For my poetry unit, I co-taught in a classroom with a peer and we planned together with another classmate. The three of us took our lessons into fourth grade classrooms, one in Watagua County and the other in Avery County. Our sequence went as follows:

1. Day #1: Poetry performances! Students watch an example of a poetry performance and then get the chance to work independently or in small groups and choose a poem to perform. There were a multitude of poems that could be chosen from including poetry for multiple voices. They then were able to share their performances with the class.
2. Day #2: Object poetry using poetic language and comparisons. We used a T-chart to move from ordinary language to poetic language and finally to comparisons. Students had the chance to explore cutie oranges in order to write object poetry to use poetic language.
3. Day #3: Musical Toolbox! This day we explored the connection between lyrical music and poetry. We studied figurative language such as rhyme, alliteration, and repetition as we listened and followed along to “The Middle” by KidzBop. Then students were able to create their own object poetry using their musical toolbox.
4. Day #4: Object Poetry. Students chose an object out of a bag and used all of the strategies and tools collected over the week to create a poem where the object is not labeled in the piece.
5. Day #5: Students revised and wrote their object poems on pieces of paper and hung them around the room where their peers could walk around and guess what object the poem was describing. They could then put their guesses in the envelope connected.

Day #1 Reflection: This lesson was a great introduction to our poetry unit because the students had fun and were able to look at poetry from a humorous perspective instead of the typical deep/emotional side. Poetry does not always have to be sad or super intellectual and we were able to show students how you can have fun with it. I think it was a beneficial activity but if I were to reteach the unit, I would provide more examples of poetic performances and emphasize the animation and emotion that readers portray. The students were still getting warmed up to us being in their classroom and performing for the whole group so I would maybe show them a personal example as well to break the ice. I think the students were able to compare poetry performances to just reading poems and they all agreed, for the most part, that they interacted and understood poems better when they performed them. I also learned during the first lesson how nervous I was to be in front of students and I was extremely glad that we had prepared and planned out all activities with a multitude of ideas in case we had extra time. I am used to working with students in special education classrooms and the general ed setting intimidated me a little.

*I did not want to post the video of student performances for privacy reasons but we have a collection of the poetry performances from the first group.