On the Trails

The National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association have teamed up to create a web site called Read-Write-Think. I use the student materials (tools) in lessons everyday.  In this post, I want to share a lesson idea regarding the Acrostic Poem tool.

An Acrostic Poem is an excellent assessment tool. Students need to use all the letters of a word to describe features of that word. So far example:

Bitter cold winds
Low temperatures
Icy roads
Zero tempertures
Zany snow plow drivers
Awful visibility
Ridiculous white-outs
Driving Snow

The neat thing about this Assessment Tool is that you have to Synthesize information – a high level of Bloom’s Taxonomy.  The folks at Read-Write-Think have built such a tool, an acrostic poem, click here to see it.

Here is how I would use it:

1. Visit the Acrostic Poem web site
2. Have the kids type in a topic – something that they have learned
3. The software will prompt them to add ideas about the topic
4. To extend their understanding, use Firefox and tabs to go get more information to add to the initial ideas (optional)
5. The software then prompts them to use their ideas in the format of an acrostic poem – this is the step where they will have to play with the ideas to make them fit the acrostic format – higher level thinking
6. The software will then prompt them to print their poem for all to see

There is one drawback to using this software; kids have to finish their poems in one sitting. There is no way for them to save their work.  Maybe someday.

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