Building Classroom Community Through the Exploration of Acrostic Poetry

Overview

Featured Resources

From Theory to Practice

 

OVERVIEW

Building classroom community is one of the most challenging yet most important tasks for any teacher, and it needs to be reinforced frequently throughout the year. This lesson gives students the opportunity to be innovative, creative, and expressive while building a sense of community. In this lesson, students explore the genre of acrostic poetry and participate in a shared writing experience with acrostic poems. Using the Internet, students explore and investigate the characteristics of acrostic poetry. They then brainstorm positive character traits about one of their classmates using an online thesaurus and compose an acrostic poem. Students use an interactive online tool to write and print the final draft and then share their poem with the class.

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FEATURED RESOURCES

	Student Checklist: This detailed checklist helps students prepare their poems for presentation to their peers.
	Acrostic Poetry Quilt from Ms. Birnbaum’s Fourth Grade Class: This online source provides visual examples of acrostic poems that are sure to inspire students’ muses.

 

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FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE

Labbo, L.D. (2004). Poetry on the screen. The Reading Teacher, 58(3), 308–311.

• Computers in the classroom have typically been used for skill-and-drill or games that promote test preparation. However, computers offer numerous possibilities to enhance students' understanding of poetry and poetic language.
  
  
• The integration of poetry with technology can help create a friendly, motivating environment for children to explore the composition of different forms of poetry.

   

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