Today we had a lot of fun creating Found Poetry. Found Poems take existing words and phrases and refashion them, reorder them, and present them as poems. Found Poetry is like making a collage with words.
To collect the words we'd use for our poems, we went on a Word Expedition. First, I asked the students to collect words that were already lurking inside our classroom, using the following guidelines:
- 10 words from those written on the bulletin boards, signs, white boards, etc.
- 10 words chosen from three specific pages in the Algebra books
- One "Y", one "Q", and 3 "B" words from the dictionary
After the students had found the words they liked from these sources and written them in their journals, we pored through magazines and cut out words that jumped out at us. I reminded the kids to look for nouns, adjectives and verbs so they could build a strong poem.
After taking a break for snack, we continued our expedition outside. We discovered words on street signs, cars, and bulletins posted at the rec center.
When we went back inside, the challenge really began. Using the words we found from all the different sources, we created poems on construction paper. It was fun to move words around and see what kind of combinations we could come up with. You can see some of the results below!
Alan
Helena