Choose Your Own Adventure

Sometimes, it takes a new word or conversation to spark a poem like nothing we’ve written before. Last week, Hale 6-8th graders relied on technology to inspire our writing. On Tuesday, we warmed up our session with an online session of magnet poetry, limiting us to a set of words that we typically wouldn’t use in our poems. Students wrote a little tale about a mysterious mustached man embarking on an adventure. Check out what they came up with (in ten minutes!) below.

On Wednesday, we played a game where we read computer generated poetry and human-written poems. We guessed which poems where written by humans versus which were written by bots. Students were stumped, but we talked about how clues like cool line breaks or weird words helped us find the human qualities of a poem. Then we took poem prompts and each student wrote a poem based on something different. Here’s Miley with her poem in response to “a time when you had to make a hard decision.”

Decide Miley L.

“I can’t decide between

you guys. You are my

best friends. I’ve known you for all

my life., but on the other hand, you

saved me! You are both my

best friends. But why are you

making me choose anyway?” Talking

to my Barbies with my five year old self.