Poem-ify

As part of my demonstration lesson on "Hand" Writing last Thursday, I asked the observing teachers at the EMWP Summer Institute to fill out a reflection chart based on a draft of their own "hand" writing that they had produced during the session. They were asked to write their favorite sentence, phrase, and word from their draft and also a possible title for their piece on the chart. I wanted to experiment with ways to create poetry with their "hand" writing snippets. I printed their words from the charts onto business cards. Then I attached the printed business cards onto adhesive backed business card magnets. The words, phrases, and stanzas were cut apart and placed on a large magnetic white board. Then I began to play with the arrangement and spacing of the words. My thought was that it would be an interesting way to show revision as the adding, taking away, or rearranging of text. I'm also thinking about how I might use this process to poem-ify content area texts. I plan on sharing this idea with my colleagues at EMWP on Monday.