Throughout the month of April, Chapin’s Lower School (LS) students embraced their inner poets — in honor of National Poetry Month — by creating original found poetry and sharing their work with the community.
Head of Lower School Literacy and Social Studies Miranda Orbach and Lower School Librarian Christina Kover thoughtfully designed K-3 poetry lessons to match students’ grade-level skills, reading abilities and developmental stages. They also blended Earth Day into the project, creating an opportunity to connect sustainability and creativity, by repurposing well-loved or damaged books from the library. Throughout April, the LS learned how to transform pages and individual words from these books into original works of poetry.
Ms. Orbach said, “The major essential question for all four grades was the same: How can we discover poetry in existing words? How can we use our voices to create a piece that is unique?”
“I hoped that students would walk away with the idea that poetry is for everyone. Poetry can be playful, visual, serious, silly, personal and so much more,” she continued. “It does not follow one formula. I wanted students to feel a sense of pride in sharing their voices publicly. I also love that poetry can connect us across grades and ages.”
Kindergarten & Class 1
Kindergarten and Class 1 girls were introduced to poetry in April — some for the first time — and were tasked with creating original found poems. Their teachers began the unit by sharing presentations that introduced the concepts of poetry and the details of the project. They also demonstrated what a found poem could look like by creating one together with the class.
At each Kindergarten table sat bowls filled with pre-cut words from repurposed texts, which students spent time searching through until they had selected up to six words they found inspiring or that stood out to them. With large print and accessible language, the Kindergarten students were able to focus on the words that interested them most and experiment to tell their own stories.
The girls eagerly shared their chosen words with classmates. After helping one another finalize their selections, the students arranged and glued their poems onto cardstock paper. They then illustrated artwork inspired by the poems they had created.
Meanwhile, Class 1 students used pages from disassembled books. Using the materials provided by their teachers, the students read through the pages to find words that they found interesting. They carefully cut out any words that drew their attention and created a bank of words. After selecting a few options, each began to think about a concept for their poem and tailored the rest of their search to finding words that supported their idea. As their poems developed, the students played with their compositions by arranging and rearranging their words on a piece of cardstock.
In both grades, once their work was complete, the students proudly read their poems aloud to their peers and teachers.
Class 2
Class 2 took another approach to found poetry while still using pages from recycled books. Instead of cutting out words to create new text, they blocked out words, leaving behind windows of selected ones to create a new piece of writing on the same page. At first, the students found it difficult to work within these constraints — how could they express their ideas within these limitations?
But they persevered , with many finding creative avenues to achieve their goals. Due to the limitation, one student was left without the word “or,” which she needed for her poem. As she scoured the page for either a replacement or a missed conjunction, she discovered that “or” lived within other words. Could she block out the other letters of the word and keep the “or” inside, she asked her teacher? Yes, and what a creative solution, she was told! Her determination and creative problem solving created a new opportunity for her and her classmates.
Students were also encouraged to be artistic in the way they circled their kept words and blocked out the discarded. Some used colored markers to illustrate their selections, others drew illustrations around their chosen words. In the end, not only did Class 2 have new poems, but also beautiful works of art.
Class 3
As the oldest students in the LS, Class 3 created more complex found poems. Similar to Class 2, the students worked with full pages of text from recycled books and were tasked with selecting, arranging and presenting words to create a cohesive poem.
Before beginning, each homeroom spent time closely reading the pages at their desks, identifying themes and brainstorming topics for their original poems. Students explored ideas such as nature, plans, forests, the human mind and the beach.
Students could either cut out words and rearrange them into new structures, or black out words using Sharpies, intentionally creating a final poem with the words that are left untouched.
After completing their work, the girls read their poems aloud to the class. Their classmates asked thoughtful questions such as, “What did you choose to keep? What did you remove? Why did you make these choices?”
At the close of each workshop across K-3, teachers reminded students, “Today we honored books, the Earth and poetry by turning something old into something new.”
Throughout the LS, the objective of the found poetry project was to give students the freedom to create. “Across all grades, the goal was for students to see themselves as poets and to understand that poetry can begin with close reading, curiosity and creativity,” said Ms. Orbach.
LS Poetry Assembly
All of our students’ endeavors culminated in a division-wide Lower School Assembly. Head of Lower School Thérèse Cruite welcomed everyone and read a sweet story by Micha Archer, titled “Daniel Finds A Poem”. Next, Ms. Kover read a haiku and explained how this form of Japanese poetry consists of three lines with a 5,7,5 syllable structure.
What followed was the moment students had been waiting for — the chance to read a poem aloud. Every Homeroom in each grade read a special poem to the whole division. Some read pieces of their own creations, like Ms. Ellis and Ms. Peixoto’s Kindergarten classes, while others read short published poems. Lower School Spanish Teacher Maestra Rosado read a poem in Español and English. The girls delighted in coming together to share beautiful poetry.
Ms. Orbach said, “Overall, I am most proud of the sense of joy and ownership that students showed [in the Assembly]. Watching students as young as Kindergarten stand and read their poems aloud with the entire LS community was inspiring and a reminder of the confidence and voice we are developing in even our youngest learners. I also love listening to the class poetry recitation.”
Since the Assembly, Ms. Orbach said that many LS students have remained inspired by the project and have continued writing and sharing their original poetry with her.
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