April is Poetry Month

MONDAY, APRIL 18, 2016

I have added this page from an awesome free blog called Free Technology for Teachers written by Richard Byrne. He has awesome resources, and frequently updates his blog/FB page with free technology resources and ideas for teachers. The below post is a repost from his page.

Check it out and post in the comments if you try any of activities or use the poems in your class.

ReadWorks Offers a Nice Set of Poems and Guiding Questions for Poetry Month.

ReadWorks is one of my favorite nonprofit services for teachers. ReadWorks offers hundreds of lesson plans and thousands of non-fiction and fiction passages aligned to Common Core standards. Additionally, each article is listed with a Lexile score and suggested grade level.

ReadWorks recently released a new set of poems and guided reading questions. The collection has poems appropriate for students in middle school and high school. Each poem in the collection comes with a set of questions that you can give to students to answer individually or simply use as a group discussion guide.

Applications for Education
One of the aspects of ReadWorks that I like is that lexile scores are listed for each article. ReadWorks makes it easy to find fiction and non-fiction articles that are appropriate for your students.

With a free ReadWorks account you can search for lessons and reading passages by grade level, lexile score, reading skill, subject area, and text type (fiction or non-fiction). In your ReadWorks account you can create digital binders of the lesson plans and reading passages that you want to use.

Podcasts in Lieu of Reading a Text?

Not only is listening a Common Core State Standard (CCSS), but it has some advantages over text. You can still have students follow along using a written transcript, but students can listen to text 2-3 grade levels higher than they read. Unfamiliar words do not stop the story as they often do when reading.  Additionally, our EL students benefit by hearing English spoken by a fluent reader.

Many high school teachers have used the popular This American Life series, Serial.  Part 1 of the series consists of 12 episodes (about 45 minutes each).  The story encourages students to use analytical skills like evaluating evidence and sources, making and defending a claim, and critically reading a text (the transcript).  The podcast can also serve as an exemplar or mentor text for students to use as a model for an original podcast.

Serial is just one example of a podcast that can be used with students.  There are many others including shorter podcasts.  Additionally, there are podcasts for many diverse subjects/contents.  Here are a few links for podcasts and resources for using them in the classroom:

Article on how using Serial impacted students and teachers

Blog on one teacher's experience using Serial with his students

Unit plan for Serial

Serial series: season one

This American Life podcasts

Website with cross curricular topic podcasts and lesson plans

Podcasts on various topics