Brainstorming In Padlet & Creating Magnetic Winter Poetry As We Kick Off Our "Winter Around The World" Project

What a wonderful week it has been as our Winter Around The World Project has been embraced by school libraries, classrooms, communities and families in places such as Australia, Africa, Russia and the United States.  

Students are creating stories, songs, poems, illustrations and personal narratives for a collaborative digital global winter story.  

After their winter contributions are complete, they will be adding them to Our Winter Around The World Project Google Presentation, which will become an eBook in December when all of the work is brought together.  

There are winter stories being added to our global winter story...one from Australia and one from Van Meter, Iowa. You can check out the eBook here. 

As children participate in the Winter Around The World Project they are brainstorming what they know about winter.  

As the Cantata Learning book and song Winter...The Coldest Season of All are being used as the inspiration for this project, it is the perfect place to inspire a conversation about winter, seasons, weather, snowmen and so much more.  

As they research these new topics and build on prior knowledge and personal experiences, students and teachers can benefit from the Glossary in Winter...The Coldest Season of All and other places...

such as Capstone's PebbleGo, which has a wonderful Winter section within the Science database.

You can find more resources on the Winter Symbaloo we created too. 

These resources will help as students develop key understanding of the concepts and create questions they want to answer with the projects they create. 

One of my teacher librarian friends I am collaborating with on this project is Lynn Kleinmeyer, who is the teacher librarian at Titan Hill Library in Council Bluffs, Iowa. 

To start the project, Lynn thought it would be awesome to have our friend Kasey Bell create a winter poem template in Google Drawing for the students.  

We sent some tweets back and forth, planned a Skype and were super excited when Kasey said yes!  

I told Kasey how to get to the Cantata Learning book online (which you can find here too) as we wanted to make sure the words from the glossary were included, along with words that Lynn's students brainstormed.  

Next, Lynn and I bounced ideas off of each other for collecting the winter words the kids brainstormed.  We decided that Padlet would be an easy, fun way to collect their winter words as this digital tool is the perfect collaborative platform for brainstorming.  

Lynn assigned the Padlets in Google Classroom and...

 even Periscoped the collaborative brainstorming event.....which I had so much fun watching.

Using Padlet in this way is the perfect activity as a whole class activity, in small groups or...

with individual students....as Lynn did with her students.  

Here is the amazing list of winter words that her students developed.

You can view their Winter Padlet here....and please feel free to use it for winter inspiration with your students too.

Lynn shared the Padlets that her students created with Kasey.

From there, Kasey created a list of words using the glossary from Winter...The Coldest Season of All and the words from the students in Iowa.

She had around 112 words, and repeated some common words like 'a' and 'the'. 

Once all of the words were in the list....

Kasey created this incredible Winter Magnetic Poetry in Google Paint and Slides.  I was so excited when I saw what she had created.

Students from all over the world are going to be able to create winter poetry using this amazing creative writing tool.

Kasey has shared a link that allows anyone to make a copy of the Winter Magnetic Poetry.   When their poems are complete, you can add them as an image or import into to the pages of our Winter Around The World eBook.

I cannot wait to read all of the winter poetry created that will be added to our global ebook.

If you want to create poetry out of words your students brainstorm but do not have access to technology, you could use this idea that I saw on Facebook today.  

You can set up a Winter Poetry Station in your library or classroom....even in your Makerspace. Just lay out the Winter...the Coldest Season of All book with magazines, newspaper, old weeded books, paper, scissors, and glue.  

Your students will be able to create winter magnetic poetry technology free.  To add these to the eBook, take a photo of the poem and add it as an image to the page. 

We would love to have your students participate and share their winter stories, songs, illustrations, poems and personal narratives too.

Please visit the Google Document above and add your information.  And don't forget to check out all of the places we will be learning with as we celebrate winter around the world.