Collaborating with Ms. Hughes

Working with Kathy Hughes has been an honor this year! Although I am her "mentor" I have learned so much from working with her. Thank you Kathy! I am impressed with Kathy's positive attitude, sense of adventure and willingness to try new things and stick with it until she fulfills the goals she sets for herself. Her students are lucky to have her.

Our final collaboration project went well for my class. I had my students work with a partner to publish two poems that they wrote. They chose one to type on their glogster and another to record and put their audio file on the glogster. We used ipods and italks to create digital voice memos. It was easy to download them to Glogster for the students to use. They also included the avitar images they created on http://www.buildyourwildself.com/. We saved those as pictures and downloaded them to glogster.

Check out our poetry glogs on our classroom blog.

Lesson Plan

Cross posted at: http://principianteglobal.blogspot.com/

Poetry Wiki

I've been having some technology blues lately-I start a project and then don't finish it, or encounter some issues that I didn't expect, and spend too much time on something ridiculous. Does this happen to anyone else?

One thing I am excited about is the poetry wiki I created. So far my students have published their acrostic name poems there. Soon they will comment on them on the wiki. Please visit and leave your comments if you are so inclined! I decided to use wet paint, which Kelly S. recommended to me. I like how it looks visually, but discovered it doesn't allow for Voki widgets. Oh well, I guess I will keep searching for my favorite wiki site. Any suggestions?

Poetry Unit

This post is cross-posted at the Global Learners Blog.

One subject I love to delve into with my students is poetry. I believe that poetry helps them love language and see more possibilities in what language has the power to do.

My students will become poets through a poetry unit that I have designed. Students will create many poems as they learn different styles of poetry and then they will bring them together by creating a podcast of their poems, or a Photo Story. Also students will post a poem they write on a classroom poetry blog. This blog will provide the structure for students and others to respond to their poems and offer feedback.

I am wondering if anyone has any suggestions or recommendations in regards to this poetry unit. Have you tried anything with your students to teach poetry using 21st century learning strategies or technologies? What worked? What other ideas would you suggest that I incorporate into this unit of study? I would appreciate any suggestions or feedback!

Please take a look at the lesson plan and a film about poetry I made on my website.