Illustration by Jode Carrasco

Ideas for Writing Poetry in the Classroom

Here are some ideas for classroom poetry writing. I hope they might be of use to you. If you come up with ideas of your own which you'd be willing to share, I'd be grateful to know about them and to add them to my soup pot.

Acrostics

A good way to get students started writing acrostics is to begin by putting someone's initials on the board (I always use my own) and then have the class think of how many little clusters of three words they can write that begin with those three letters. They should come up with a variety of possibilities. (Tell them they can't repeat a word that was already used.) For my initials, SRK, students have come up with everything from Smashing Rowdy Kangaroos to Slimy Rotten Kiwifruit. This is a good warm-up exercise to get them into an acrostic frame of mind.

You can use as your spine words vocabulary words or key words from any subject the class may be studying, from scientific or mathematical terms to the names of historical figures. Often using a word for an acrostic embeds it in the mind.

For a variation on the acrostic, you could have the students write a poem using a spine phrase, where each word of the phrase must begin a line of the poem. These phrases could be proverbs, book or movie titles, slang expressions, song lyrics, a line from a favorite poem, or just a sentence or phrase that has special meaning for your class. Here's an example:

THE mermaid lived in an
OLD boat under the waves, where no
MAN swam, only dolphins
AND giant squid. She often watched
THE waves roll and sang haunting
SEA chanties all night long.

Another kind of "name" poem is to have each student write down every variation of his/her name, including nicknames and middle names, and then see how many words can be made out of the resulting letters. Then have the student select five or ten of the anagram words and use those words in a poem.

Some other ideas are:

-- Have the students write an acrostic using a word selected at random from the dictionary.

-- Have everyone in the class write an acrostic using the same spine word to see the wide variety of ideas that can be generated from the same beginning. (An easy and successful word to use for this is "fun".)

-- Do an alphabet poem where in each line all the main words must begin with a single letter of the alphabet:

All the annoying aardvarks
Began to bombard the blue boat.

This poem could be passed around so each student could add the next line using the next letter of the alphabet.

-- Pick five letters of the alphabet and have each student in the class write a line where each of the five letters begins a word. ABCDE could produce lines like:

A baby could drown easily.
Emily Dickinson crunches a bagel.
Dogs eat biscuits and candy.

-- Write the letters of your spine word on a diagonal so that they are used for the first word in line one, the second word in line two, the third word in line three, and so on.

It can also be fun to have the students write the spine word in ornate letters, like illuminated manuscripts, to turn an acrostic into a combined writing/art project that makes an attractive display for the hall or classroom.

Poems Using Words from Another Language

Students may enjoy inventing imaginary words in small groups, with each student making a list of ten syllables that might begin a word, then passing this list to the next student to add another syllable - or simply taking those first syllables and looking at all the different ways they might be combined to make words. Imaginary words can be used in poetry to talk about anything so new and wonderful it needs a new language to describe it: a new sport, a new kind of animal, a new holiday, a new food, etc. A poem using an imaginary word can be a good one in which to use simile: a "whiffmiller" smells like..., tastes like..., etc.

Another way of using words from another language is to read a short poem in French or Spanish or some other language and have the students invent a translation for it. Then compare their guesses to the actual translation. If you can find music to fit the mood of the poem, you might want to play that in the background while the students are working.

If you or some of your students are fluent in a second language, you might want to use words from that language in a poem. Have the students write poems about colors, for instance, but instead of using the English words for each color, put color words from another language and their English translations on the board, and have the students use the nonEnglish words. Each line of the poem should contain a nonEnglish word. Read these poems aloud and listen to their music.

Or if you have students who speak several different languages, choose a single word (the word for poetry, for instance, or the word for friendship) and write it on the board in all the languages. Have the students use the word in their poem at least one time in each language.

Students could use a word in another language to begin each line of a list poem. (For more about list poems, see below.)

Sixers

Sixers are simply six line poems. This kind of poem, short and with very specific guidelines but plenty of room for imagination, seems to work well with younger students. An amusing kind of sixer is a poem written in the voice of an alien creature. One way to get the students started is to begin with the "What do I look like?" question. Make a list on the board of everything that might be described: mouth, nose, hair, neck, belly, etc. And then another list of the specific qualities that might be described: size, shape, color, number, etc. Have the students write just one line and read it aloud. Then present the idea of making comparisons. My eyes are like maple leaves or antennae or purple golf balls. Encourage them to come up with unusual comparisons. You might want to let your class come up with their own list of questions to answer. You may want to have only six questions so that every student follows exactly the same format.

If students enjoy writing alien poems, they might also enjoy writing poems about the planets from which their aliens come. There are so many possible subjects: plant life (maybe they grow mustaches on trees), animal life (maybe their ants are the size of grizzly bears or their dogs the size of molecules), weather (maybe it rains erasers), landscape, buildings, etc. Students could be broken into small groups and each group assigned to one aspect of life on this planet. Students could write about what a school is like on this planet. What is a kitchen like? What would a student's bedroom be like? Or each student could write about his own particular planet, just presenting some of the highlights. Here's an example:

The Planet Galliwake

Sometimes it rains canteloupes
And sometimes it rains shoes.
The clothes hanger plants
Jangle us awake every morning,
And the roosters crow us to sleep.
When the seven moons rise,
All the green pigs
Lie down on the stars and sing.

