5th Grade Visual Poetry!

The fifth grade students have been learning about poetry in their classroom, and their amazing teacher asked me if we could collaborate on a project.  At first I thought, "oh man, poetry was never my thing" but I always like a challenge so we decided to have students write a poem in their classroom, then carry the unit over into the art room by turning their own poems into visual poetry

Above and to the left you can see the starting steps we took to creating a visual poem.  Students first looked at some poems by Shel Silverstein and designed their own visual poem for one of his pieces.  We talked about symbols and developed symbols or simply imagery for each students poems.  After we practiced for a class period, we got our final paper, used a pencil, then black fine point marker, and traced. 

After tracing in black marker, students were given the option of watercolor paints, watercolor crayons, or watercolor pencils to use for this project.  Students discussed simplicity through the phrase "sometimes less is more".  We learned about how to use color to further enhance our artwork, but still keep the emphasis on the visual poem..... check out these results!

 

I cannot express the excitement and investment students felt in their projects for this unit.  I truly feel without the collaboration between the classroom teacher and myself, this could not have been possible.  This project showed me an entirely new level of dedication from my students which I know I will continue to see in the future!!!

WAY TO GO 5th GRADE! COLOMBIA! PANAMA! BOLIVIA! 

and a special thanks to the hard work and collaboration from Mrs. Addo!