Poetry: Using Our Senses To Describe

When thinking about the many different components of a comprehensive literacy program, teachers often reflect that it is hard to find the time to integrate different language components like giving students a chance to write poetry or having them study language conventions (like grammar), etc. This honest reflection is always followed by, "it's not only about how I can integrate it into my program, but how can I do it thoughtfully and meaningfully?"

Donna and Wendy have found a way to balance these valid reflections into their programs.  Through the integration of their Science topic on the Five Senses, and using this as a basis to study adjectives, students spent time using their senses to write cinquain poems, using different fruit.

Part 1: Mini-lesson

Prior to this lesson, students spent a great deal of time learning about and understanding adjectives and trying to use them in their writing to make their pieces more interesting and engaging for the reader.

Before students began to write a poem of their own, Donna and Wendy led them through an example using chocolate chips.  The children each received a chip and used their words to describe how it felt/looked/smelled/sounded/tasted, connecting to the prior lessons about adjectives.  These words were then used to create a cinquain poem, as a class, preparing them to launch into writing their own poem, with their own focus.

Part 2: Independent/Guided Practice

Wendy and Donna prepared some fruit for students to work with during their independent practice of their poetry writing.  Each chose one fruit and then began to brainstorm their words to describe the fruit.  This ended with choosing the best words and creating their very own poem!

Part 3: Sharing Our Poems
Finding the time to have students share their work is always so important, in any subject!  During this lesson, our student poets were able to share their poems with one another, leaving some more sharing time during the next day for those that hadn't quite finished. 

Supporting the Learning:

Throughout their shared classroom space, Wendy and Donna have ensured that their co-constructed anchor charts are visible and accessible for students to use when needed.

Three Part Lesson using Literature: Wangari's Tree of Peace (Number Sense)

The small group of teachers visiting Wendy and Donna's Grade 1/2 classrooms at Edgewood PS were fortunate enough to see a great three-part math lesson integrating the use of literature.

Math and Literature:

Any book used to form the basis of a math lesson should be read to students ahead of time for enjoyment.  While there are many math picture books readily available, some are more authentic than others.  

The book Wendy and Donna used for this lesson is not only a rich literacy experience but also provides an authentic context for the mathematics.

Student's Prior Learning:

This was one of the first lessons in the counting unit.

Learning Goal:

Both Wendy and Donna wanted to find out what background strategies their students had already. 

Groupings:

Students worked in mixed pairs.  Some worked with another person in the same grade while others worked with someone from a different grade level.   

Part 1: Getting Started

Wendy chose a smaller problem to engage students into the book.  She posed this question to the whole class:

All student responses were recorded on chart paper.  Luckily (or strategically!), students came up with the context for the problem that Wendy wanted: plant more trees.

Once the context was established, Wendy posed the smaller problem to the class: What if these people wanted to help Wangari by planting 3 trees each?  How many trees would they plant altogether?

The whole class had the opportunity to share their thinking and strategies for figuring out how trees would be planted if 3 people planted 3 trees each.  Several strategies emerged from this discussion:

- repeated addition (3+3+3)

- counting (1, 2, 3,...)

- multiplication

- counting by 2s and adding 1 more

- counting by 1 1/2 (we all had a hard time following this child's brilliant thinking!)

Part 2: Working on It

Wendy then introduced the bigger problem to the whole class.  She had this recorded on chart paper ahead of time:

Prior to solving the problem, Wendy reminded students of the variety of manipulatives that were available for them to choose from to solve the problem.

Since this was a regular occurrence in their classroom, partners had no difficulty selecting the tools they wanted to use to solve the problem.

As pairs began to work out the problem, we were able to observe a variety of representations of the solution process:

one to one counting

joining

groups of 2 visually represented

groups of 2 (counting or repeated addition)

beginnings of an array

addition

Part 3: Reflecting and Connecting

This lesson really demonstrated for us a dilemma that might occur during a rich lesson like this: sometimes the students demonstrate such variety in thinking that it becomes difficult to choose what to focus on during the consolidation part of the lesson!  The good news is that you, as the teacher, gets to choose!  Wendy chose to focus on the most efficient counting strategies.  So she selected pairs to share their work to demonstrate this focus:

This pair was chosen because  they used groups of 2.  Wendy noticed that many other pairs used this strategy as well.

This group counted by 10s.  Wendy asked why they counted by 10s.  They said it was faster!  

This is the same pair as above.  Since they didn't have the manipulatives to show their groups of 10, Wendy drew what she saw them do.

This pair was chosen because they started to use a doubling strategy.  

 This pair was chosen because they discovered a pattern and started to organize their work like a table.  

By the end of the math congress, students in both classrooms heard about a variety of strategies that could be used to solve this one problem.  They were also asked to think about the most efficient strategy (which one is quicker and easier?).

Explicit Teaching:

After each pair got a chance to share their thinking, Wendy used the last pair's work to jump into her explicit teaching.  She wanted students to understand that a table could be used to help them organize their thinking and work.