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Showing posts with label couplets. Show all posts
Showing posts with label couplets. Show all posts

Saturday, April 4, 2015

More Springsational Poetry


In my quest to inspire passion about poetry, I have 3 more springsational poems for you to try.
  • Engage your students in writing a 5 senses poem about spring.  After identifying the 5 senses, challenge your students to describe spring by writing 1 line for each sense.  You can make it a super easy task by giving them a template for their poems, such as this:
    • I see ______________
    • I hear ________________
    • I smell _________________
    • I feel _______________
    • I taste _________________         
Here's an example:
      • Spring
      • I see the bright sun shining.
      • I hear the baby birds chirping.
      • I smell the garden flowers blooming.
      • I feel the warm breeze passing.
      • I taste the gentle rain that is falling.
Writing 5 senses poems provides a perfect opportunity to highlight adjectives and present participle verbs.  

  • We all know that April showers bring May flowers, so during this month dedicated to poetry, rain seems to be an appropriate subject. Hence, try writing Umbrella Poems about rain with your class. (I suggest you provide an umbrella shape for your students' writings, thereby enhancing the shape poem.) The format is easy:
    • Line 1 - Write 1 word related to rain.
    • Line 2 - Write 2 words that describe line 1.
    • Line 3 - Write 3 words that tell how line 1 sounds.  (Think onomatopoeia)  
    • Line 4 - Write 4 words that tell what line 1 does.  (This may or may not be a sentence.)
    • Line 5 - Repeat the word in line 1, writing it vertically in the handle.

  • Tongue twister couplets are tons of fun to write and even more fun to read aloud. Create the first line of the couplet using spring thematic words that begin with the same sound.  The 2nd line should also be a tongue twister about the same topic, however, it may contain words that begin with a different sound. As per traditional couplets, the 2 lines should rhyme and a similar rhythm pattern is desirable. Provide access to a dictionary and/or thesaurus to assist your students' efforts. Then have students trade tongue twisters, challenging each other to read them without getting their tongues twisted. Here's an example:
    • Ten terrible tornadoes tore through the town.
    • The storms shattered shelters, shook shops, and struck steeples down.
Have fun!


Perfect poetry products picked for you:

Sunday, December 30, 2012

Hat Day Riddles


It's about time, teachers, for some Hat Day riddles.


No, the riddles are not about why the chicken crossed the road.  Rather, these riddles are about literary characters, historic figures, or occupations associated with hats.  Try these out:

          He may never grow up, but my, oh my,
          This boy in green can certainly fly!
          Who is he?

          His hat is striped in white and red.
          He put a pink stain on mother’s bed.
          Who is he?

          He  often wore a stovepipe hat.
          Do you know a president like that? 
          Who is he?


Were you able to solve them?  My students love the challenge!  I write 1 or 2 riddles on the board each morning of Hat Week.  As soon as my students arrive, they begin copying the couplets for handwriting practice.  While completing this anchor activity, they can ponder who is described in the riddle.  

At our morning meeting, volunteers read the riddles before we share the answers.  This affords me the opportunity to assess my students' ability to read fluently, with expression, and with regard for punctuation.  Mini-lessons on these topics are easy to slip in daily, giving valuable reinforcement for these critical reading skills.

Hat riddles are fun and motivating.  They can provide valuable information about your students' problem solving abilities.  Moreover, they provide the students with ample opportunities for making connections: text-to-world, text-to-text, and/or text-to-self.

These riddles are part of my thematic unit, Hats!  Hats!  Hooray for Hats!  There are 29 riddles in all.  If you have some gifted/talented students, challenge them to write more couplet riddles to share with the class.  Doing so causes them to employ higher order thinking skills.  I am always amazed at the riddles my kiddos compose.

The ELA components of this thematic unit include vocabulary work, comprehension, poetry, alphabetical order, writing center ideas, and a 14 page booklet for students to make about Hat Idioms. You can download the Hat Idioms Book for FREE on TpT or TN.  Following is a preview of the Hat Idioms Book:




Hold onto your hats!  

Next time, I'll share some math activities from Hats! Hats! Hooray for Hats!


The answers to the riddles above are:
Peter Pan
The Cat in the Hat
Abraham Lincoln