Smiles and Sunshine: Abstract Noun Poetry

Thursday, January 30, 2014

Abstract Noun Poetry

I first saw this over at All Things Upper Elementary and thought it would be a wonderful idea-and a fairly quick time filler if I needed one!

Well, on Monday I needed one! We were going to exchange our Snowflake How-To's and see how well they wrote their directions...

...but I had 4 kids out and 1 sent home for a total of 5 missing! Plus, I would have 3 leave for Gifted and Talented halfway through.

So our How-To's have been postponed until next week :)

We have about an hour forty-five for Writing once a week (we don't choose to switch reading groups on that day-making it easier to do some longer lessons-otherwise it is squeezed into our half-hour whole group-along with everything else!).

I split the time in half-having the kids work on finishing their How-To's (some were so close!) or freewriting (which turned into comic writing!), and then the rest of the time was poetry!

First, we talked about abstract nouns-things you can't touch-mostly feelings.

Then, we got a little deeper with our feelings (with some significant help from me! ;)

After we came up with the list, I told them that they had to pick a word to write a poem on- and it did have to be one that was on the board!

I modeled how to do with with one of my favorite words-and one that I think describes me fairly well! (They did help a little-I like to ask their opinions!).

Then they got to work!

A few had questions about if they and a friend picked the same word-and I told them it would be fine because they would come up with different poems because they saw that word differently. (We had a lot of 'luck'!).

I also made it a requirement that they had to use at least one type of figurative language in their poem-just to make it more interesting!

They turned out great! I was impressed with some of them-I loved reading what they thought of the word they picked.

This is one of my LD kids-who struggles with writing! (and reading). It says: Luck Smells like a wild clover after a rainfall. Tastes like gold out of a fresh stream. Sounds like sweet music in the olden times. Feels like a colorful rainbow going through the sky. Lives in a King of true heart. How awesome is that!!