For students, creating a “found poem” (words not their own but found in other sources) is often novel and fun. There is a buzz of excitement as students sit on the floor, browse through classroom book titles, find connections between titles, and then stack the books to create a poem.
Embedded within this challenge are the opportunities to read aloud and revise. How? Students stack the books in an order they like and then read the titles out loud as a poem to see how it sounds. They are encouraged to add, remove, or rearrange books to create the most pleasing sounding poem. Revision at work!
We did this found poetry last week and it was more difficult for the students than I thought it would be. Definitely fun and exciting, but it took them a bit to get the idea of it. We also did the found poetry with cutting out words/letters from a newspaper. So fun!
For sure! They’re often not used to playing with words in this way. The more they experiment with similar activities, the easier it gets. And for some, not having to actually ‘write’ is what hooks them!