Engineering a Poem: An Action Research Study

This study explores the use of design technology to teach a unit on poetry in a fifth grade class. The main goals of the poetry unit were to develop students’ abilities to use their own creative voices to express themselves and to write descriptive poetry that creates detailed images for the reader. To reinforce the latter concept, the teacher used a design challenge that asked these fifth grade students to make a three dimensional representation of the imagery created by another student’s poetry. The students’ experiences of being immersed in design and construction revealed engagement and attention to detail. Their abilities to meet the design specifications and constraints of this challenge were observed and researched by the classroom teacher. The students’ understanding of imagery, appreciation of poetry, and their ability to write poetry improved as the unit progressed. Design technology became a vehicle for creative expression that is not usually associated with the teaching and learning of poetry.