Poetry and Pop Art

Yesterday, I posted about writing sensory poems using paintings to inspire descriptive language. I used Starry Night as our focus.


Today, I want to share another painting I use to evoke sensory language from my first graders. I use 4 Ice Cream Cones by Wayne Thiebaud. We write the poetry first using the same template ( I see..., I hear..., I smell..., I taste..., I feel...)



See an example below from a student's poetry book:
After the class writes their poems, the  next day I have them draw their favorite food with pencil.
I have them outline the food with black marker but they cannot color in the picture. After school,
I make four copies of their favorite food outline.
The following day, I talk about pop art with the students. I show some other Wayne Thiebaud works as well as some Andy Warhol. We find that color, especially bright colors, is an important element of Pop Art. The students then color in their favorite food outlines with 4 different colors and glue onto black construction paper. They turn out awesome! But we aren't done with this great piece yet!

On the third day, the students use a multiflow map to write an opinion piece about their favorite food. This is so hard for my little ones. They want to write, "I like it because it tastes good." We have to do a lot of thinking about the reasons they could like the food. Is it the color, the size, the shape? Is there anything that makes the food unique? If they like the taste, what specifically? For example, if their favorite food is pizza, they need to specify if it's the cheese, sauce or crust that is "tasty". After the fill out the multi flow map, they rewrite their opinion piece on writing paper. Here are some pictures!

I put the rest up on the bulletin board but here is an amazing piece of writing I had to share. This student is one of my most talented writers ever and I am so blessed to have her in my class! <3

I hope you enjoyed this lesson! Let me know what you think and whether or not you'd try this in your class!

Erin