Spotlight on… Poet Tree

2015-02-23B-FeatureImage

Say something nice for Poetry Day this March!

The R49132 Four Seasons Poet Tree comes with a full set: 32 beautiful leaf shapes in an assorted range of colors and a full sized classroom poetry tree on which to pin the leaves.

Mount the tree up on a wallboard in your classroom in a space that can be prominently seen. Tell students that the tree represents their knowledge of literacy. Anything that uses words in a descriptive way can be written onto the leaves and tacked up on the tree for everyone to see! This will fill up the tree to make it look bright, colorful and beautiful.

49132-Four-Seasons-Poet-Tree-art

For early years, focus on writing simple descriptive words and attaching those to the tree. For example, you could ask students to think of a word to describe how their day is going or what the weather is like outside. Use crayons or markers to add some color to your writing!

You can also use the tree as a base for introducing students to each other at the beginning of the school year. Give each student a leaf and tell them to write their name and birth date on it. Tack up the written leaves onto the tree and arrange them by succession according to students’ birthdays. This helps to keep track of everyone’s birthday, a bit like a birthday chart!

Older students can write a more sophisticated piece that relates to their current studies in literacy. If you were teaching your students how to write topic sentences for paragraphs, use the leaves as mediums for writing example topic sentences. Students can add to the topic sentence to make a complete paragraph!

Additionally, explore lessons in poetry with the use of descriptive words. You can introduce the students to this activity by asking them to write a random word that comes to their heads on the leaves provided. Place the words around the tree. Give each student scrap paper to write on. Ask them to observe the words on the tree and use the words as inspiration for descriptive writing. Perhaps students can write a short story or a poem about the words they see. There are so many different literacy exercises you can adapt to your classroom with the Poet Tree!

Line-06

Like us on FacebookShare this post with your friends, or Subscribe to this blog today to receive original craft project updates every Monday, Wednesday and Thursday!