technology

Technology Integration - Lesson Plan
Passion for Poetry – A Digital Poetry Anthology

Grade 4 English Language Arts & Instructional Technology

Essential Question: How does poetry enhance written and oral expression?

Description: This unit is designed to introduce fourth grade students to the world of poetry through the use of their own reading, writing, listening, speaking, and creativity skills. The students will create a poetry anthology based on a theme of their choice. They will be introduced to ten different types of poetry, of which they will read and listen to several examples, and then write their own poems based on their theme. The students will type their poems into Microsoft PowerPoint to create a Poetry Anthology. Completed student poetry anthologies will be presented to the class by reading with expression, and as a culminating activity, a PowerPoint presentation to the class and other invited guests. Poems from their poetry anthologies will be shared on the class blog and other students from within the class will be able to read and respond to their classmate’s poems.

Students will:

• understand how to interpret, read and write different types of poetry • understand how to read a poem with expression • gain basic knowledge of poetry terminology • use the digital camera to take poetry pictures - import pictures into computer • create and present a PowerPoint slide show • learn how and why to use RSS Feeds and del.icio.us • learn how to a blog for educational purposes

RSS Feeds & del.icio.us The teachers will establish an RSS feed on the topic of poetry for students to read throughout the unit using Bloglines or Google Reader. The teachers will introduce this piece while students are learning about and reading different types of poetry, during weeks one and two. When the feeds come in, the teachers will work with small groups of students to look through the feed results and decide if any are worth posting to the del.icio.us poetry list. http://del.icio.us/jennyrmurphy/poetry. At this time, the teachers and students will decide if the RSS feeds need to be altered to meet their topics more appropriately.

Digital Camera Students will document the poetry anthology project steps with a digital camera (Ex. Step 1 – read poems, Step 2 – write poems, Step 3 – create anthology, etc.). We may post these pictures to flickr, depending on the pictures taken. At the start of the unit, the teachers will ask the students how they would integrate digital pictures into this project. We’re looking for them to imagine taking a picture of something they could write a poem about (Ex. If the theme is sports, take a picture of people playing basketball at recess).

Tool Used to Share Final Project - Blog Once the anthologies are close to completion, we will add the blogging aspect of this project. The class blog address is: http://poetryanthologies.blogspot.com. Students will post samples of poems from their anthologies to the blog and then comment to each other’s poems in the blog. From past experiences with this unit, students that reflect on their own poetry show mastery of the content being taught. We are hopeful that reading and responding to their classmates’ poems will show the same mastery.

Students take pride in creating this poetry anthology. Their hard work and effort shows through in the final presentations. We’re hopeful that they will have a positive experience from publishing poems to the blog.

Parent Letter The classroom teacher will send home a brief letter describing the content and activities involved in the unit. All students in grade 3 sign an Acceptable Use Agreement. This form includes language about proper use of the technology we will work with in this unit.

Rubric on Rubistar Poetry Anthology Rubric on Rubistar (Rubric ID: 1390208) http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php?screen=PrintRubric&rubric_id=1390208&