Throughout any unit in all classrooms at Discovery School, student questions are encouraged and drive the unit. As we explored our central idea relating to poetry, we spent time researching questions that students wrote on our Wonder Wall. One student wrote, “Who are some popular poets?” Students worked together during Daily 5 on laptops researching the answer and then filled our poster. Their curiosity led them to fun facts about various authors. Because students are nearing the completion of portfolios filled with poems they wrote, they had an appreciation when they saw 178 poems listed under Robert Frost. Another student saw that Emily Dickinson wrote over 1,800 poems! One student discovered that Robert Burns was a lyricist and a poet. The class connected the process of writing lyrics to a song as being similar to writing poetry.
Another question on our Wonder Wall was “Where did the word rhyme come from?” This question was definitely more difficult to research during Daily 5! We first generated a list of key words or phrases that we could type into Google. Because Google is a search engine, sometimes we have to try different words for a useful website to pop up. Students worked in pairs to see what they could find.
Stay tuned!