month's Blog Carnival, please contact Dean at dean@reachtoteachrecruiting.com, for more information and check out the other bloggers contributions here.

"What lesson or moment are you most proud of in the classroom?"

I don't know if I could pick one, but I can pick the most recent!

This semester I made it a priority to have my students do work which would NOT just stay in the classroom. One aspect of this was that we made dream flags!

We started the semester talking about hopes and dreams and kept that theme going throughout the short stories and assignments. 

When it got down to it we had a day or two of poetry where we made poetry videos discussing different types of poetry (Catalog, Diamante, Haiku, etc.)

 

Picking their favorite type of poem, students created their own poems about their dreams and put them on dream flags.

What are dream flags? Well, to the right is the description we posted along with our flags.

Basically, dream flags are an international art and poetry project inspired by Tibetan Prayer Flags and Langston Hughes' poetry. 

It is a chance for students to contemplate and reflect about different dreams that we have and embrace in the similarities.

Once a year in Philadelphia there is a Dream Flag ceremony where schools that are able to are invited to send their flags to be displayed along others made during this event.

How did we go about making the dream flags?

After the students wrote their poems, their teacher looked over them for spelling or grammar errors. I was sure to keep in mind that poetry, unlike an essay, doesn't have to follow traditional grammar rules. My students LOVED this as it gave them the chance to be more creative and really play with the language.

Then, each student got a piece of material (usually a cut up t-shirt) that was about the size of a piece of paper (8.5 by 10). It was a windy day so we taped it down to the table to be sure it didn't fly off.

Most students wrote their poems down in marker first, but some of them went straight to paint.

After the basic poem was written down many students went over the text in a different color, or with sparkles.

Then they used the markers, stamps, and paints to decorate the rest of their flag however they liked.

At the end we carefully took them to my office where we spread them out to dry.

While we were doing this some students from other English classes came by and had the chance to work on their own flag! The catch? They had to write and speak in English! My students could help them with their poems (and I would play the video we made), but we had to communicate in English.

In the end the students made unique flags to represent their unique dreams!

Some of them still had errors, but the meaning and hope still manages to show through!

 Once we finished, we strung them up on campus and let people see what they were.

We also uploaded them to the dream flags gallery where other schools involved in the project can see them

I am looking forward to doing this again with next semester's class. Plus, in the next semester we'll send this batch of flags (and the next semesters) to Philadelphia for the ceremony which is really exciting for my students.

For more information on the dream flag project (like how to join or its history you can check out http://dreamflags.org/

If you end up being part of the dream flag project please let me know, so I can take a look at your students' creations! You can comment here, tweet me at @eslcarissa or find me on facebook 

Poetry 101

We started working on Poetry in my class today. First I assigned all of the students an animal and gave them some keywords and told them to write me a poem. No rules or regulations, just... write a poem. Then we listened to volunteers read their poems. Most were very dark, but a few were light. Some rhymed, some used a meter (though I am not sure they knew it). One was just a series of questions.

We just finished reading, "Thank you Ma'm," by Langhston Hughes so we went over some of his poetry about dreams.
 

Then I passed out a sheet that had a few of Langston Hughes poems. "Dream Keeper", "Dream Differed", "I too", etc.

I've been preparing for this for a while so we have already talked about dreams in class. We have some dreams for the world, some for Mexico, some for our generation, and some personal dreams. 

We quickly rehashed their dreams as I passed out papers to each student. Each student receieved a different type of poem (Acrostic, Haiku, Catalog, etc.). I asked them to use that type of poem to make a poem about their dream. They read the directions, saw the examples and wrote their own type of that poetry.

If they finished early I looked over it and fixed any mistakes, or encouraged them to make another one about a different dream (or continue the poem about the same dream).

You can see one of the student's dream poems to the right. It discusses her dream of becoming a lawyer in the future.

 
Then they watched a video of me explaining a type of poetry. (Note the volume is low so you may need to adjust your sound)

 

After I showed them the example I asked what they noticed. They pointed out:

• An explanation
• An example

They also mentioned subtitles, but I told them that was optional and not needed for their classwork.

They were divided into groups of other students who had their type of poem. Some groups picked the best poems from the group and used those as their examples. Other teams chose to write poems together. I checked to be sure each group had a tablet or cell phone to make the video. If not I had my laptop, tablet and camera available for them to use (all of the groups had technology so mine was not needed).

 

One group's video for catalog poems

 

One group's video for quatrain poems

These videos are shared with the rest of the class and compiled into one video the students can use a resource for the different types of poetry in the future!

Overall this was a really fun class! They worked well in groups and spoke a lot of English to direct things. Making the videos took about 2 minutes, but preparing to make them took about ten.

This is tying into the dream flag project my students are working on, but I'll post about that next week.