Let's Write a Poem!

I cannot stress enough the importance of poetry in a child’s education. When I recall my own childhood school days the things I remember I most enjoyed were the poems we had to memorize and the songs we sang. So I make a concerted effort to introduce my students to poems that they would enjoy reciting. This usually leads to them writing their own poem with a similar rhythm, which was the writing task for the week.

 My goals were:
 1. Writing a poem;
 2. Revising for better quality.

I accomplished this in four lessons.

Lesson One: Read, discuss, and enjoy the poem My Shadow by R. L.  Stevenson.
Lesson Two:  Memorize the first two verses (or more).
Lesson Three: Using a template, think of something you are attached to and write a poem about it/him/her.
Lesson Four: Revise each line to: 1.  Make it sound more poetic;
2. Remove awkward sounding words and phrases;
3. Replace repeated words with more powerful words;
4. Make sure each line flows into the next.

Here’s the poem:

My Shadow
by Robert Louis Stevenson


I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.


The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow—
Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;
For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball,
And he sometimes gets so little that there's none of him at all.


He hasn't got a notion of how children ought to play,
And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.
He stays so close beside me, he's a coward you can see;
I'd think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!


One morning, very early, before the sun was up,
I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;
But my lazy little shadow, like an errant sleepy-head,
Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.


I selected this poem because I remember learning it as a kid. I never forgot it because of its enjoyable rhythm. Kids love rhyming poems too. It’s a great one for memorizing. On the first day we had several readings of the poem. We looked at the rhyming pattern and discussed the meaning of the poem.

On the second day I used my cookie bribe to get kids to memorize the first two verses. I didn’t actually need to bribe them because they loved reciting the lines. I  told them to get out of their seats and look for a quiet space in the classroom where they could learn their lines. This worked beautifully!

For the third lesson I made up a template for the kids to use to write their poems. I started by asking them how a poem was different from a story and listed their responses on a chart. We came up with the following:

1. Poems are shorter and are usually not more than a page long.
2. Stories/narratives have sentences; poems have lines.
3. Poems have rhyming lines and are like songs because they have rhythm.
4. Poems have verses, narratives have paragraphs.

Even after this clarification, kids have trouble writing poems with lines that aren’t sentences. The template helps them stick to a format that resembles a poem. To make the template I blanked out all references to the shadow. The first verse looked like this:

I have a little ____________ that __________________________
And _________________________________________________
_ is very, very _________________________________________
And I see _____________________________________________


Before this lesson the kids had already been primed for the acitivity with their journal topic that morning. I asked them to think of something they were very attached to. These could be animate or inanimate things. We did a quick brainstorm which I listed on the board: a pet, a little brother/sister, a toy, a gadget, etc. (With older kids you could ask them to think of something imaginary, or something unusual that nobody else would come up with.) They had to make a list of ten special features about the object they selected.

Having memorized the first verse or two the kids had the rhythm in their heads. As they write they will naturally try to imitate a similar rhythm. I handed out the templates. Using my document camera we worked on each line together. I chose to write about my little brother (turning back the clock a few decades). I modeled thinking up unique aspects of my subject and how to include that in this poem. I told the students that each line had to have a different idea (they had their journals open to the list they had made earlier).

A very important aspect of writing tasks in my class is the banning of certain words!! All my students learn very quickly that they cannot use the following words in any of their writing pieces:
Nice, good, great, stuff, cool, and things.

I also made it clear that if any of the words on the template didn’t work for them they could cross them off and replace them with something more suitable. I modeled changes that worked for me.

The kids responded to this assignment quite enthusiastically. I had no trouble getting them to finish their poem in the 45 minutes we had for the class.

The last phase – Day 4 - for this task was to revise the entire poem. This can be tedious for kids, so it’s important to make the process as efficient as possible. I gave them all a sheet of lined paper and asked them to get out their poems. I got out my poem and using the document camera, I read out my first line:

I have a little brother who makes me laugh

It doesn’t sound right, I said. What should I do? A few kids immediately spotted the problem. A couple of suggestions were made:

I have a little brother who makes me laugh a lot
I have a little brother who always makes me laugh.

I rewrote the first line – the second suggestion - on my new sheet of paper, then instructed them to the same for their first lines. We completed the entire first verse in this manner. After that they didn’t need any more modeling. They went to work rewriting their poems. I worked with my two struggling students at this point.

After the kids revised their poems the natural thing would be for them to come to me for editing. But I felt that they had spent enough time on this project. I want kids to love writing. I couldn’t make them do another rewrite. I collected their poems and typed them out myself. Yes, it was time consuming, but worth it to see the pride on the faces of the kids.