Poetry Lesson Analysis Tracie S. Howard RE 5130
Identify the population with whom you will be working: Heterogeneous classroom of 5 and 6 year old kindergartners 7 ELL (5 Hispanic and 2 Hmong), 14 white, 2 bi-racial 3 served by Title I 1 labeled Developmentally Delayed with autistic tendencies
Identify the participating structure: Whole group for taking nature walk, reading and discussing spring acrostic book, generating list of fall words/phrases, writing fall poem from class-generated list, and generating list of words/phrases about apples Individual for writing apple poems using words/phrases from the class-generated list
Identify the books you will be using including title and illustrator or creator: Title: Spring An Alphabet Acrostic Author: Steven Schnur Illustrator: Leslie Evans
Identify your purpose of instruction: why will you be writing poetry with this population? To assist students in writing poetry with interesting vocabulary/describing words/action words To reinforce phonemic awareness To promote creativity
Plan for instruction: *Review the characteristics of an acrostic poem by sharing the book Spring An Alphabet Acrostic by Steven Schnur. *Display some selected acrostic poems from the book on a chart paper (GRASS, JUNGLE, MAY, OUTSIDE, and TWILIGHT). Help students locate and underline interesting describing words and action words from the selected acrostic poems.
Mini-Lesson *Take students on a nature walk behind the school. Ask students to observe signs of fall. *Assist students as they work in a whole group to generate a list of words/phrases about fall. Be sure to include interesting describing words and action words. *Create a class-generated acrostic poem about fall using words/phrases from the list. *Next, assist students as they work in a whole group to generate a list of words/phrases about apples. As they make the list, students should think about the apple orchard field trip, apple books we have read in class, and apple activities we have done in class. Be sure to include interesting describing words and action words. *Tell students that they will be able to write an acrostic poem using the word APPLES. They will use words/phrases from the class-generated list. *Provide the attached invitation and rubric to students. *After students write their poems, assist them in revising and editing. Make sure students used words/phrases from the chart, began each word/phrase with the correct letter, and spelled each word/phrase correctly. *Invite students to illustrate their poems and display them in the hall.
Discuss the projected results. What do you hope to accomplish? I predict that my students will gain a deeper understanding of phonemic awareness as they take words/phrases from the list and apply them to the acrostic format. I also predict that they will remember more of the information they learned about apples after participating in this activity. I will evaluate the success of the project by the rubric score and by the results of the student survey.
Rubric
Yes No Possible Points
Is your poem about apples? 6
Did you use an acrostic format? 6 Did you use words/phrases from the class chart? 6 Does each word/phrase begin with the correct letter? 12
Survey the students: 1. Explain how you feel about writing acrostic poems. It was fun. I liked it. I didn’t go to the apple orchard so I was able to find out what the others learned on the trip. 2. What did you learn about your topic? Apples like to be cold. I learned how to pick an apple. Bees pollinate apple trees. Johnny Appleseed planted apple trees. 3. How is writing an acrostic poem different from other kinds of writing? The words were spelled right for us. We didn’t have to sound them out. 4. What was your favorite part of writing your acrostic poem? It was easy to do. Making the poem was fun. The words were spelled right. 5. What was your least favorite part of writing your acrostic poem? Not knowing all the words I was writing. Leaving off the first letter. It doesn’t rhyme. 6. Would you like to do another acrostic poem on another topic? Why or why not? Yes. It was fun. It helped us learn more about apples. I can spell apples now.
Discuss the results of the project. Did your students’ writing improve? How so? Are the results different from what you projected? How so? Will you continue to write acrostic poems? I was not sure that my students would be able to participate in a poetry writing assignment, but I found that through the use of a mini-lesson I was able to provide support for my students through literary models, shared writing, a graphic organizer, and teacher demonstration. The support that was provided allowed my students to be successful at poetry writing, which in turn, built confidence in their writing. My students were able to demonstrate their individual levels of phonemic awareness as they worked on their poems. Most were able to make a direct phonetic correlation between the letters in the word apples and the words/phrases on the class-generated list. In addition, through the process of taking information and transferring it to another format (a poem), my students were able to retain much of what they learned about apples. I believe (through observation and survey response) that my students will be excited to continue to create acrostic poems on other topics we cover in class.