Winter Wonder-Slam Poetry Contest

The "Winter Wonder-Slam" just got a whole lot bigger! What started as a beloved 6th grade tradition expanded this year into a massive (and ambitious!) school-wide poetry contest for all of our campus's grade levels. Read more on this annual project here.

All students from 6th, 7th, and 8th grade wrote and refined a poem in their format of choice, created a visual to fit their reading (using Keynote for animations and Canva for still graphics), and performed live or via screen recording in front of their class. Judges (staff from across the campus and district) watched and scored performances that led to our esteemed group of finalists!

In the next week, finals quickly became an event of collaboration and community, with parents, other community members, district staff, and peers from each grade level gathering to support and celebrate our poets live on stage. Grade level teachers scored the craft and students voted on their favorites, with winners from each grade level revealed to a cheering crowd!

While such a large event may not be in your sights (yet!), anything that can capture students' real voices and engage them to such a degree that they are excited about their work is always worth doing!! Getting to see our almost 1000 poets support and celebrate one another in the classroom, during finals, and all throughout the creative process reminds me why this is always my favorite project to help with each year: it perfectly captures the spirit of engagement, voice and choice, collaboration, and creativity in our classrooms. #weareLCP