Tinker Teacher – Magetic Poetry

Enjoy The Lesson

Now simply take a few moments to add a splash of your content to the activity and you are all set!

STUCK ON LEARNING

Looking to take the sting out of original poem writing (or unit content recap!)? Magnetic poetry is just the trick for any teacher in search of a tool to help young learners find the words to express themselves for any occasion! Simply click the download button for a fully editable Google Slides template (and a whole bunch of student sample projects!) that can inspire your instruction through the delicate art of “found” magnetic poetry. The game is simple: click and drag any of the “magnetic” text boxes included in the template in order to flex your creative muscles or tell any story that you can possibly imagine. Students will geek out over the puzzle-like construction of this activity where words click together like LEGO bricks, and there are no limits to the sort of creativity they can dream up! Add an additional layer of fun to your in-class activity by encouraging individual students to swap out the background image of their original pieces, allowing young minds the opportunity to customize their creations as if they were applying brightly colored stickers or protective cases to their laptops or phone cases. This one is wide open for any course or content area! And using it is as easy as 1-2-3.

STEP ONE.
We recommend providing EVERY student in your class with an individually editable copy of the source template. With hundreds of text boxes ready to be moved, shifted, and rearranged all at once, this template can really gobble up a ton of shared bandwith if you’re working in a slide deck that multiple students can edit at once. Save individual load time and frustration by sharing individually editable copies of the main template using Google slides or simply by copy / pasting the link below to each of the learning in your classroom!

STEP TWO.
Give students a moment to familiarize themselves with the template and the tools it will take to manipulate it to their liking (click dragging to multi-select, changing the background image, etc.). Encourage students to play with the words on the page to their liking! And for an added challenge: don’t be afraid to assign specific “to do” items where students are given a set amount of time to compose their original works aligned to your specific course’s unit of study. Here’s a fun one: what might it look like if everyone in class had exactly 10 minutes to compose an original “magnetic poem” where they tried to convey the main idea of what they learned about Ancient Egypt? Or have students craft an original story to tell the tale of what they read in last night’s assigned homework (and then be prepared to explain and defend what they’ve created)! The possibilities are endless.

STEP THREE.
Level up your learning by tweaking the original template to add unit-specific vocabulary words to the existing mix of magnetic poetry words. Then share your new and improved creation with your students and encourage them to go to town creating individual “poems” to bring new life to your existing course content — complete with specific unit vocab terms! In rare occasions, you might even provide your learners with a handful of blank word templates to add to the existing collection, which will allow them to tailor-make their available poem parts to suit the unique needs of your course or content area (but part of the fun is working within the intentionally limited parameters of the words provided! So we recommend sticking with the existing word bank and those that the teacher assigns to keep students on their toes).

Have a blast with this experimental activity! And please let us know how it shakes out in your classroom. This is a great way to give students a place to play together and share their creations with their fellow learners. With a few quick tweaks to suit your latest unit of study, it can be used again and again!

 

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Click the download button to begin using this activity with your students. We know it will be one that your students will love!

 

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