We've been working on our first poems of the year, Circle Poems. The goal of the Circle Poem is to surprise the reader, to come up with something that makes them think, "Wow, I never would have thought of that." Our first few drafts weren't really big on the surprise element. I wanted the students to be more creative.
Enter technology. So, I set them up on the laptops so that pairs of students were working on the same Google Document. (That way they can both type on it at the same time. Awesome, right?) Then I had them take turns writing a line for their shared poem. I challenged them to surprise their partner. I kept it anonymous, so that they didn't know who they were working with. It turned out really well. They wrote some really surprising poems.
Take a look at this one:
FOREST
trees
saw
spikes
head
hair
headband
pretty
girls
pink
room
desk
computer
websites
all-girl-arcade
fun
recess
outside
Jada and Tamerica wrote that together! Also notice the other feature of the Circle Poem--they "circle" around so that the last word of the poem connects to the title. Pretty cool.
Want to see a few others? Take a look at our Student Work section!
1 comment:
Have you tried having them write more than one word? A sentence maybe?
This is a very interesting way of using technology to write, and I think you should keep it up!
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