Writing Trait/Strategy:

poetry tools

Mentor Text Suggestions:

• A Fire in My Hands by Gary Soto
• I Thought I Heard the City by Lilian Moore
• Until I Saw the Sea: A Collection of Seashore Poems by Alison Shaw

See also suggested literature for metaphor, simile, and personification.

Description:

Imagery is the writer’s use of words to create mental pictures or images for the reader. The use of figures of speech and vivid descriptions creates strong images.

Activity:

Six-Room Poem (Heard, 1999): Have students draw six boxes on a piece of blank paper and label each box.

Ask questions to help students fill in each box.
Room 1: Think of a subject from nature—something amazing, beautiful, or interesting. Close your eyes and try to visualize it clearly. Notice details, and describe it as accurately as you can.
Room 2: Look at the same image, but just focus on the quality of light. Is the sun bright? Is it a dull, flat day? Are there any shadows? Describe any colors you see. Room 3: Picture the same image and focus only on sounds. Are there any voices? Rustling of leaves? Sound of rain? If it’s silent, what kind of silence—empty, lonely, peaceful?
Room 4: Write down any questions you have about the image. Anything you want to know more about? Anything you wonder about?
Room 5: Write down any feeling you have about this same image.
Room 6: Look over the five rooms and select one word, or a few words, a phrase, a line, or a sentence that feels important and repeat it three times.

After the boxes are completed, have students use the words and phrases to create a free verse poem. They can rearrange the rooms in any order, eliminate rooms, words, or sentences. Students can use this same technique for poems about people, animals, experiences. (The labels for each box can change depending on the subject). It is a great way to brainstorm ideas before attempting to draft a poem.

Sample poem written from 6-room boxes:

Writing Trait/Strategy:

Word choice; simile

Mentor Text Suggestions:

• Borrowed Black by Ellen Bryan Obed
• Easy as Pie: A Guessing Game of Sayings by M. Folsom
• If You Hopped Like a Frog by David M. Schwartz
• It Figures: Fun Figures of Speech by Marvin Terban
• Owl Moon by Jane Yolen (or any other book by Yolen)
• Quick as a Cricket by Audrey Wood
• Similes by Joan Hanson
• Storm in the Night by Mary Stolz
• The Elephant’s Child by Rudyard Kipling
• There’s a Frog in My Throat by Loreen Leedy and Pat Street

Description:

A simile is a figure of speech that compares two things using the words “like” or “as” . The writer uses similes to create mind pictures for the reader.

Simile Traveling Book

Click here for traveling book directions. Choose a person that everyone in the class knows. A school staff member works well. Have the class brainstorm adjectives and characteristics that describe the person. Next have them compare each characteristic to an animal or object and write each in the form of a simile.

Subject: Mr. Murphy, the school principal

Sample simile:  “Mr. Murphy is like a lion because he is king of the school.”

Have each child illustrate one simile, compile the pages into a book and give it to the person as a gift.

Riddle Poems

Read aloud poems such as those in Do Not Feed the Table by Dee Lillegard, but omit the titles. Have students try to guess what object the poet is describing. Ask which words in the poems helped them figure it out. Have students select their own subject and write riddle poems using metaphor, simile, and personification to describe the subject without stating what it is. Have pairs of students exchange poems and try to guess.

Purpose

• To introduce students to the entire writing process in a non-threatening way
• To introduce and reinforce literacy skills and conventions of language
• To give students authentic purposes and audiences for writing
• To introduce students to writing workshop and classroom publishing
• To give every child the opportunity to experience early success as a writer
• To build the confidence of even struggling or reluctant writers

Procedure

1. Introduce the new skill  by identifying and describing it (see examples in the downloadable document below).
2. Read aloud one or more mentor texts that have many examples of the targeted skill. I like to read one as an introduction the first day and then reread it or read other examples on subsequent days.
3. Have students brainstorm a list of examples as you write them on chart paper. Examples may come from the read aloud book, other books, personal experience, etc. Generate a list of several more examples than the number of students you have (25 students/30 examples). The following are helpful resources that include lists of words that can be used for word study and word play: The Reading Teacher’s Book of Lists by Edward Fry, et al,The Writing Teacher’s Book of Lists by Gary Muschla, and my personal favorite The Big Book of Phonics Fun by Carson-Dellosa.
4. Leave the chart posted so students can add more examples that they find in their daily reading.
5. On subsequent days review the generated list and have each student choose a different example to write about and/or illustrate. Have each child do a rough draft of his/her page for the book.
6. Depending on the level of your students, have them peer edit or do a teacher edit with or for them.
7. Have students complete the final copy.
8. Design or have a student design a cover. Compile all student pages. Add the Traveling Book parent letter (download below) to the front of the book and the Kind Compliment sheet (download below) to the back of the book. Bind together into book form.
   
