Home and cinquain poetry

Today in class we worked with a new type of poetry (for me), and combined this with the use of pictures about our homes. The lesson behind the pictures of "home" was a broad and inclusive concept in which we challenged ourselves to think about the possible variations our students might reserve for the word home. Taking a picture of our own home is an opportunity to show students that we are just people as well, it breaks through this barrier of teachers as school faculty. The use of photography and simple poetry, the cinquain poetry, created a dynamic project in which we not only showed a picture of where our "home" is, but we worked with creative imagery describing our homes. From this we then made mobiles that brought all of the pieces together. I think that this could be a great way for the teacher to get to know the students, and where the students are coming from in the classroom. As any good icebreaker project, I think that it would be the most effective to be done at the beginning of the year. Here is a link to a generator that can create cinquain poems for you.