Week 9 observations

During week 9, we used the book Seeing the Blue Between to learn about using poetry in writing.  This was actually one of the most beneficial things that we have completed this year i believe.  Because this is one of the first times that we were exposed to tons of different types of one genre, I feel as if I will be able to encourage poetry in my classroom not only by teaching them the rules for different poetic forms, but also how to read a poem, and react to it.  This is something that is very important to show the understanding of what the children have read, and also it allows for them to have a chance to feel like they are successful poets as well.
When conferencing with the children over Skype, it was very evident that they were very proud and confident of their poems they had written.  This is something that obviously took them several weeks to complete, and there were many steps involved to have the coordination of the art teacher, computer lab, and classroom writing time all cooperate.  I would love to implement something like this in my future classroom, although I don't think that I will spend as much time as the teacher did.  I do think that using different modalities of literature is highly important for the children to grasp concepts, however I want to expose my children to different types of literature all at once, so I would add in something such as letter writing to the principal and other staff to come see their poems and pictures (like Beth showed).  This i believe would be more helpful to have a well rounded unit.