Brief Description

The students will utilize a PBS related website entitled Fern’s Poetry Club to publish a student-authored poem on an Internet to not only meet the Arizona Language Arts and Writing Standards (2, 3,4, and 5) and also the Arizona Technology Standards for Second Grade (1T-F1). Additionally, the students will learn that the Internet can be a valuable resource tool to learn from and make educational contributions toward. http://pbskids.org/arthur/games/poetry/

Standards and Frameworks

Technology Standards

1T-F1. The students will communicate about grade-level technology operations using developmentally appropriate and accurate terminology.  The students will also learn to enhance their individual technology skills.

Arizona State Reading Standards: R-R5

• PO 1 Demonstrate an understanding of directionality.
• PO 1 Track visually, auditorily, and/or tactually in a horizontal (left to right) and vertical (top to bottom) pattern.

• PO 1 Use the writing process, including generating topics, drafting, revising ideas and editing, to complete effectively a variety of writing tasks
• PO 2 Align purpose (e.g., to entertain, to inform, to communicate) with audience
• PO 3 Write a first draft of a poem with the necessary components for a specific genre
• PO 4 Revise initial draft content (e.g., organization, relevant details, clarity)
• PO 2,3 4,5 Use correct spelling, punctuation, capitalization, grammar and word usage, and good penmanship to complete effectively a student-authored poem for the website.

• PO 1-4  Students will enhance their individual literacy skills through identification of main idea, facts sequence of events, determine an author’s purpose in a range of traditional and contemporary literature through reading a varied genre of writing (poetry).

Academic

• The students will write a poem in a specific genre of poetry that was taught within a specific unit of study (previously) done in the regular classroom or in the Resource classroom (for students with special needs).  The students will publish a poem on Fern’s Poetry Club website on the Internet that was student written and edited.

The students’ will:

• Know content of the website and be able to locate additional information as needed (this will be for the purpose of finding classmates poetry and evaluating it)
• Become self-directed learners within the computer environment on a teacher-guided website
• Collaborate and cooperate in team efforts, where needed
• Use developmentally appropriate technology resources to access information and communicate electronically by writing a poem and publishing it on the website entitled Fern’s Poetry Club.

• The students will need to know:
• Basic keyboarding skills (how to locate home-row on the keyboard)
• How to type sentences
• How to capitalize letters where necessary
• How to locate the URL address bar on their computer monitor
• How to access a teacher-directed website on the URL address bar of the computer
• How to write a poem that has been student written and edited to be posted on the website called Fern’s Poetry Club.

 

The students will need their copy of a previously written poem (that has been edited and revised for publication), access to a computer with Internet access and the URL address: http://pbskids.org/arthur/games/poetry/

Accommodations for Special Needs

Students with special needs will be accommodated for in these ways:

In teaching the students the initial poetry-writing lesson, SEI (Sheltered-English Immersion) students will have a class peer tutor to model and show how to work around the words of a poem as well as the computer.  They will have one-on-one assistance with his/her class peer tutor with poetry writing in class. The initial writing lesson should be listener friendly and hands-on so that the limited-English learner can be exposed to the flow of poetry.  This can be accomplished through modeling others poems written on sentence strips to be put into order to make the topic make sense (sequencing).  The teacher can also provide picture clues to match the “theme” of the poem so that the student(s) learning English can visualize symbols related to the theme. This can also be achieved by utilizing an older “student buddy” that is well versed in the necessary writing and computer skills being taught or a parent helper who is also versed in the current lesson. (This should be arranged with an Intermediate Grade or Middle School teacher well in advance of the lesson being taught to the entire class.  The “older student buddy” should know the lesson from writing the poem to having the student-authored poem published on the website.)

Students with an IEP (Individualized Education Plan) will be given additional work time on writing his/her poem within his/her Resource class work time (if this is already established within the student’s work schedule) as well as additional computer class work time.  (This should be arranged with your school Resource Teacher in advance of the lesson being taught to the regular class.)  To better accommodate a student with special needs in the regular classroom, the use of a peer-tutor can be implemented for this assignment to ensure success or you can have one-on-one assistance with a parent volunteer or older “student buddy” who is well-prepared for the content of the lesson.  The special needs student should also have a model to use as a demonstration (i.e. Sentence strips to read, put in order according to the directions/demands of the style of poetry being utilized and to model their poem after.)  The teacher can also provide a poem that already has words started for the special needs student to fill in only the rhyming pattern or missing verbs, nouns etc.

The Gifted or Academically/Technologically Accelerated students will serve as monitors/helpers for other students in the classroom or technology lab. Students who fit into this category will also be instructed to write additional poems, as necessary, to be posted on Fern’s Poetry Club.   To accommodate the gifted student population, the teacher can provide additional paper for illustrations of the poetry being written.

