Perspective

I'm baaaaaaaack! 👋

After returning from maternity leave, I’ve hit the ground running — working alongside teachers to make learning more meaningful, creative, and engaging for their students.

This week, I partnered with a 5th grade teacher to enhance a reading lesson focused on comparing and contrasting two poems and exploring the authors’ perspectives. Instead of simply annotating and discussing, we invited students to think critically and express their ideas creatively using Keynote.

Students started with a blank Keynote and enlarged the glasses shape so that the lenses filled the slide. They labeled each lens with the title of one of the poems to represent each perspective. Then came the fun part — using shapes, drawings, and emojis to illustrate the author’s point of view in each poem. This simple shift pushed their critical thinking to a new level — students had to analyze deeply and visually represent abstract ideas.

To take it even further, students recorded voice explanations describing their design choices for each lens. This layer of reflection helped solidify their understanding and gave them an opportunity to communicate their thinking in a creative, personal way.

It was such a joy to see how this lesson helped students dig deeper into poetry and perspective — and to be back watching learning transform in such exciting ways!

Example of what students were creating.