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 anyone yet so you may want to go through the slide deck and see if it is easy to understand (i.e. you can do it). You will be forced to make a copy. Once you make a copy you can rename and edit as needed.
On the Google template I also included instructions on how to make a video version of the poem that I embedded above (I used PowerPoint to create the forward and backward effect).
We use Google Classroom in our district as our LMS (Learning Management System) so I created a snapshot of what the assignment might look like within that environment.
If you try it with students you can cut and paste all the finished student poems into one Google Slideshow to share.
I would love to see what your students come up with. Please share either in the comments below or tag me on Twitter at @techcoachlife.
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