Thursday, June 16, 2011

Primary School students eat their veggies!

The 'Vegetable Victory' project continues. At Balaklava Primary school yesterday it was time for the students to look at some vegetables, think about how they look, feel and taste.

Their teacher brought a big collection of vegetables to their classroom for the session. There were leeks, a beetroot, cauliflower, broccoli, carrots, capsicum, chilli peppers and more. It was a lovely colourful display, and the students were interested in having a look at it all.

I was impressed with the level of interest from the students. I suppose having me in the class is fun because I'm someone they only see once a week, and we talk about different things. The students seem to be enjoying thinking about vegetables and poetry!

Their teacher wrote an acrostic poem about potatoes for the lesson and read that, explaining how to write one. I read my acrostic poem about onions and then it was time for the students to finally get stuck into actually writing a poem.

They had another look at the vegetables on display, then went back to their desks to craft their own acrostic vegetable poems. The teacher and I walked around the class, looking at how the students were going and offering advice. Some of the students struggled a bit, but overall, the standard of poetry written was good.

Once students had written at least one acrostic poem, it was time to try a haiku. These were simply three lined poems with syllable counts of 5,7,5 for the lines, with no worrying about the many details of what makes a good haiku - that would need more time than we had, and it wasn't needed for our purposes. There were fewer of these poems written, but they'll add interest.

Some of the poetic offerings were more than just good, they were excellent. The teacher collected all of the books from the students for checking and spelling correction. Next week the students will type up their poems and cut out pictures of vegetables to put together a booklet of vegetable poems.

This booklet will go to the Balaklava Community Library, and the students will all be published poets!

We all had a bit of Zucchini slice made by the other Community Foodie, and several students asked for the recipe, which I'd already given to their teacher. A very successful Vegetable/Poetry lesson!

2 comments:

john l m\alone said...

it's a wonderful project, Carolyn, enriching the students of Balaklave Primary; the community is richer for havin g projects like this; good on you for coming up with the idea :)

Carolyn Cordon said...

I'm enjoying this project and it's thrilling to see the young students getting into the whole thing.