Cinquains and Photo Story

Yesterday I blogged about what inspired me to have my class write cinquains and then present them via Photo Story and mentioned that I would post more about the process today.

I had my 6th graders do the feather cinquains just like in my college class. The 6th graders wrote exclusively in English with the exception of some choosing to put the Spanish translation pluma as the synonym.

With my 7th graders I decided to try something different. Most of the 7th graders could get enough soccer, so I thought it would be a fun opportunity to utilize that passion in the classroom. After having them play soccer while I snapped away pictures, I continued to guide them through creating a cinquain. However, then I extended it and told them that I thought that it would be even more interesting if instead of all of them doing a cinquain focused on soccer in general if they took the pattern and created them about other sub-categories, such as goalie and spectator. I also told the students that they could decide on the language or do a mixture of language. Typically in dual immersion the languages are strictly separated, depending on the language of the week, but from time to time I like to show how code switching is used for creative expression in writing.

Although each class was different, there were many similarities in the process:
1. With both classes I had them do something active to generate ideas, as my professor had modeled.
2. The writing of the poems was scaffolded (again modeled for me). I loved how all students were able to create cinquains, regardless of their academic and language levels.
3. I talked to each class about how each of them wrote their own poems but that we were going to compile them into one document, so we needed to think of order just as we would with the organization of the other styles of writing we had been doing. I gave some suggestions to spark student ideas, and then they decided as a class. For the feathers they decided to start with the soft/gentle poems, transition to the poems that had other aspects/tones for the feathers, and end with some more soft/gentle poems. The 7th graders built off of each other's ideas and ended up coming up with having a visual soccer field. I probably know the least about soccer out of everyone in the room, so I can't remember the exact positions, but it was something like: goalie-spectators-forward-ball-forward-spectators-goalie. I know that I am missing some more in there, such as defenders, but that was the general idea. It was fun to hear them come up with the idea as a group and debate certain points, such as whether the spectators should be intermixed throughout the whole poem or just be in one spot.

It was fun to create and then watch the final products with the classes. An added bonus is that our school added a Photo Story tab to our school website so parents are able to view the presentations as well.