One of my favorite strategies - which complements or overlaps with this idea - is to do poetry dialogues. Got the original idea from Practical Ideas for Teaching Writing fromt he California UC Irvine Writing Project.
I read a poem aloud. Kids know they will be "talking" to the poem as I read it so they are prepared with their pencils and paper. They need to skip spaces between responses to each line of the poem. I read a line aloud. Their job is to respond with whatever their brain is thinking!!! They can ask a question. They can respond with a word or words that pop into their mind. They can comment. They can make a connection. They can ask a question. They can say "I sure do hate poetry." Everything counts. It is their brains response to the poem. After they are done, I ask for a volunteer to have an out loud dialogue with the poem. I read a line and he/she reads the response. We do the whole poem that way. We laugh or ooh and ahhh or whatever. Then I ask for others. Eventually I ask if anyone wants to do a duet dialogue. I read a line and two children each read their response in turn. This is a great point at which to start the discussion. Cuz usually the duet turns out to be amazing too. They responses are different yet they seem to go together. So why is that? Kids will get well we are just different but also get that both are responding to the same words/poem. So they are bound to connect. Then we gather different kinds of responses. >From connections we gather all the different ones: movies, books, similar experiences etc. It's then that I talk about reader response. And I ask them to do a quickwrite about the poem (if they are older) or just share another response orally if they're younger and the writing isn't yet so fluent. I copy them all and post. Kids love it. We put them in books. Kids eventually ask if they can do quadrophonic from 4 corners of the room. They start bringing me poems they think would work best for a dialogue. And wonderfully, they realize that sometimes their response creates its own stand alone poem!!! (They ask if they can change a line or two or three and I of course say yes.) This has been a favorite favorite activity all year long for most of my classes since I first used it with 5/6 graders. High schoolers lover it. First graders can do it. It worked well with reading buddies who could script the first graders responses. Have fun!!!! PS It also works when I teach new teachers. Gets them loosened up to the whole idea that we bring different schema to our reading and that is an important part of the process! On 12/29/11 11:11 AM, "evelia cadet" <[email protected]> wrote: > > I do something similar with my 4th graders. I make copies of several poems > that I know my students have the background knowledge to relate to. They can > choose any poem they like and draw their mental images about that poem. > Since, many students choose the same poem, we use this opportunity to talk > about how their unique experiences and background knowledge led them to draw > different pictures of the same poem. I like to post their pictures along with > the poem in the hall for people to read and look at. Evelia > _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org Search the MOSAIC archives at http://snipurl.com/MosaicArchive
