Poetry Music Project

I made this poetry project my first year teaching and after three years of using it, I have made all the necessary improvements within the project and to teaching it to the class.  I start by sending home this request for parents to either find a song with their children or to have me work with the child to pick out a song.  I always read over the song for language, appropriate content and enough figurative language.  Click on the picture and you can get to the document.  Most families do this part with their children.


In fourth grade, the students cover most of this figurative language so in fifth grade I review the topics in minilessons.  Every day for two weeks I have a brief lesson to review that form of figurative language.  All of the links are embedded into the document
below (the picture is the link to the full document.).  Once I teach the lesson and go through the link or links, they look at their own song to find that element and color code right on the printed lyrics using crayons or colored pencils based on the table.  I go to the computer lab several times within this period also so they can copy and paste the song into a Google Document, share it with me and color code it in the document.  As part of this process we review copy and pasting along with formatting rules.  At this point, I have also shared the project with them.  I share it with them as a view only so they can revisit the links if there is any confusion.  I also allow them to play the games that are linked in the document.  

In this two week process, I go over rhyme, chorus and different types of poetry.  We use a writing journal daily with the front being their personal writing and the back being the lessons taught.  I have them take notes on several types of poetry in the back and in the front they try to write this type of poem.  I started this year with limericks.  The notice the five lines, the humorous content and the AABBA pattern for both rhyme and syllables.  Again, I go to some different sites for examples; I often use Giggle Poetry and Poetry for Kids.

Once the two weeks are over, I correct the found figurative language. The documents have been shared with me through Google Docs. I use the comment feature to ask guided questions to help students find the remaining figurative language. Now, they can go back, use the comments and find the missed figurative language.

This year, I teamed up with a fourth grade teacher. I gave her a list of the songs and she had her students choose from the list. This guaranteed every fourth grader a partner. They started the lessons and finding the figurative language in their class while we continued on to the next part of the project.

As the fourth grade was learning and searching we were reading our lyrics, thinking about our figurative language and getting ready to explain. The children were asked to explain "the story" of the song and what it means to them. I then show my write up of the song Bubbly by Colbie Caillat. I review the formatting rules along with the needed icons to support successful keyboarding. I review our rules for dead words and teach a mini lesson on how to find our own dead words.