Poetic Forms and Cootie Catchers (5th)

Today, was our last day before break and the last lesson in our unit on surprise and play. We talked about how varied poetic forms can be and how there are no rules in the ways that a poem can use the page. We looked at a group of poems and talked about how different they all looked and what different styles they all had. We then looked at Leila Chatti’s poem, published in Poetry Magazine, in the shape of a cootie catcher. Folding them was a little challenge, but we persevered, and wrote mini poems from Chatti’s cootie catcher. We then created our own. The colors they used for the cootie catchers were amazing–including Takis red, galaxy purple, and black snowflake. Here are a few examples of their work: