Translations of Life

During the course of the year, we do poetry workshops every Friday, learning about different styles and features of poetry while exploring the creation process. As a way to show students the unique voice and view of poetry, we will be doing a week long project involving poetry, nature, and technology. Students will explore the outside regions of our school, brainstorming lists of things that they obseve with their senses. Then in groups of three, they will work on creating a poem that includes these ideas. When poems are finished, students will tape each other with Flip Video cameras, reading the lines from their poetry. They will then also go back outside and tape short segements that pertain to the things that they wrote about. The clips will be put together in a graphically spliced visual version of their poetry, interspersing words with images and sounds. To celebrate the finished accomplishment, we will have a small movie premiere party, inviting other students and parents to view our poetic movies. The finished videos will also, with parent permission, be posted to our classroom website.