Our Fourth Graders Using HaikuDeck & Photos To Create Poetry With Our Friend And Poet, Laura Purdie Salas

As we get to the end of Poetry Month, I thought it would be fun to have a few more connections this week for our students to poets, poetry, and creating poems of their own.

Yesterday, the fourth graders connected with the poet Laura Purdie Salas.  Laura and I have become friends through Twitter and Facebook.  We were super excited to make this connection with her and the kids at Van Meter.

One of her books that we have in the library is Picture Yourself Writing Poetry....Using Photos To Inspire Writing. With the fourth graders all having their own iPads, I thought this would be a perfect way to connect and create something cool together.

Laura first spoke to them about using photographs to inspire writing.  She brainstormed with them and showed them how to write a poem with different visualizing techniques.

For this project, I thought it would be fun for them to use the HaikuDeck app. HaikuDeck is one that is new to the fourth graders and one I wanted them to use before the end of the year.  They would be able to put together words and images into a presentation really quick and easily.  It is also easy to share these with others.   

We had the students get with a partner and gave them the task of either taking a photograph or finding one within HaikuDeck.  They then wrote a poem to go with the image they choose.  

We gave them 15 minutes to create and told them we would come back together with Laura on Skype when they were ready to share.  

All of the groups shared their HaikuDeck Poetry.....They did an amazing job!  

 It was so much fun to listen and see what they created using photographs.

The fourth graders published their HaikuDeck's and were excited to add this digital tool to their own "tool box" of things to use on future projects.  

Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app

Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app

Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app

Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app

Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app

Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app

Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app

Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app

Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app

Thank you Laura for connecting with us through Skype and for teaching all of us about visualizing and having fun with words.  We can't wait until you come visit us again.