I Wish poems...

Around the Corner, highlights a second grade lesson that uses blogs to post student work.

In the lesson second graders will learn how to properly plan for the writing process and how to write a poem. I especially liked how the lesson not only truly integrated technology but the technology allowed the results to really shine.

The students were to watch a PowerPoint presentation that showed various pictures of animals, after picking one animal the students were to make a "word map" to describe the animal and how the animal feels. The the students were then told to use the "word maps" to write a poem about what it would be like to be the choosen animal.

I loved how the assignment encouraged student's imaginations to take control. I thought that posting of the 5 poems voted best in the class on the classroom blog probably encouraged the students to do their best. It would be really neat as second graders to see your work posted online for "all" to see. However, I wish that all the children's poems could have been posted so that each child could share in that excitement.

I really liked how by posting the finished poem on the classroom blog to share with other classes the student's work was really published. I can remember in my second grade class we had "writing workshop" where the final stage of the writing process, publishing, meant making pictures to go with our stories which we had written and reading them allowed to the class. By using the technology avaliable today the teacher has taken the writing process one step forward by actually publishing the poem for many to see, in a professional-like atmosphere. It would be very rewarding as a student.

It will be interesting to see how successful this lesson is. I hope it works out well because I would definitely try this lesson in my own classroom.