Computer Projectors Poetry Writing - Staircase Poems

This is not a computer lesson, but is a lesson I used a computer to teach. I have managed to wrangle a computer projector for my classroom. No big deal you say? In the elementary classrooms in my district, this kind of thing is rare. By using the computer and projector to teach my lesson I was able to:

1.) Save my lesson for the future -why re-invent the wheel
2.) E-mail it to an absent student (ok, not yet, but once I get their parent's email, no problem)
3.) Print it off and give it as a fill in the blanks note-taking practice to students who find writing a challenging experience.
4.) Share the lesson with another teacher (our Student Services teacher who walked in and said she liked the lesson and wanted a copy)

5.) Had this been a Science lesson, I could have taken the classroom notes, and by blanking out key words, I could have used sections of it for a test. This saves time, and ensures that the content that students study is closely tied to the tests they take.

Staircase Writing

Today we are practicing adding more details to our writing. We are going to make a sentence more interesting by adding one detail (an adjective) to the line for each new line. The end result is a kind of poem that looks like a staircase.

Example:
My pen.
My red pen.
My skinny, red pen.
My smooth, skinny, red pen.
My favourite, smooth, skinny, red pen.
My pen.

Here is another sample, which I left blank.

A dog.
A ____ dog
A____, ____ dog
A ____ , ____,____ dog
A____, ____ , ____, ____ dog
A dog.

This lesson was well recieved by my class of grade 3's, and the students with writing difficulites who were given print-offs of the notes and samples were able to keep pace with the rest of the class. Many of the students wanted to show off their creativity when the lesson was over, and all seemed to enjoy the lesson.

It is my hope that more computer projectors trickle down to the elementary level as time goes by. They are an invaluable teaching tool.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence.
2007 James J. Gill