Art and Poetry 1.2: MS & Upper Elementary
I loved reading the poems about emotions and colors that students wrote! If your child forgot their poem at home, please take a picture of it and either email or text it to me.
Today we read a book about Jacob Lawrence's life, focusing on some of his work again as we discussed the intersection between art, poetry, and emotion. We began working on collage-style projects in a similar style to Lawrence, with themes taken from Maya Angelou's poem, Life Doesn't Frighten Me. We will finish our collage art next week in class.
For homework, I would like all students to watch the following videos first before doing the written assignment. The videos will help explain how to write their poem. Many thanks to Eric for sharing the video about Sarah Kay with me!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cds2pWToZGw&feature=youtu.be
Sarah Kay: (Warning on this next video--"d@#%" is mentioned at about 2:48 seconds into the video. Feel free to have your child skip the 2:30-3:00 minute marks of the video)
After the videos have been watched (they don't have to do the activity mentioned at the end of the first video, although it would be a good discussion to have with them), each student will write a poem that begins with one of the following five lines:
- I have to write a poem
- I want to write a poem
- My teacher said to write a poem
- I will write a poem
- This is a poem
The poem can be about any subject or idea that the student wants, as long as they are "using their poet glasses" and writing about something they really care about! It can rhyme if they want it to rhyme, or it doesn't have to rhyme.
The length of the poem should be as many lines as the child's age in years. If you have a ten year old, they will write (or dictate to you, or type) a poem with ten lines.
This gives a lot of freedom! Some kids may be comfortable with the assignment, some may need some extra ideas or discussion. The goal is to use emotion and imagery that connects the reader of the poem with the reality the author wanted to show. I want everyone to continue to explore the connection between painting a picture with words and painting a picture with colors, through both our written and visual art projects!