We started with a hallway display board.
- selecting 16 sweeet poems as our starters (goals: diversity of voices and poetic forms, balance contemporary/classic, comic/serious, short/long)
- pre-recording staff members reading poems (goals: audio only, as I wanted emphasis on the words; mp4 format in a shared google folder so that the broadcast team could play daily contestants on morning announcements)
- preparing a schedule and voting form, posting link to google form on school web page
- tweaks (a kindergarten teacher helped me realize that adding one still image to the poems would help younger students in the voting process, as they would understand to vote for the cow or noodles, see below)
We started at the end of March,
due to spring break schedule & fitting all contests in by April 30th.
- classroom applications: teachers used same poems for read-aloud fluency activities
- teachers used graphs in math problems
- ELL teacher reported strong student engagement in activities
- hallway bracket board became "water cooler" hangout place (I listened with joy as students discussed the poems, pretended not to hear when adults discussed wagers)
- morning announcements brought school community together vertically
- teachers, students, and staff volunteered to be part of it next year!