Children, even in first grade, have thousands of words in their vocabulary. However, it seems that when students compose a piece of writing, the words they choose come from a very limited menu, so they therefore repeat many of the same words. Magnetic Poetry encourages students to literally draw from a wide variety of words. We observed students, after having used Magnetic Poetry, accessing words from a much broader menu. Along the same vein, Magnetic Poetry emphasizes the importance of word choice.
Children are impatient by nature, and writing is no exception.
As each magnet is chosen, children experience writing as a series of deliberate decisions about words and word order, thus creating a higher quality product. We know that students learn and retain more when they are captains of their own learning, so we try to view the curriculum through child-centered glasses. Magnetic Poetry is an innovation that helps teachers put many aspects of the Language Arts curriculum literally right in the students' hands. Our students have swapped suffixes, maneuvered sentence patterns, played with parts of speech, and explored shades of meaning. Because of the versatility of this tool, first through twelfth grade teachers can adapt virtually any lesson that involves writing or studying the English Language to make it more child-centered.