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Teacher Review for ShelSilverstein.com

Before you shirk it as a simple promotional website, go to the learning resources tab.

Marcello S.
 Classroom teacher
Rocketship Mateo Sheedy Elementary School
San Jose, United States
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My Subjects English Language Arts
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My Rating
Learning Scores
Engagement
Pedagogy
Support
My Students Liked It Yes
My Students Learned Yes
I Would Recommend It Yes
Setup Time More than 15 minutes
Great for Creation
Further application
Small group
Teacher-led lessons
Whole class
Great with General
How I Use It
I use the activity ideas in the the resources tab. Some are really awesome and engaging, the kids love interacting with the poetry and getting involved, there's a lot of engaging and hands on activities. I take those and then thread through academic objectives and align them to what we're learning in the classroom. I also used to 2009 event kit to throw a little poetry party. Also the poetry workshop kit is a fun graphic organizer for going through types of poetry. The other tabs of the website didn't glean much use and all the above resources require a lot of you making them rigorous and academically driven. This isn't a one stop shop, but it will enhance your lessons and give you creative ideas. Also all of my ratings are subjective because the activities will be as useful and engaging as you make them, the canvas is not fully painted for you here, but can really improve lessons.
My Take
Go straight to the Learning Resources and don't look back, the rest of the site is pretty useless. There are a couple of good videos of individual poems in Shel books and the games have a OK games (all can only be played once through and educational value is minimal at best). Once you get to Learning Resources you'll see some actually useful resources! There are some great activity ideas each of the lessons and activities pdf's. The activities are not lesson in of themselves, you need to add in the academic rigor and align to your class objectives, but they are fun, kids love them, and they get your creative juices flowing. The event kits create a great experience for the students, walking them through project based experiences culminating in presenting and creating poetry. The drawing books are minimally useful as far as academics go, but can be fun.