Notebooking, Teaching, and Technology

  I ran across a YouTube video from an art teacher, Darren Maltais , explaining how to use color gradients to make a night sky scene in Google slides. I liked how easy it was and started looking for a way to use it in the classroom. He has another video for sunrises but the idea is interchangeable.  Since April is poetry month, I thought I could tie it into a writing activity and picked Haiku’s for the simplicity.  I targeted third graders and approached a teacher friend to let me come in and try it with her group. It didn’t go as smoothly as I hoped but I did learn a lot! I made  a video of the entire process  if you want to check it out. I naively thought we could do the entire project in one 90-minute ELA block. That includes all the tech components AND writing an original haiku. We should have broken it up into two parts: 1. Writing the haiku and 2. Adding in all the tech elements.  To be fair students had only worked on haiku’s the day before...

A blackout poem is when a poet takes a marker (usually black) to already established text, like in a newspaper, and starts redacting words until a poem is formed. The term "Blackout Poetry" was made popular by author Austin Kelon who wrote a book of his blackout poems. The ideas is if you are at a loss for words then find words that have already been written and create something new from them. I've done this with children in a classroom and it is quite messy when you start dealing with newspaper print and black sharpies. You can make a digital version using either Google Slides or Google Drawings - much cleaner and neater! The way to create this type of unique "found" poem is to start with a wall or slide of text, start highlighting words of interest, from there develop a poem, and then change the color of the background so only the highlighted words show through (I am over simplifying but that is the basic premise). This is a VERY tricky ...

We are in our last week of April and I am wrapping up a four part series of online poetry activities for National Poetry Month. This last idea, paint trip poetry, came from Mrs. Hall's Fabulous in Fourth blog . From Mrs. Hall's Blog I really liked the idea and made it digital using Google Slides. I created a template that teachers could use and modify if they wish. Once you click on the link you will be asked to make a copy. Once you have copy in your drive you can adjust as needed for your students. This activity is appropriate for grades 3 through 5. We use Google Classroom in our district so it would be easy to assign it. Below is how the assignment might look in Google Classroom: The finished poem "Grey Is" (above) was one I created and used as a sample for students in the template. Definitely check out Mrs. Hall's blog to see other samples of student work. She had a linked worksheet for student brainstorming and I copied those instruc...

April is National Poetry Month. I have been trying to share some poetry ideas for tech integrated lessons (ones that can be used in a remote learning environment). This week's lesson is on Reverse Poems. The idea of a Reverse Poem is that it has meaning when read from one direction (top to bottom) and an opposite meaning when read in reverse (bottom to top). To try it out, and make a student sample, I made a reverse Cat and Dog poem ( YouTube video embedded above). I was proud of the poem and video. It definitely is tricky. I would recommend this activity for upper level elementary GT and Middle/High students. The entire concept of a "Reverse Poem" came from this "Lost Generation" poem . This got me thinking about how I would teach the concept to students (particularly in a remote learning environment). This resulted in creating a Google Slides instructional template that could be assigned to students. To be clear, I have not tried it with anyon...

Last week I noted that April is National Poetry Month and this year most of us will be celebrating/observing it at home as we isolate ourselves amid the Covid-19 crisis. I decided to post four online/tech activities, one each week, that teachers (upper elementary/middle school) could have students do. My first post featured creating a simple Quarantine Haiku using Google Drawings. My second idea is to...host a remote poetry slam. Here is a great article featuring "5 Tips for Slam Poetry" Teachers can use Flipgrid  (free for educators) as the "performing space". Students would record their original poetry (Flipgrid has blur and pixelating options for children who didn't want their face shown). You can indicate a time recording maximum to keep children focused. There are several student Poetry Slam videos on YouTube you could share to get students thinking about their poems. I really liked this one from a 12 year old Australian . If you host a onlin...

April is National Poetry Month and many of us will be observing/celebrating it from home in the midst of the Covid-19 crisis. As a tech coach, I have been posting remote learning ideas for teachers and thought I would try my hand at providing four online poetry activities/projects students could do involving poetry (one for each week in April). Since we have a short week (we have Good Friday off) I thought I would start with something relatively easy...Quarantine Haiku's. The idea came from this YouTube video -  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC35ibZd1LE I made a four minute instructional video for students (which you are more than welcome to share with children) -  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_S2K8_Wl1hM . The video briefly explains what a haiku is and walks them through how to create their finished poem using Google Drawings. Here is a copy of the  Haiku Google Drawing Template if you wish to use it. You will be forced to make a copy before you can as...

I love the idea of Blackout Poetry. The basic premise is using existing text and finding words within the text to create a poem...then blacking out what you don't need. There are many internet posts, pictures, and videos on creating Blackout Poetry for those interested in looking into this cool genre. Many years ago I tried it with a Girl Scout troop of fourth and fifth graders and they found the concept difficult..and I have to admit that I probably didn't do a good job of explaining it. I tried a variation of it using magazines where students cut out words and created a poem using their "found" words. That went a little better (maybe because they can tangibly rearrange the words?). Anyway...I haven't had much of an opportunity to work with students and poetry in several years and then this video came across my Pinterest feed and I got excited about using technology with blackout poetry. The video was super easy to follow and I created a blacko...