How I Use It
I use the poem creation interactives with students of all ages. It it so easy to use as it teaches students step by step how to create a poem, prompting them to add descriptive words and giving examples as necessary. This site is wonderful because poetry is not necessarily every teacher's strong suit, but this site prompts children to add certain kinds of words, It is easy to use and walks students through the kid of poem they are creating and as they add information it makes the poem. Students especially love creating poetry online. I have had many students who are so excited to write more poems that they go home and show their parents this site and create different poetry following the examples. A natural motivator for the students I have used this site with! You need to make sure you finish your project in one sitting and print it off as the website cannot "save" your work.
Love this website for ideas and suggestions for language arts activities. It is maintained by the International Reading Association so I can trust that the content is accurate and reliable. I like the accompanying lesson plans as they are easy to follow and are "quality" lessons that fit into the curricular content easily, they offer many extension activities and other ideas to use with the interactive you choose. . It allows me to explore poetry that I don't necessarily know well / or have a solid plan to teach which I love afterall what is a diamante poem? They also offer suggestions for each grade level to show how it fits, so teachers at every grade could do a diamante poem with their students at each level. Poetry is just the beginning of what this wonderful site has available for students and teachers! It takes time to look through all the resources so you need to make sure you give yourself plenty of time, there are many good resources!