Poems+with+pictures

We explored the ideas of metaphors and how Koly connected with the Tagore poem of "Homeless Bird" in the book __Homeless Bird__ written by Gloria Whelan. To help them further understand the power of this use of figurative language, we had them pick an animal which had traits they shared. They wrote the name of the animal at the top of a word document on their computers. They moved to their neighbors computer and had to write what images or feelings that animal evoked. Then we rotated the students so they each got to write something on each document but they were not allowed to repeat anyone else's comments/ideas. At the last person's computer (before they returned to their own), we all wrote a poem together comparing me to a giraffe (oh, yes I did...be brave!) on the LCD projector/computer and then the students returned to their own computers to read and process the information their peers added to their pages. Next they were to use those ideas and their original ideas to create a poem. also were to get a picture of that animal or take a picture posing as the animal. They integrated the picture and poem in one document and made some impressive connections. See a couple below as examples and I included the class poem comparing me to a giraffe.

The class poem:

A student example of the brainstorming and the poem that followed: