During the month of April my sixers and I have been reading, writing, and ENJOYING poetry! What began as groans after Spring break has turned into eager cries of "What kind of poem are we gonna do today, Ms. A.?"
So far we've enjoyed highly formalized poems such as haiku, tanka, and diamonte; explored rhyme scheme with couplets, quatrains, limericks, and clerihew; and giggled, laughed, and been left speechless by free verse and dada. "What is dada?" you say. Hmmm? Better than I trying to explain this most unusual poetry format, try your hand at a dada poem here:
A poem similar to dada is a Page Poem. I had never seen this type of poetry until I stumbled upon it on Pinterest. Pinterest? Ah, what would I do without Pinterest? Here's what I pinned about Page Poetry.
I absolutely fell in LOVE with Page Poetry. Crazy and deviant as dada, Page Poetry calls for great visual creativity, not something added as an after thought, but art that is essential to the meaning (if you can call it that) of the poem. Some Page Poems appeared to be random ramblings of strange, twisted minds while others appeared well thought out and planned. I can do this, I thought! My sixers can do this! And so they did and with great fun, great thought, great sharing, and great discussion.
I introduced Page Poetry to my sixers by sharing my Pinterest Pins and visiting some of the websites. Fresh from creating dada poems, they were hooked and couldn't wait to begin. Next we began looking through our library for a book that might lend itself to creativity and fun. It also had to be a book that was well loved, meaning it was ready to fall apart. We hit the jackpot with an old copy of one of the Mrs. Piggle Wiggle books. With some sadness at having to destroy the book, I ceremoniously began tearing out pages at random and passing them to my sixers with great dramatic flair. From there my sixers spent quite some time reading and rereading their given page, searching for just the right words.
Once the words were chosen, they had to decide how to present their poems, how elaborate would the page appear? Some simply used black pens to circle the words and draw directional lines, some added color, others added textured lines, while others utilized multiple colors, shapes, and designs.
These are just a very few of the Page Poems created by my students. Enjoy!
Page poetry looks awesome ~ I will definitely need to pin it!
ReplyDeleteI hope you give it a try, Lisa! It is soooo much fun! I won't get to it this year with my sixth graders, but I will see them again (perhaps next year; I might be teaching seventh Language Arts also) and sneak it in then. I'm looking forward to doing this lesson with my eighth graders this coming week. They have been working so hard, digging deep into some tough, classical poems that Page Poetry and DaDa will be a fun release!
ReplyDeleteHave a great weekend,
Angela