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Action Factor,  Inc.  presents the workshop for teachers and parents

Paint Your Day with Poetry and Wordplay

Presenter:  Dr. Myrna R. Gifford

Workshop overview: Paint your day with poetry and wordplay and color your classroom with a rainbow of rhythm, rhyme, repetition, imagery, and shape. This workshop addresses both the reading and writing of poetry in a highly-charged interactive format. Participants will learn how to “orchestrate” poems by adding layers of repeating phrases, sound effects, and dynamics. Children will delight in this new approach which enables them to score poems like a symphonies, assigning segments to individuals and groups and varying pitch, speed, and volume. Participants will also learn to teach poetry writing in a way that that produces fresh writing with personality and creativity.

Objectives of the presentation: Participants will become familiar with a) many types and formats of poetry and wordplay for children, b) effective ways to introduce and share published poetry with children, c) techniques for building student motivation and success in writing various forms of poetry, and d) tactics for incorporating the power and pleasure of poetry throughout the school day. Participants will receive a packet of ready-to-use activities that can be adapted to individual and classroom needs and curricula.

Format of the presentation: Workshop with audience participation. This is an interactive workshop where participants read, adapt, orchestrate, and create many forms of poetry and wordplay. In full-day workshops, participants will have the opportunity to share the poetry they create during the workshop through an Internet forum hosted by Action Factor, Inc.

Target age group: Grades 1-6.

The target audience: Classroom teachers, reading specialists, special educators, and administrators interested in improving the quality of student writing and generating enthusiasm for language in all its forms.

Brief summary of content:  The workshop begins with a smorgasbord of poetry children’s favorite poets. Participants experiment with enhancing poems through variations in pitch, speed, and volume, adding sound effects and rhythm instruments, adding repeating parts, dividing poems into different voices, adding visuals, movement, and music. Using a listen-practice-discover-create framework, teachers will discover how to support student poetry writing through frames, collaboration, and other techniques for making poetry fun and easy to write. Poetry and wordplay formats used in the workshop include word pictures, formula poems, model poems, concrete poems, syllable and word count poems, rhymed poems, free form poems, and riddles. Participants will learn several ways in which poetry can be used in the classroom as mood setters, transition activities, content area enhancements, behavioral rewards, tension diffusers, and rapport building tools.

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