Website+evaluation

Erin = Pink Font

By: Erin Hutton [|web page evaluation #1.doc]** This site provides many examples of poetry. It gives students something to reference when they are writing poems of their own. I could use this website for helping to teach a poetry lesson. It includes podcasts for poems that have been read aloud, which would be very helpful in demonstrating to my students the way that a poem is supposed to be read. However, this site is not very good for my age of students. Young elementary students are probably not ready to be reading a lot of poetry. The website was kind of hard to navigate, and it used a lot of text that included big vocabulary words. This would be a limitation, but I could still use the website by showing it to my students in front of the class, rather than having them explore it on their own. I could use this website in my classroom by allowing my students to type in words to the rhyming dictionary on the site. This could be helpful when they are writing their own poems. I could also use the podcasts, I could use the poems on the site, or I could allow my students to play the rhyming games.
 * Poetry For Kids

By: Erin Hutton [|web page evaluation #2.doc]** This website allows students to get information regarding the most frequently asked poetry questions. A number of children's poets have written their answers to questions such as "How do you come up with ideas?" or, "How do you get started?" This site also includes examples of the different types of poetry. This could help students to write their own poems, and it will also allow them to get a perspective on poetry from someone other than their teacher. I believe that this site would be a little over the heads of my young elementary students, but again, parts of it may be useful. There is wordy text included on the site that my students probably wouldn't be able to read or understand. The website is easy to navigate though, so I could demonstrate to the class what to click on from the from of the classroom, while the rest of my students follow at the computer they have in front of them. This site would be extremely helpful for upper elementary students. I believe that it is geared more toward an older audience.
 * The Children's Poetry Archive

By: Pat McDonnell** http://poets.org/ This website is a poets paradise, and is extremely useful for a broad range of things. The sites home page contains helpful divisions in the site that allow for easy navigation. In the top left corner there is a search bar for poets and poems, this allows for easy access to specific information. This site would be helpful in a classroom setting because it allows students to simply and freely search the information about poetry that interests them. It also shows information about where poetry events (such as poetry readings, or visiting poets) are and when they are coming to a town near you. This is very interesting, and helpful to an older poetry student. As a teacher you could assign research assigntments and suggest this site to your students as a source of information. One disadvantage of the site is that it may seem a little overwhelming to someone without a specific idea of what they are looking for. There is a lot of information to sort through and it may seem a little overwhelming to someone browsing through.  However, this site may not be very good to use in an elementary school classroom. This site is geared more toward high school or college aged students. An elementary school teacher may find this site helpful to look for poetry to read to their students, but the content of this site is way over the head of an elementary school student. One good feature about this site is that it links different ideas together. If you were to research a poet, then in a side bar there would be suggestions of his or her poetry as other topics of interest. Overall the site is very professional and is definately a good source of information. By: Pat McDonnell
 * Poets.Org
 * Harlem Renaissance

http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761566483/harlem_renaissance.html** This website is based off an msn encyclopedia. It is based around the Harlem Renaissance and has a lot of information pertaining to this era. In the article the whole renaissance movement is divided into different paragraphs describing its history, impact and other crucial information. The site is a lot of text, which may be a disadvantage considering many students in high school do not like to spend much time reading. However, the information in the site is very valuable and can greatly improve ones knowledge about this amazing era in United States literature and history. The site could be used to get information for a lecture on the topic and is a useful tool to learn from.**

Fizzy Funny Fuzzy By: Caitlyn Lillibridge This website is one that I could use in my classroom. It would be a very useful place to find examples of poems that I could show to my students. Its updated quite often, so it gives new examples to work with. Therefore, I could use the website more than once if I needed to. I could also use the many podcasts that the website offered. This gives my students a chance to hear someone else reading a poem, maybe someone who is more animated. However, I didn't like that the website isn't student friendly. I would only be able to use it as an example in front of the whole class rather than letting the students do it on their own.**
 * [|**http://www.fizzyfunnyfuzzy.com/**]

Fern's Poetry Club By: Caitlyn Lillibridge** http://pbskids.org/arthur/games/poetry/what.html I like this website because it is more interactive. It allows students to learn about poetry at their own pace, they can click on the different types of poems and learn all about it. It is a very kid-friendly site, using easy to read vocabulary, and a lot of pictures. With each link to a different type of poem it also offers an example for the students to read. I also like that it has an option where the students can write their own poems. This is helpful in the classroom because it gives the students a chance to express their own creativity. The website also posts the poems on the interenet, which would be cool for the students to see. It's a website that would allow me to give my students the link and let them interact on their own. This site also provides games for students. Many of the games are uneducational, but a few of them are educational. Some of them relate to other things besides poetry, but they could be used in some kind of school lesson. For instance, there is a "facts and opinions game". Children do learn the difference between facts and opinions in school, so this may be a good game for them to play for that lesson. However, it does not relate to poetry.