CLASSROOM VISITS AND TOURS
Ridgecrest Elementary Classroom Visit
Date: April 1, 2003
School: Ridgecrest Elementary, Shoreline
Teacher: Lynn Dawson
Grades: Fourth and fifth combination
On April 1, Tamara Galvan and I visited Lynn Dawson's fourth and fifth grade combined class at Ridgecrest Elementary in Shoreline. Lynn, who subscribes to Season Ticket and uses The Times to teach her students about Current Events, had asked me to come to her class and teach a lesson.
In honor of the first day of National Poetry Month, I explained to her students that we would be writing Found Poems based on a story entitled, "Feisty peace activist creates a buffer zone" written by Eric Sorensen.
I read the article aloud to them, and as they followed along, the students circled words and phrases that caught their attention. When we finished the article, I listed the words and phrases on the board; we then discussed their meanings and what they liked about the words. After creating this list, I asked what they thought the main idea or theme of the piece was, and I was impressed with the insights they had on the article.
What came next was the poetry writing portion of the lesson. I gave the kids the definition of a Found Poem; because they seemed intimidated by the thought of starting the writing process, I created a poem out loud and wrote my words down on the overhead projector simultaneously. My hope was that once they heard me working through the thought process, mixing words and phrases from the board with my own vocabulary, they would see that poetry writing wasn’t as hard as they thought.
The students spent the rest of the class period working on their poems while Lynn, Tamara and I circulated around the classroom and offered our help.
A few weeks later, Lynn sent copies of the poems to NIE, and they were terrific (read some here). This visit was a great way to celebrate the beginning of National Poetry Month and the relationship between classrooms and NIE.
If you are interested in having me come visit your classroom, please contact our Youth Outreach Specialist.
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