Poetry in motion

We have been writing poems and it has been a lot of excitement and frustrations for some of our writers. It is wonderful to hear the students in my target group questioning each other about the use of figurative devices in poetry such as similes, metaphors, personification and so forth. Words which they did not know much about before the start of this poetry unit. 

In trying to identify which language devices they are using in their poetry writing, we have started to use colour coding. It is a great way to annotate their poems and also challenge their thinking and re-crafting in writing. 

Below is a poem written by Student 3 which he has not completed yet but is looking very promising. His poem is about Planet Earth. 

Group teaching

As we are a Manaiakalani school our teaching approach involves the use of digital devices such as netbooks, Ipads and computers.  All students in Room 7 have netbooks. In my target group six of the students have a netbook of their own which they use while two use the class computer for their work. 

I use Google slides to upload student work. The students can access the slides from the class site. The use of the class site is valuable as the students are able to access their work from home or anywhere where they have access to the internet. 

Below is the slides for the Ihimaera group which displays the genres they  have been writing and what we have been discussing as a group in our group discussions.