9. Circulate the published book among the students, allowing each child to take the book home for a day or two. Students share the book with their families and ask family members to respond to the book on the Kind Compliment page.

Traveling Book Ideas and Directions
Traveling Book Parent Letter
Kind Compliments

Writing Trait/Strategy:

Word choice; metaphor

Mentor Text Suggestions:

• all the small poems and fourteen more by Valerie Worth
• Water Music by Jane Yolen
• Color Me a Rhyme by Jane Yolen
• Snow, Snow by Jane Yolen
• Do Not Feed the Table by Dee Lillegard
• Little Night by Yuri Morales
• Love is a Handful of Honey by Giles Andreae
• Miracle Tree by Christobel Mattingley
• Odes to Common Things by Pablo Neruda
• Once I Was Scared by Helena Pittman
• Ordinary Things by Ralph Fletcher
• Say Something by Mary Stolz
• Silver Seeds by Paul Paolilli and Dan Brewer
• The Patchwork Cat by William Mayne
• The Ocean Is… by Kathleen Kranking

Description:

Metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two things but does not use the words “like” or “as” (e.g., Ann is a walking encyclopedia). Metaphor is a little trickier to explain than simile, but with lots of exposure to mentor text examples, they get it and are so excited to begin using it in their writing.

Student Samples:

Writing Trait/Strategy:

Word choice; personification; poetry tools

Mentor Text Suggestions:

• Arnie the Doughnut by Laurie Keller
• Dirty Laundry Pile by Paul Janeczko (ed.)
• Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert
• The Scarecrow and His Servant by Philip Pullman
• The Goldfish Yawned by Elizabeth Sayles
• School Supplies: A Book of Poems by Lee Bennett Hopkins
• The People Could Fly by Virginia Hamilton
• My Secret Surprise by Jasper Tomkins
• Winter Barn by Pater Parnell
• Do Not Feed the Table by Dee Lillegard

Description:

Personification is a comparison in which something that is not human is described with human qualities. This tool is used especially by poets, but authors of other texts as well, to create mind pictures for the reader. Introduce this literary craft to students by pointing out examples in mentor texts such as those listed above.

Activity:

Have students go on a “personification walk.” Have them make a list of things they notice (trees, clouds, rocks, grass, wind, etc.) Ask them to choose one and make a list of ways their subject seems human or animal-like. Example: Trees = Giant hands reaching toward the sky. (Heard, 1999)

Writing Trait/Strategy:

Word choice; poetry tool

Mentor Text Suggestions:

• A Twister of Twists, A Tangler of Tongues and Busy Buzzing Bumblebees and Other Tongue Twisters by Alvin Schwartz
• All About Arthur—An Absolutely Absurd Ape by Eric Carle
• Alligators All Around by Maurice Sendak
• Alphabet Annie Announces an All-American Album by Susan Purviance and Marcia O’shell
• Animalia by Graeme Base
• Dinorella: A Prehistoric Fairy Tale by Pamela Duncan Edwards
• Faint Frogs Feeling Feverish and Other Terrifically Tantalizing Tongue Twisters by L. Obligada
• Four Famished Foxes and Fosdyke by Pamela Edwards Duncan, 1995.
• Six Sick Sheep: One Hundred Tongue Twisters by Beverly Collins and Stephanie Calmenson
• Some Smug Slug by Pamela Duncan Edwards
• The Awful Aardvarks Go to School by Reeve Lindbergh
• The Biggest Tongue Twister Book in the World by Gyles Brandeth
• The Wacky Wedding: A Book of Alphabet Antics by Pamela Duncan Edwards
• The Worrywarts by Pamela Duncan Edwards
• Toad by Ruth Brown

Description:

Alliteration is the occurrence in a phrase of two or more words having the same initial sound (e.g., wailing in the winter wind) It is a tool frequently used by poets to create rhythm and music.

