Poetry Wheel for Literary Devices and Sensory Details

1. Could you have done this activity without the teaching aid you have fabricated?

I could have set up three containers with little slips of paper and had students choose from each to get their Literary Device, Sensory Detail, and Theme. But I don’t think the students would have been as interested or engaged. This Poetry Wheel also gives them more of a choice in which literary devices they use. 

1. What value did the teaching aid add to the lesson, or if it didn’t add value, why not?

The teaching aid added value because it made it abundantly clear that they were expected to use literary devices and sensory details. In past years, I went over these in class and was clear that I expected it in their summative assessment, but many students simply didn’t either didn’t understand that this was an expectation, or they weren’t sure how to do it. When it’s made tactile through the wheel, this will hopefully be less of a problem.

1. What are some challenges you expect when you do the activity with your class?

One challenge I do expect when doing the activity with my class is that my students might choose the easiest literary devices, or the ones that they are most familiar with, rather than ones that will challenge them. That is why I built it into the lesson for them to spin twice, to increase their chance of doing one that will push them further.

1. What did you learn during the fabrication process?

In terms of hard skills, I learned how to use Adobe Illustrator for the first time, and also how to use a laser cutter. I also learned about how a lasing cutting design needs to be structured. In the end, I ended up creating a second file with my final design because my first file was far too cluttered with disorganized layers and artifacts I thought I had deleted but really hadn’t. It was too cumbersome to go back and fix it, so I just redid it, which actually took less time. 

I also learned that an initial design may ultimately not be practical in real life. My first full design had nearly a full cover with a small turning window that I thought would be enough to rotate the wheels. But this turned out not to work. So I had to completely redesign how I secured the wooden wheels so that they could rotate without wobbling.