Podcasting Poety: A Reflection

In the second grade class I am placed in, I taught a poetry lesson which included audio recording technology. Each studentL

1. Thought about what a poem is
2. Listened to 5 varying poems about weather
3. Wrote his/her own poem about weather
4. Recoded the poem they wrote
Why I decided on this technology and lesson:
I wanted students to see technology as a way to publish work. I wanted them to think it was exciting to be able to talk into a recorder and then hear their own voice. I wanted it to help them see their poetry as important. Eventually, I hope to put it on the web so they can share it with their families, but in the mean time I am sending a cd home with several students at a time. They were for the most part very proud and happy to know that others could hear their voices. Technology is used a a mode of sharing the students work and also making them feel like the work is important because it is out there for people to hear. Additionally, I hoped it would make them feel pride and confidence in their ability as young poets. Using the recorder was a good way to help them learn about poetry because it let them express themselves without worrying about spelling or handwriting, two things which hold them back when they are writing. They did write down their poems initially, but being able to read their own writing meant they did not have to check spelling of every word when they were publishing.

Goals for the lesson:
The technology did not really help them to understand content except to illustrate that recording their voice is a way to share a poem with other people.
A poetry unit is in the pacing guides for Lansing later in the year. I think poetry is not something that should be taught for one month, but in order to get students to be more successful it is something they should have many experiences with. This lesson was a preview of what is to come and also a way to get them some preliminary experience with writing poetry. It was their very first try at writing a poem for the year.

Learning:
Learning takes place through experimenting and experiencing. Because this was the students first time writing poetry they listened to several poems and then just tried writing something. They also worked together in some cases, with follows social constuctivist theories. The students also work together to make a working definition for poetry.
Because of the nature of poetry and that the assignment was totally open, that made it possible for any child to be successful. They just had to write about something in the way they thought a poem should be written. When reading poetry aloud, students could listen and read along, each poem had a picture by it.

The Technology:
The students were all very excited for their turn to record their poem. Many of them asked, after they heard their voice, “is that really what I sound like?” They asked what the device was, I explained that it was a recorder that recorded whatever they were saying. I told them I could take the recording and put it on a CD or on the internet.
Most basically, teachers need to know how to work a digital voice recorder. Beyond that, they should know how to somehow publish the audio files. Students need to have enough experience with poetry to be able to try and write a poem. It would have also been valuable to talk about speaking skills to help the recordings be more effective. I think that doing this same type of assignment multiple times would yield a better product down the line. Ideally, this should be done with older students who could handle the recording on their own. I had to take a couple minutes with each student individually and that would be hard to manage without other teachers in the room.

Assessing Students:
During the early discussion, I asked students what they thought poetry is. To assess the students here, I just wanted to make sure they were participating in the discussion. I wanted to know that about 80% of the class had hands raised at any given time, and they were. Then when the students wrote their own poems, I wanted each student to make an attempt at writing poetry. This was their first try and there were few rules or guidelines. Every single student wrote a poem at least three lines long, and most much longer. They were so proud and worked very hard.