Studying, Writing, and Creating with Poetry

Well, we wrapped up our 3rd grade poetry unit today.  We spent a week of reading classes focusing on some poems written by Robert Louis Stevenson.  

Illustration of "Pirate Story"

This was our first poetry unit of the year so we started by defining the parts of a poem.  We used Lovin' Lit's interactive notebook lesson on Parts of a Poem to begin with.  We defined lines, stanzas, rhythm, and rhyme.  

A sideways picture - Oops!

After gluing copies of the poems into our notebooks, we then spent two lessons focusing on rhyme scheme in poetry.  We talked about using letters to identify what words rhymed at the ends of lines and then the students practiced finding rhyme scheme on their own.  We also spent one lesson talking about the theme of this set of poems - imagination.

Working on "Block City"

Finally, we chose two of the poems to illustrate in different ways. For the first project, the student was allowed to choose any poem and paint a picture that they felt showed the poem in some way.  Then, they cut out block shapes and glued them onto paper to make a block city of some kind. Once the blocks were glued on, they colored in a background picture.  This art project went perfectly with Stevenson's poem "Block City."  The projects came out amazing.  

We also read the poems out loud several times and then to the class while we displayed our art projects.  We finished by writing our own poems about ways that we use our imagination in play.

It was a great week of poetry fun!  I can't wait until the next one!