Procedures

Day 1:

In the regular classroom, the teacher will model the genre of poetry that the students will be expected to write.  This will be done by showing the students the website (the website can be demonstrated on the computer monitor or on a TV converter in the classroom or in the computer lab and the teacher should demonstrate by reading some of the poetry posted on it.  For teaching the students to write in a specific genre of poetry, this website has examples of Narrative Poetry, Limericks, Haiku, Free Verse or Cinquain and Lyrics.  The students should write in a specific genre to accompany the current unit of study within the classroom environment.  This will be dictated by your specific Language Arts Curriculum mandates.   This particular lesson can be utilized for teaching students how to write in any style of poetry but was used to teach Cinquain or Haiku style of poetry.  The students will then be given instructional time to write and if time permits, to edit with a peer or the teacher and to rewrite his/her poem in class over two in-class writing periods of 20 minutes each, if this much time is needed for the students to develop his/her poem.  During the first in-class writing period, when some students are able to finish their poetry, the teacher can edit with students who have completed his/her poetry while class-peer editors concurrently edit as well. (This should be done only if the peer-editors are able to edit for grammar and spelling very well, and that this has been demonstrated to the teacher before in class).  The poetry writing can also be done during Center time, after the initial class lesson has been taught.  The teacher can have a small group setting for managing the literacy skills being taught.  If the poetry writing is done in a Center-directed environment, you should allow for more time to have elapsed from the start of writing to the actual publishing of the poem on the website.
At the end of the class period, ask your students:
1. What did you learn?
2. What confused you?
Make a list of questions to be addressed the next day.  You can also have a large piece of chart paper to list what was learned that day (to be reviewed when the lesson is done).

Prior to this lesson, the teacher should review school district Internet Acceptable Use Policy.  Also, be sure to have permission signed by your students’ parent or guardian to be able to be use the Internet.  In addition, the teacher should obtain permission from each child to publish student work on the Internet.
In the computer lab or on the classroom computers, the students will learn how to use and locate a specific website in the Internet for their poem to be published. (See the URL address listed).
The students will preview the website: http://pbskids.org/arthur/games/poetry/ to see how to work within the framework to publish his/her poem.  The students will be given time and encouraged to browse on Fern’s Poetry Club website, “What’s A Poem, Write A Poem, or Read More Poems” to see examples of what a poem is, how to write a poem and to be able to read more poems.  The teacher will guide the children through “What’s A Poem” (allow about 6-10 minutes) so everyone can get a feel for the type of poetry that will be expected to be published on this website and also to see some favorite poetry styles posted on this website.  With teacher guidance, the students will then explore “Write A Poem” (on Fern’s Poetry Club) simply to be exposed to composing on the computer and familiarizing each child with the use of the keyboard while entering a poem on this website.  The students will also be able to see other children’s poems posted.  (This portion of the teaching and exploration will not be published on the website at this time, unless some students are at the publishing stage.)  The teacher should allow approximately 6-12 minutes to explore and practice, giving time you see necessary for the students to be comfortable with using the website. Time will then be given to explore “Read More Poems” for everyone to see other child-authored poetry that is already posted on Fern’s Poetry Club. Discussion should follow each component on Fern’s Poetry Club as it is taught.  The teacher should model each sub-section (What’s A Poem, Write A Poem and Read More Poems) for the children to see before they are expected to explore and learn.  This portion of the lesson may be split into two computer class periods.  This will depend upon the diversity of your learners and their individual learning needs.  At this stage, the teacher should look for readiness, interest (meeting all of the learning profiles and multiple intelligences) and content focus, not coverage focus.  This should go from learning the most simple task of using a computer as an educational resource to the process of publishing on a website.
At the end of this class period, ask your students:
1. What did you learn?
2. What confused you?

The students should take have their poem that was written and edited in class in hand so that the poem can be entered into Fern’s Poetry Club under “Read More Poems” on the PBS sponsored website, Fern’s Poetry Club.   The teacher should monitor and check for children:
1. Correct posture and use of the computer
2. Locating the correct website to be used for publishing the poetry
3. Correct use of the website
4. Re-reading for correctness of the poem before it is submitted
5. Proper submittal of the poem under the section called “Write A Poem” by typing the poem into the text box and then entering the child’s first name only and age.
6. The text box that indicates email address should be skipped (as per PBS Child’s Privacy Policy).
7.  The text indicated for state or providence, can be accessed by the child clicking on the down arrow to find the child’s particular state.

 The students will check for their own previously submitted poem on Fern’s Poetry Club and will also look up a friend’s poem under “Read More Poems” on Fern’s Poetry Club.  This will be done by looking up a classmate’s poem by looking for their first name and title of the poem.  When a first name is entered at “Read More Poems”, a listing of previously written poems will be brought up.  The students will have to preview the poems by looking for a familiar title that the teacher has written for them to see somewhere.  Everyone will have to look up a classmate’s poem and evaluate it on the criteria listed on the checklist (rubric) provided by the teacher.

The students will be assessed by his/her electronically submitted poem to Fern’s Poetry Club under “Read More Poems.” The students will enter his or her first name, and will find his/her poem within the poetry club of previously submitted poems.  Other students should locate their poems (which are posted by first name only) as well as their classmates poetry on the website. To evaluate the student authored poem, see the teacher created poetry checklist (evaluation rubric).

Each child should review the cinquain (rubric) checklist.  The students will fill out the student name for the poem that is being evaluated and then fill in his/her name.  The project being evaluated is the poetry written in the areas of:

1. Capitalization
2. Ideas
3. Word Usage and parts of speech (this includes using nouns, adjectives and verbs)

Have fun with your student’s journey into technology and learning!

Teacher Name: Carole Celaya
Site: Wilson K-8
Date Submitted: November 12, 2002