Black-out or Erasure Poetry

Today the first graders had a little time to explore different things as the second graders enjoyed a sample Mandarin lesson with Fan.

I read a beautiful picture book called All the Places to Love by Patricia MacLachlan. Afterwords, I showed them a page I had copied, and demonstrated how - by circling words or phases you liked and then blacking out the rest - you could make a type of poem. 

While only a few children attempted to do this with a different page of text, the children who did found it quite enjoyable. Here is what Niccolo was able to do - which, I have to admit, made my paltry attempt pale in comparison.

Here is what Niccolo started with:

Here is the finished poem:

  

We climbed

our 

                        tree

to eat fruit.

                I see the sun rise on one side.