Color Acrostics

With a million and one things to still do before school lets out next week, I completely forgot to post these bad boys, but I definitely like how the lesson went, so better late than never… I think that’s my slogan these days.

Anyway, as part of our introduction to poetry last month we did acrostic poems with colors as a theme rather than the traditional name poems. I like doing acrostic poems, but I find that they are generally too easy for my 6^th graders. I decided this year to try to challenge them to come up with something more abstract. Each of them drew a color from the hat, brainstormed words to describe that color, then scoured a stack of old magazines for items to match. Here’s what we came up with!

Sensory Poems

This is the second year that I’ve done sensory poems, and possibly one of my all-time favorite lessons. The kids love it, and it’s such a great way to teach rich, descriptive writing… something that most of my students struggle with. By isolating the senses one by one, they are really challenged to find words to describe how something sounds, feels, smells, feels, sounds, or tastes and then find ways to convey that to a reader. It’s truly phenomenal what they come up with during this exercise.

Last year I used a couple of different stimuli than this year, but it was just as successful. In fact, that’s the beauty of this lesson; you can use whatever you have access to, to bring this to life. Here is what I did:

First, I introduced the word “sensory,” which most of them were unfamiliar with. I wrote it in caps in the middle of the white board and asked what they thought it meant. Give them a minute with this because you will usually have one brave soul who offers up the word “senses.” Once you've got that, they generally know the 5 senses. Add the five senses to your mind map on the board around your middle “sensory” word. Then, one by one, add adjectives under each of the senses until you feel like they get it. Then explain that you’ll be making poems using these 5 senses. You will see the excitement start to rise when they realize they will get to eat something. Naturally, you have to keep that one for the finale to hold their interest, but you get the point here.


I started with "sound." I played this youtube clip for them from my desk so they weren't able to see the screen. After the clip, I told them to write down words or phrases in their writer’s notebook that they think of when they hear this sound, and to go beyond naming it.

Next, I played this clip on the overhead projector without sound and asked them add it to their writer’s notebook page under “see.”

The next sense I did was “touch.” For this one, I got a boa from our drama room and told them to close their eyes while they held and squeezed it. Last year, I used sand and ice for touch- all were good.

The next one was “smell,” which I did with a eucalyptus scented essential oil. This one was hard for them, so I might suggest a strong smelling flower or more recognizable smell like cinnamon.

Lastly, I sent around a bowl of freshly popped popcorn for them to take a handful of for “taste.”

As a class we went through some of the descriptors that they came up with and I shared a poem I wrote about apples. Then, I turned them loose to choose one of the 5 stimuli we just experienced and create a sensory poem about it.

I’ll post a couple of their finished poems when I get back to school tomorrow. Until then, enjoy what’s left of your weekend, and go indulge in a good meal with all your senses! 

Book Page Art Poems

I've seen variations of this project floating around on pinterest for quite some time now and thought it would be a perfect addition to our poetry unit (although it could be adapted to other areas of language arts). We all have a book or two that is beyond salvageable our classroom or library right? Well, don’t be so quick to throw them out because they can be turned into these beautiful works of art quite easily.

For ours, I had a really old, worn out copy of The Wind in the Willows that I used as a course book last year. I picked this particular copy up at a used bookstore when I was home for Christmas last year; I think I may have spent a whole dollar on it. 

Anyway, it was in rough shape so I tore several pages out and told the students to take a couple of pages and search for words that stood out that could make a poem and circle those words lightly in pencil. It was not an easy task for everyone, but I liked watching them struggle a bit with the challenge. Is that bad? Of course I was there to help them along, but I really wanted them to start thinking about poetry in a different context. Some of them are stuck in the it-has-to-rhyme stage and I wanted to help them see beyond that.

Once the words were found, I showed them a few examples of recycled book art and let them choose the style they liked best. I put a basket of glitter pens, black fountain pens, and chalk out for them to experiment with on their pages, and here’s what they came up with.

Pretty awesome, right? I highly recommend this one!

Haiku- Mixed Media Art Journals

Well, we’re a couple weeks into our poetry unit here, and things are going great. We covered the elements of poetry and have now ventures into the thick of it with acrostic, concrete, and haiku poems. I wanted to share our haiku project from today because I was really impressed with their effort on this one.

It’s not every day that your students can grasp a concept like subtlety, and then show you that they GET IT. It is a beautiful thing, my friends. Anyway, so after we learned a little about the history and structure of haikus, we split the class into different seasons and started brainstorming ways to describe nature in those seasons. Then, once we felt like we had enough descriptive words down, they went to work making their own seasonal haikus.

Later for art, we looked at some really great examples of mixed media and art journal pages so they could get a visual of what our goal was, and started exploring with texture, color, and technique. I allowed them to use any medium that we’d worked with this year, including drawing/sketching, painting (watercolor & acrylic), doodling, collage, stenciling, and sponging. I had to keep reminding them that mistakes could be covered, and that layers were what make mixed media so cool. Once they got that, the awesomeness started to emerge… Check out s couple of them below. Have a splendid weekend!

Spring!

Summer!

Winter!

Fall coming soon!

Mother's Day Poems

Happy Friday, everyone! Well, at least for those of us living in Asia. It’s May and the rainy season is upon us once again, which means I’ll be sporting wet shoes and a poncho for the next couple of months. It really makes me miss having a vehicle with doors and a roof, but hey, it’s just water, right?

This weekend is Mother’s Day, and coincidently, we’ve just started our poetry unit, so I thought- what better way celebrate mom than with a beautiful poem? In language arts we’ve been learning about figurative language, specifically similes and metaphors, so we read some poems that use figurative language just to get some ideas. Then, we brainstormed a list of adjectives that we use to describe our moms.

Later for art, we created a watercolor floral border to publish out poems on… I got the idea for this project here. Here’s a few snapshot of our pieces today.

Happy Mom’s Day to all you fierce females out there. Hope you have a great weekend!

Start with watercolor- be sure to leave a space for your poem!

Any color combo will do...

Once it dries, draw over it with a fine-tip permanent marker or fountain pen (0.5mm)

It's up to you how light or dark the flowers.

Add the final draft of your poem.

Voila! Mother's Day Gift, boss status.