Slam – Poetry with Passion

At the end of the year, I always do a poetry unit with my kids.  I love to have the kids work on writing poems and talking about the many genres that poetry can take, and have always just used my poetry writing journal.  However, I never thought – until recently – about having my kids write slam poetry.  Over the last few weeks, I have been exposed to two great “slam poets”, Holly McNish and Taylor Mali and  who have recorded themselves and put their poetry up on YouTube.  After watching quite a few of their poems, I thought about how cool of a project it would be to allow kids to write “slam poetry” of their own – in a poetry unit, or even a persuasive writing unit.  Unfortunately, I won’t be teaching writing next year (although I will pass this on to the teacher who will be), butthought I would pass it on to you all here too

First, show your students some examples of slam poetry.  Here are two examples from the two poets I listed above:

Here are some kids performing slam poetry:

Ask students the question - “What makes slam poetry different from regular poetry?”  If needed, guide them to answers like – Slam poetry is meant to be presented, not read and slam poetry has a specific message.  Record this question and answer session on the board, or in your students’ interactive notebooks.  You could also use this information to create a Venn Diagram.

Next, ask students to choose a purpose for their slam poetry.  Slam poems will be more powerful if students choose a topic that has a purpose specific to them. “Child appropriate” slam poem topics will probably overlap with your persuasive writing topics – why kids should or shouldn’t have homework, or wear uniforms, why smoking is a bad idea, why kids should eat healthy foods etc.  Bullying, media pressure, and sibling rivalry would all also make good slam poetry topics for kids.  If your class is in the middle of a history lesson, they might be able to write a slam poem from the point of view of the “downtrodden” – slaves, peasants, etc.  There are many avenues to get kids writing slam poetry.

Now, it’s time to let them write.  After choosing a topic, kids will need good solid brainstorming time, time to think up words, rhymes, stories etc. to go with their topic.  They will need time to draft as well, and should be encouraged to edit using a good thesaurus – this is a great time to talk about word choice!

Finally, students should have time to rehearse their presentation.  Since presentation is such a big part of slam poetry, students should take the time to perfect their presentation.  Then, have students record their presentations.  It would be fun to also present the poems in front of the class, but since 1.)  video is the presentation mode preferred these days and 2.) many kids get stage fright when presenting in front of the class (especially your language learners!)  Recorded presentations provide students with a great way to share their slam poems.  Once slam poems are recorded, share them with other classes and students (with student and parent permission), and allow students to compare the topics and styles of different poems.

Hope this can help you in your class.  If you end up with sharable video – please feel free to leave me a comment with a link!

ISM Spotlight - Reciting Rhymes While We Walk

This year I am the luckiest teacher in the world. I get to teach at the best school ever – International School of Morocco, with some of the best, most creative, teachers ever. Each time I walk into someone else’s classroom, I get inspired and we just seem to spiral great teaching ideas off of each other. It’s a wonderful place to teach, and since we are all collaborating, it’s a wonderful place for our kids to learn – a teacher’s dream, right? I have tried and tried to convince the other teachers to create blogs of their own to spotlight and share some of their amazing ideas, but everyone is super busy. Instead, they have each agreed to let me spotlight some of their ideas right here on Raki’s Rad Resources. So, each Friday night, I will be posting an ISM Spotlight.

This week, we are spotlighting Jen Kadiri, our Pre-K teacher.  Jen teaches the 3 year old class.  She also has spear headed the nursery rhyme project at ISM.  Since the majority of our students are not growing up in English speaking households, Mrs. Kadiri realized that this means they are not growing up with those common rhymes and stories, which influence so much of our common English culture.  For this reason, she set us up with a nursery rhyme each week and we decided as a school to make it a school wide effort to use the nursery rhyme to explore rhyming, vocabulary, fluency and to build a common culture for our students.

Each morning, before entering the building, our students line up outside.  At that time, the entire school - from K3 to 4th grade -  finds a steady beat, and we recite the rhyme together.  During the day, as we transition from lunch to recess, recess to snack etc., we recite our rhyme.  On Monday, we’re shaky, with mainly the teachers reciting.  By Wednesday, most of the kids have memorized the words, but the teachers are still reciting.  By Friday, the teachers generally don’t have to say anything because the kids are reciting loud and proud (although we still do, simply out of habit).  Here is what one of our kindergarteners sounded like last Friday:

 In addition to simply memorizing the rhyme, each class works with the rhyme in a way that is appropriate to their grade level.  Mrs. Kadiri’s students (the 3 year old class) color pictures of the rhyme characters, order the events with picture cards, create crafts of the rhyme, and pick out the rhyming words.  The Kindergarten class picks out rhyming, word family and decodable words, works on some simple vocabulary, finds sight words that they know in a written version, and creates pictures of the rhyme.  With the “big kids” – Grades 1 – 4, we are have a weekly poetry sheet.  Each day, the kids have a reading comprehension or fluency task to do on their poetry sheet, having to do with the weekly rhyme.  On Monday, we increase fluency by reading the rhyme 4 times.  On Tuesday, we pick out vocabulary words that are challenging or interesting and find the definition. On Wednesday, we visualize and draw a picture of the rhyme.  On Thursday, we make two text connections with the rhyme.  On Friday, we come up with three question that we had while reading the rhyme.  Feel free to grab this sheet from Google Docs if you want to use it in your class. 

How does your school utilize nursery rhymes? 

Come back next Friday to find out what the other ISM teachers are up to.

Seasons Poetry Book Freebie

I realized today that I have 17 more instructional days.  When you take out Science Day, Sports Day, Awards Day etc., it’s even less than that.  And in this time, I need to teach an entire poetry unit and finish up my seasons/weather unit.  Ummmmm……  So, I decided it’s time to integrate!  This afternoon, I put together a quick, little poetry journal for my kids to write poems surrounding around seasons.  Today we read some poems by Shel Silverstein – my absolute favorite poet for kids.  Tomorrow we’re going to read a few seasons books I got a while back, and then they are going to start their Seasons Poetry Journals.  Looking for something like this for the final days of your school year?  Grab a free copy from Google Docs and have fun!

BTW – I’d love to know how many days everyone else has left, feel free to leave me a comment and let me know!