Found Poetry
Submitted by: jae
Put a supply of newspapers and magazines and scissors at your center. Instruct students to cut out 5 nouns, 5 verbs, 5 adjectives (minimum) You can add other parts of speech, too. Then have them manipulate the words to make poems. Students can move them around on the table in different ways. Once they are happy with it they paste the words on to a sheet of paper. They add any words that are necessary to complete the poem. I did this in November when there were a lot of Thanksgiving-like words and I got many beautiful poems.
A variation on this theme is to have students bring in a prescribed number of interesting words from home as a homework assignment. I put them in a big goldfish bowl called the Word Bowl. Anytime students are stuck they can go there and pick through the words for inspiration. You would be surprised how many students find just one interesting or unusual word and that is the catalyst for greatness.
I have turned this into a bulletin board with newspaper backing and Found Poetry as the title.