A Bear of a Poem

Composing and Performing Found Poetry

To add to students' growing ways of looking at and listening to words, students will “mine” texts for favorite words from familiar children's literature. Working together, students select words and phrases to create a collective class poem, that they will then turn into a performance. This lesson helps students recast the text they are reading in a different genre, which in turn, makes students more insightful readers and helps develop creativity in thinking and writing.

This lesson uses books from the Berenstain Bears series as an example, but any children's books or book series can be used.