1st and 2nd Grade Students Create Poetry at Pagosa Peak Open School

Pagosa Peak Open School advisors Kelle Bruno and Katie Young worked for the past few months with students on the creation, illustration and presentation of their poems, ending it not only with the celebration, but also bound books for families containing all the poetry from the class.

Student assignment was to make observations about why people write about the sky, which they executed by studying the patterns seen in the sky, including the difference between day and night and the phases of the moon and came up with fictional stories and folktales about the sun, moon, and the stars.

The entire project was triggered by a visit to the planetarium at San Juan College in Farmington, leaving students in awe of the close-ups of the planets and the moon and fascinated by the constellations. This learning experience was concluded with the students writing a poem about the sun or the moon.

During the course of this project, students took charge of their learning by writing and revising their own poems and sharing that learning with the community. In the end, it was exciting for them to see their work in a professionally bound book and celebrate being published authors.