Poetry Learning Activities: High Tech to No Tech

This year my Year 8 class is participating in the Red Room Object poetry competition again. Last year I used Verso to flip poetry readings, Google docs for the class to share their writing and we Skyped Zenobia Frost in a poetry workshop.

These various technologies engaged students to actively give feedback to their peers, share their learning and engage in authentic and intimate conversations with a poet.

This year I have used Verso to flip poetry readings for homework as I want students to listen to more poetry and to engage with it by answering challenging questions and then responding to other students’ comments. Following the Flipped homework, lessons started with reading and discussing the  students’ Verso comments. These gave me an insight into their thinking, to personalise and differentiate learning and to share the rich, thoughtful comments made by the students.

Red Room’s learning resources are inspirational and are easily combined with technology. I used Google docs in the Overcoming Cliche activity

For the metaphor activity, we shared our metaphors on Padlet and then groups made a metaphor poem by combining lines.

We also crafted Diamante poems and choose an image from Unsplash Free (do whatever you want) high-resolution photos, to visualise their words as an  image. Please see the slideshare at top of page.

In the Lineation Activity students added their line breaks and punctuation to Eileen Chong’s poem Mid-Autumn Mooncakes. This no tech activity used  pen and paper and the whiteboard for sharing. After reading, listening and watching Eileen Chong recite Mid-Autumn Mooncakes, students responded saying that this was their favourite poem so far.