Tag Archives: writing

Creating “Self-portrait” Poems & Visual Representations

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It’s week 5 of the school year and we’re progressing along pretty smoothly in my classroom, all things considered. I’ve learned everyone’s name and gotten to know a bit of their personalities. Classroom jobs are up and running (some better than others), and students are settling into the routines of our class.

We’ve been studying different texts that address people’s names as part of our opening identity unit. Usually I have students write their own name stories as the assessment for this unit, but I had a sudden burst of inspiration (unusual over these past few years!) and decided to change it up last week. We’ve watched and read some poems, particularly spoken word, so I thought it would be fun for students to write their own poems. In my English classes, we opened the year with a poetry unit, and one of the sub-genres we teach is “Portrait Poems.” I decided to adapt that idea, and the brainstorming sheet I already had for it, and have my Heritage Spanish students write “Self-portrait Poems”.

The idea of the poem was to paint a picture of their lives with words. We’ve been looking at craft moves like imagery, metaphor and simile in the texts we read, so it felt natural to apply those techniques in a poem of their own. I modeled the brainstorming process and shared my poem with students, and then they were off to brainstorm and write their own poems. The finished product was graded as our first standard of the school year.

Inspired by the idea of a written “self-portrait”, I had another creative burst and thought, what if we also made a visual “self-portrait” representing the parts of our lives we detailed in our poems? With my teaching partner, we came up with two options: drawing by hand or creating a visual on Canva.com. We both created examples to go with our poems on Canva. While several students started out drawing by hand, in the end, everyone decided to create their self-portrait on Canva. (Side note: If you’re not using Canva yet, you should definitely check it out! As educators, we essentially get the premium access for free, and when students join your class through the link, they also get access to all the good stuff 100% free. I use it all the time to make classroom posters, graphics like the ones for my Autores del día for el mes de la herencia, and student projects.)

Check out my example (left) and my colleague’s below:

Once students completed both parts of this project, we printed them and hung them side-by-side in the halls. I created a simple worksheet to guide students through reading the poems and studying the student-created art that went with them. This helped them stay on task and limited the noise we made in the halls.

Want to try it? Here are some helpful resources:

  • Brainstorming doc (with my example at the bottom); credit to Louder Than a Bomb for creating the original Portrait Poem brainstorming idea that this is modified from.
  • Slides from class Poem & Art creation + Gallery walk
  • Poetry & Art Gallery assignment
  • Single-point rubric for the poem (I told students that should have at least 2 of the 3 literary devices we practiced: simile, metaphor, sensory details)
  • Some student art samples below:

If you decide to do this in your classes, I’d love to hear how it goes! My students and I had a lot of fun with this project, and I’m so glad I decided to switch it up last-minute!

The Journey Begins…Again

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A brand new school year is just around the corner, and I am really excited to get started. At the same time, I really wish my summer were a few weeks longer. Who doesn’t, right?

I’m especially excited this year because I have completely revamped my course – I’ll be teaching my Heritage Spanish 1 class using the reading and writing workshop model. I’ve spent the last 6+ months learning as much as I can about it: poring over blogs, stalking ELA teachers on Twitter, reading some great books on the subject (check out anything by Penny Kittle; you won’t be disappointed), tagging along to English department meetings at my school, and even attending 3 days of PD with the entire English team.

I was able to try out a writing workshop unit in my classes last year, and it was amazing! My students wrote more and better than they ever had before. I realized that if they could improve so much in 5 weeks of workshop, then a whole year would lead to incredible growth.

I’m lucky to work with some wonderful English teachers who are always seeking to improve their practice, and who never hesitate to let me pop in to observe. Learning to teach a language arts class with no formal training in that area is work – but it’s work that I’m excited to do.

So I’ve been working a lot this summer, but when it’s work I want to do, and it’s done on my own time, it doesn’t feel so stressful. I’m still poring over blogs about writing workshop and stalking ELA teachers on Twitter. I’m also adding lots of books to my Amazon wish list (and, of course, buying some with my own money because I just can’t resist), buying a mountain of composition notebooks and colorful pens, and working on planning documents for the year ahead.

My teetering tower of 150 composition notebooks.

One big takeaway from all that I’ve read is that you can’t teach writing if you don’t write. Before the writing workshop unit I did last year, it had been a long time since I did any kind of writing. Writing beside my students, I wrote 6 personal narratives, and carried two of them through the editing process to a finished product. This summer, in preparation for the new year, I wrote a letter to my students, “10 Cosas que quiero que sepas acerca de esta clase.” And now, here I am starting a blog. Even if no one ever reads it, at least I am working on writing. That’s a start.