January 13th we kicked off our Poetry unit -- one of my favorite for kids that are reluctant writers because they are quick and fun. The first tool in our writers' toolbox was rhyme. Students then set off to write their own rhyming couplet after we wrote (several) as a class. 1) Think of a place 2) Think of rhyming words for that place and 3) write a two line rhyming couplet which is two phrases or sentences that have the rhyming words at the end.
We wrote:
Pool
The cool blue water of the pool
Sparkling like a dazzling jewel
School
Walking quietly is the rule
When in the hallways of the school
We then spend a few days learning the difference between nouns and adjectives so that we could write "Two words on a Line poem" As a class we wrote
The Wedding
Happy bride
Nervous groom
Beautiful dress
Lace veil
Flying rice
Thrown flowers
Wedding cake
Fun dance
Married couple!
We learned about the author's use of repetition and enjoyed several poems with rhythm in an ABCB rhyming pattern
Next we took on Personification -- this is a tough one. We read The Fog by Carl Sandburg and walked like a cat to visualize the fog moving through the harbor. We spotted examples in our reading like "the sun peeked over the ridge", "the waves tossed and turned the boat" and my personal experience -- the chair jumped in front of me. Students had a worksheet to guide them writing this one.
Acrostic Poems were next. My main teaching point -- but not necessarily the student's learning direction is that you brainstorm your subject first instead of trying to force phrases that spell out the subject. We watched a brainpopjr., wrote several class examples and then did our own. I conferenced with students to make sure that their phrases were meaningful to the subject.
Alliteration might be the most fun as we threw ourselves into tongue twisters and wrote silly but grammatically acceptable ALLITERAINBOWS. We read Z got Zapped and wrote a class A my name is __________ poem as well as tongue twisters.
Last, but never least we worked on the second grade syllabication tek by learning to count out 17 special syllables in a Haiku. We read Dogku and Haiku Hike (a book written by students) During conferences I encouraged a lot of rewriting so that we weren't
repeating a lot of words in those short three line poems.
We also learned about sensory poems, concrete poems and onomatopoeia. I hope when these beautiful collections come home next Thursday you will enjoy. I already have some nominees for the Rising Star book for sure.
