Elementary Poetry Writing

Elementary Poetry Writing is a digital pdf downloadable lesson on writing poetry. The file is 9 pages long with one title page. The lesson is geared toward a 3rd to 4th grade level or for an 8- to 10-year-old student.

Elementary Poetry Writing includes:

A definition of poetry
A short lesson on how to rhyme
Two short rhyming poems to read, one by Howard Pyle, and one by an 8yr girl
A definition of non-rhyming poetry
A definition of imagery and how to write imagery
A non-rhyming poem to read by Henry David Thoreau
A short lesson on Haiku
Two haikus to read
A short lesson on using emotions in poetry
A poem about Happiness by Edith Wharton

The lesson has the student write:

1 rhyming poem of 4 lines about nature with an aabb rhyme scheme
1 non-rhyming poem of 4 to 8 lines about nature using imagery
1 Haiku
1 poem highlighting an emotion

The Lesson also asks the students to write what they think about the poems that they have read and draw a picture inspired by Henry David Thoreau’s non-rhyming poem included in the lesson.

The point of this lesson is to introduce students to different types of poetry that take a little more thought than nursery rhymes and teach them how to write those different types of poems. It is hoped that this lesson will inspire elementary students to take a look at the natural world around them and consider how to describe what they see using specific nouns and concrete language.

This lesson should help your student focus more on word choice, which is an important attribute of all good writers. Learning poetry is an important step to learn how to write because it gets the student to delete a lot of useless words and really concentrate on what matters.