10 Minute Grammar Episode #14: Teaching Beginning Poetry for Upper Elementary (Part I of II)

Teaching poetry writing is one of the (many) great loves of my life! Upper elementary students can enjoy poetry writing if it is taught to them systematically. On today’s episode, I start with the first three steps I use for teaching poetry to fourth graders and up:

1. Plan for poetry teaching to be a process—not a one and done event.
2. I like to use two weeks of writing time each semester for poetry writing in order to introduce it in a fun way and teach all the skills they will need in order to succeed at writing poetry.

1. Read aloud from poetry during reading, content areas, unit studies, etc.
2. Use fun, whimsical, silly, and enjoyable poetry books for read aloud.
3. Use familiar yet simple verses for them to highlight and code the rhyme scheme and syllabication with you. (Give them copies of the ones you will teach rhyme scheme from.)

1. Teach the two parts of rhyme scheme using highlighters to code the rhyming words at the end of the lines.
2. Highlight rhyming words.
3. Teach them to label these with their letters (AA, etc).
4. Teach them to count and write syllables after each line.

I go over this using “Humpty Dumpty” as an example, so it is easy to follow my methodology. Join me next week for the remaining six steps!

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