Lesson Plans (Something New Every Month!)
ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS about WEATHER:
A Group Writing Activity
A Step by Step Process
Facilitation Notes: You can write group poems with your students without ever telling them they are writing a poem! They will be amazed by what they’ve written when you read it back to them, as if at a poetry reading. They’ll take pleasure from hearing their words, and their friend's words and, more often than not, the reading will trigger responses such as, “Wow, that’s good! We wrote that?”
Group poems are also a way of assessing what your students know, and what they are thinking about a subject. You can write a group poem at the start of a unit, and the end of the unit, as a creative pre- and post assessment.
The process is simple, and there are a few key points to pay attention to.
Click here to download a PDF of the weather poem activity.
The following is an example of a group poem written by 5th grade students in Holyoke.
WEATHER HAPPENS – WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT
Rain, hail, snow, and slush
Terrible, miserable heat.
Windstorms, and sand storms,
heat waves, and lightening,
weather is a part of our lives.
It’s always changing.
No two days are alike.
And it’s different in different parts of the world.
Weather happens when the wind patters shift.
A cold front meets a warm front.
Clouds fill with water.
The seasons change.
Weather happens, whether you like it or not.
Weather hurts when it changes the land.
Mudslides down a mountain,
Cities ruined by floods,
farmer’s crops dry when the rain disappears.
And people can be hurt too.
Hurricanes, Tornadoes, Tsunami Waves hit hard.
Pay attention. Read the news. Be prepared.
Weather happens, whether you like it or not.