January - Bulletin Board Display for Grades 4-12: Cinquian Poetry Snowflakes

Create a beautiful winter bulletin board display with poetry made by your students.  I have found that all of my students have been very successful with the format poetry, even if they are a couple of years below grade level in reading / writing.

Before beginning this project, students should know the basic parts of speech.  This would be a good exercise for learning to use a thesaurus to choose more interesting vocabulary or as an assessment on the parts of speech.

1.  Put up light blue backing paper for a bakground on the bulletin board.

2. Put up snowflake or snow/ice themed border. See resources below. 

3.  Have students each make their own snowflake or use diecut snowflakes.  Your Ellison Press at your school may also have a snowflake die available.  Making your own is more fun and makes a great centers activity or a great craft for your holiday party just before the winter break.   See my other bukisa article on how to make 6 sided snowflakes:  http://www.bukisa.com/articles/25705_six-sided-paper-snowflake-directions.  Students should put their initials on their snowflake in pencil on one side.  You can choose to collect them or have students keep them until their poems are ready to be attached to the snowflake.  I highly recommend that students make their own.

4.  Look at the link for the Cinquain Poetry format below.  Show your students some exmples of cinquain poetry.

5.  Brainstorm a list of  interesting "winter words" with your students and write them on the board.  This will help students begin with their own poem. This is a very important step.

6.  Have students begin a rough draft of them poem.  Circulate around the room to make sure they are following the format.

7.  The next time they are in the computer lab, have students type up their poem, making sure to CENTER EACH LINE as they type.  They should choose an appropriate font that will be readable on the bulletin board and an appropriate size that will fit (when cut out) onto their snowflake.

8.  When all of the students have finished their poems, make a photocopy of all of them and then use the paper cutter to cut one copy of the poem out into small rectangles that will fit onto the center of the snowflakes.  Give the cut out version of the poems back to the students and have them glue it to the snowflake they made or to the diecut snowflake.  DO NOT laminate them.  Hanging them up as is, gives a kind of "fluffy"effect and the delicate edges can end up being folded over in the laminator, which is not good.

9.  The other copy of the poem is for the teacher to grade.  You might also choose to make a third copy to include in a class book of poetry which might include all of the poems students have written during the year.

10.  Staple the snowflakes and attached poems to the light blue paper.  This makes a very attractive and impressive display.

11.  Think of a crafty title: " A Winter Wonderland of Poetry" or "Flakey Fifth Grade Cinquains" are suggestions.  Note that they do have blue die cut letters with sparkly snowflakes on them for sale in the TREND catalog.  I just used my Ellison Press at my school to make my letters.

Resources:

Border and snowflake diecuts available here:  http://www.trendenterprises.com

Cinquain Format:    http://www.beaconlearningcenter.com/documents/2111_3628.pdf