Creando poesía con tercer grado (Creating Poetry with Third Grade)

Creating poetry is a wonderful way for students to share information they learned in Spanish class. To complement their culminating Mid-Autumn Moon Festival, the third graders shared their learned vocabulary through this form of art.

We narrowed our theme to the objeto (object) “moon,” and we began by jotting down all the words that came to mind when they thought of this natural satellite such as color and forma (shape). Then we came up with other adjetivos (adjectives) that might describe the moon including sentimientos (feelings) and emotions. To include verbos (verbs), the question was posed “If you visit the moon, what would you do?” to which many students shared excellent and some even hilarious ideas.

After much discussion, a decision was made to create a Diamante Poem, which is an unrhymed seven-line poem. The beginning and ending lines are the shortest, while the lines in the middle are longer, giving a diamante poem a diamond shape. Here’s a way to visualize this piece of art:

objeto

adjetivo, adjetivo

verbo, verbo, verbo

objeto, objeto, objeto, objeto

verbo, verbo, verbo

adjetivo, adjetivo

objeto

All the words gathered were then written on flashcards and categorized by each part of speech, with its Spanish translation. Then, both third grade groups, Grupo Azul and Grupo Verde, took turns at crafted their own collective poem.

Once completed, all students practiced learning their group’s poem in Spanish, individually and with each other.

To help reinforce the learning of new vocabulary, we solved crossword puzzles... 

...and played many games including Pictionary. 

The result of their hard work, and play, was witnessed during the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival celebration last week where each group recited their poem perfectly. The third graders had so much fun with this study that they have requested to each create their very own poem. Stay tuned!