I recently planned a lesson with a teacher that slowly morphed into something greater than what she imagined. She wanted her high school students to write their own slam poems at the completion of this unit. The one non-negotiable was the fact that it had to revolve around one of the topics below.
Well, a week had gone by and the students all had their poems done. Now what? I’ll tell you what! Here’s what we did. I had the teacher create an assignment in Google Classroom that included a copy of the Google Doc template for their poem. We also added the topic flipcode for the Flipgrid Topic we created for this project, the URL for Soundtrap, and Adobe Spark. Once they had those resources, here is what they had to do:
- write their slam poem in a Google Doc
- create a background track using Soundtrap
- create an Adobe Spark Video of their poem using their own images
- record themselves reading their poem in the Adobe Spark Video
- upload their finished video as their Flipgrid video response
- mark the assignment as Done in Google Classroom
In anticipation, I created my own slam poem but to gain interest from the students, I created a quick food rap and the students loved it. I recorded the vocals and the beat using Soundtrap and uploaded them to my Adobe Spark Video project.
Needless to say, this was a fun activity for me and an opportunity for me to be creative. Imagine what the students felt? How often do our children get the opportunity to use their own creativity and voice to create a project that is relevant, tech-infused, requires critical thinking, and more than anything, fun! Give it a shot and see what your students create.