Aliens and alien planets in poetry are subjects that lend themselves to wonderful artwork, so the final versions of such poems might end up as poem- drawings. Also, it can be fun to cover a very large cardboard box with construction paper, creating a "square planet". Each student can cut out an island or continent from a different color construction paper, write a poem about some aspect of life in that place, and paste it onto the planet.

A terrific suggestion from fourth-grade teacher, Erica York, of Grain Valley, MO, is to write alien/planet poems and draw the pictures, then exchange poems with another class. Those students read the poems without seeing the pictures and then draw what they see in the poems, so the students have the fun of comparing what each got out of the same poem.

Sixers are very easy and versatile to use for any kind of topic. You can set up a structure of six questions that students can answer as a framework for the poem, or you can treat a sixer as a very short list poem (see below for more about list poems): six things that make you mad, six favorite foods, six things that happen in the spring, six things you see at a circus, six things that insects do, etc.

Chant Poems

The chant, one of the oldest forms of poetry, uses a word, line, or phrase, repeated over and over, to give the poem its rhythm and shape. Chants don't have a specific fixed form, but can use their repeated elements in a variety of ways. Long poems work well as chants because they allow space for the rhythm to build.

Almost any kind of word or phrase can be chosen as the repeated item in a chant, but it should be chosen with care since the repeated element is the heart of the poem. Students might choose to repeat a phrase like:
my dog
my brother
my best friend
I am afraid when
When I was younger
If I ruled the world
I wish
In my dreams

Or perhaps a word such as: secret, happiness, enormous, Halloween, listen, laugh, etc. The possibilities are endless. You might want to suggest them by categories.

The repeated item could be the object being written about:
this white vase
the atlatl
the monarch butterfly

Or a person, perhaps performing an action the chant describes:
the hunter
once a woman
when the potter held the clay
the painter dipped his brush and

Or a place:
in the forest
in ancient Greece
at the banana museum

Or the time period the chant describes:
in the cretaceous period
long ago
when the willows bloom
every winter

The poem might directly address the reader in some way:
look at
listen to me
let me tell you

Or describe feelings:
It is glorious.
I wish
When I saw..., I felt
I am happy because

Or repeat variations on a single word, such as a color.

Prepositions or prepositional phrases often work well for chant poems. A poem could, for instance, start in a student's bedroom and, using "beyond," move out farther and farther until it reached distant galaxies. Or the poem could remain in the bedroom. A phrase like "in my room," could be used for a poem that described a room, or talked about the things that happened in that room, or revealed how the writer felt when s/he was in the room, etc. In the sample poem below, the simple phrase "on top of the" is used to move the chant along:

Ceramic Bowl

On top of the table four scaly feet,
On top of the feet a plain white base,
On top of the base a dragon crouched
with big white eyes staring up,
On top of the dragon a white bowl
whose handles are two griffins' heads,
On top of the bowl a curved lid,
On top of the lid a tiny man,
with long mustache and pony tail,
Trying to climb out.

Once the poet has chosen what to repeat, he needs to use specific sensory and factual details to complete the lines:
I am happy because the golden duck on this screen flies high.
I am happy because the reeds beneath him shine like....

The repeated line or phrase might emphasize the most important aspect of the subject. If the outstanding feature of an Egyptian exhibit, for instance, was the pharoah's golden throne, a poet might use that fact to create a chant, describing some other part of the exhibit and then saying, "And the pharoah's throne was gold." Another detail and then again, "And the pharoah's throne was gold." Keep coming back to that one outstanding part of the exhibit until the reader can see it shine.

Or the repeated words or line can be used to emphasize feelings about the subject of the poem. Writing about a musical instrument that is no longer played, for instance, a poet might want to repeat a sad line like "The song has ended now" between details about what the instrument must have sounded like, where it was played, who might have played it, and on what occasion it was played

Be sure, however, that - whatever repeated line or phrase is used to connect and move the poem - students also include lines which vary the pattern to avoid monotony. It would be a good idea to emphasize those two key words: "repeat" and "change." Both are necessary for a good chant poem.

For examples of chant poems, see "Sleeping Outdoors" by Marchette Chute and "Silver" by Walter de la Mare (which can be found in the collection, A Pocketful of Stars, compiled by Nikki Siegen-Smith). Or read The Circle of Thanks, told by Joseph Bruchac, which contains many poems that use chant elements in a variety of wonderful ways.

Whatever kind of chant poems your students write, enough time should be set aside so the poems can all be read aloud as this is a form which derives from oral traditions and has much pleasure to provide to listeners.

Lunes

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