This morning in the AT&T Classroom the Rootstown third graders utilized several digital tools as they continued their study of poems. Using the ceiling document camera the students had a whole class poetry-read of Onomatopoeia poems and Personification poems. Onomatopoeia poems use words that imitate or sound like the source of the sound they describe. In Personification poems, inanimate or non-human objects are given human attributes. Back at their laptops the students explored several poetry websites bookmarked in their Symbaloo looking for examples of Personification and Onomatopoeia poems and shared their favorites. The students also used a resource at the Read Write Think website (RWT) to learn about Diamante Poems. The term diamante means diamond in Italian. A Diamante poem makes the shape of a diamond with the first and last line being the shortest and the middle lines much longer. Each line within the poem uses different types of words such as adjectives or -ing words to describe a central topic or two contrasting topics. The RWT Diamante Poem tool engages students in word study to brainstorm and select different parts of speech to use in comprising the poem. The tool is accessible online at the Read Write Think website at
Later this morning during their science block, the third graders used the SMARTBoard to create a Venn diagram comparing the tundra environment and the shore environment. A Venn diagram is a visual representation of the relationship between concepts. The concepts are represented by circular shapes with common elements/features represented by the area of overlap among the circles.Teachers often use Venn diagrams as a strategy to facilitate students’ critical thinking and their ability to identify and understand similarities and differences among key concepts.
