A Conversation Poem

This week students focused their poetry skills on a conversation poem, a poem involving interaction between two characters. To prepare for the poem, students read "Hey Daddy Long Legs!" as a choral reading. I split the class in two groups. One group read the little boy's part and the other group read the spider's part. This helped students read and hear the rhymed responses between the two characters. The next step involved partners writing a conversation poem. Students were paired up and given a selected character/animal conversation poem planning sheet. This draft would then be acted out when Mrs. Kneeland visited. The 3rd grade team generated the character/animal ideas based on our own collection of props and masks. We wanted the students to get into their part as they performed for their peers.

Mrs. Kneeland focused her visit on preparing the students for their conversation poem readings. She started with a short clip from Finding Nemo, where Dori speaks whale. Then, she read a poem about a snake and she modeled body posture and voice. We utilized two anchor charts to remind students as they met with their partners and practiced the conversation poem. The first reminder was about voice (pitch, volume and speed), and the second reminder was about body (posture, gestures, and movement). Students were given the props right before their performance and it truly brought the dramatic side out during the poetry readings.