Activities:

• Give each student or pair or students some sticky notes. Ask them to brainstorm as many words as they can that begin with an assigned letter and write one word on each sticky note. Then have them manipulate the sticky notes to compose a sentence/poem/story using as many of the words as they can. Allow them to use extra blank sticky notes for “glue words” such as the, and, or, etc.
• Write an alliteration class alphabet book. Use Animalia by Graeme Base as a model.

Writing Trait/Strategy:

word choice; sentence fluency

Mentor Text Suggestions:

Most poetry collections will have examples of poems that use repetition

• "Things" by Eloise Greenfield
• Saturdays and Teacakes by Lester Laminack
• The Sunsets of Olivia Wiggins by Lester Laminack
• Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type by Doreen Cronin
• In November by Cynthia Rylant
• The Doorbell Rang by Pat Hutchins
• Whoever You Are by Mem Fox
• Momma, Where Are You From? By Marie Bradby

Description:

Repetition is the repeating of a word, phrases, lines, or groups of lines to add rhythm or emphasis. Read aloud poems and picture books that have examples of repetitive words and phrases. Discuss the impact the repetitions have on the overall feeling of the text. When using repetition in their poetry, students should always go back to reread the poem aloud often. This is the only way to tell if the repetition works in the poem. Guidelines: Use repetition to stress an important word, phrase, or idea, and to add rhythm. Avoid using repetitions that sound awkward or that are in too close proximity to each other to be effective.

Student Sample:

We also call this activity “Look at a ________ through a poet’s eyes.” Choose a subject. Things from nature or every day objects work well.  Have students use ordinary words and phrases to describe the subject. Then have them look at the subject in a different way and use metaphor and simile to describe it (Heard, 1999). Here is an example of one that my students did while looking at this conch shell:

Writing Trait/Strategy:

word choice; organization; revision

Mentor Text Suggestions:

• Cow by Jules Older
• One Dark Night by Lisa Wheeler
• When a Monster is Born by Sean Taylor
• The Other Dog by Madeline L’Engle

Description:

Do you have students who begin every sentence with “And then…” or students who begin every sentence the same way as this student did?

These are writers who need a mini-lesson on transition words or “glue words”—those words and phrases that hold a piece together and help the reader navigate smoothly through the text. In Super Story-Writing Strategies and Activities, Barbara Mariconda calls these transitions “red flags” that tell the reader that there is a shift in the plot.

Have students begin a list of “glue word and phrases” like the one below to which they can refer when they are writing. When I encounter a child during a writing conference who seems to use the same transitional words repeatedly, we circle those words, refer to our chart, and find some suitable replacements.

For an extensive list of transitional words and phrases, go to the following website:

Study Guides and Strategies

Try retyping a portion of a published text omitting the transition words. Copy onto a transparency and work together to fill in the transitions. Examine the original text to see how the class transitions compare with the author’s.

Writing Trait/Strategy:

word choice/word awareness

Mentor Text Suggestions:

• Fancy Nancy series by Jane O’Connor
• Donovan’s Word Jar by Monlisa Degross
• Miss Alaineous by Debra Frazier
• Max’s Words by Kate Banks
• The Boy Who Loved Words by Roni Schotter

Description:

Read aloud one or several of the listed mentor texts. Designate a bulletin board, chart paper, or section of the chalkboard for students to record new, interesting, or unusual words. Set aside a few minutes daily to discuss these words. I especially like to focus on synonyms for overused words. Many of these words surface during read aloud time. I introduce the words naturally in the context of the story: “’Dilemma. That’s an interesting word. Does anyone know what that means? It’s a fancy word for ‘problem’.” We add it to our Fancy Word board, and I encourage students to use the word in context in their speaking and writing throughout the day. We also keep special lists for words like “said” and “went” that have many more interesting synonyms. The students become very excited about finding these words in their independent reading, during read aloud, and during conversations. A study on word learning in the elementary grades suggests that this intentional focus on words has great impact on students’ overall word learning (Beck, Perfetti, & McKeown, 1982).

I have also used the phrase “rice cake and salsa words” to help remind students to be intentional in their word choice. I give each student pieces of bland rice cakes and sample-size cups of mild salsa. As they taste each, we talk about how we want to use salsa words, not rice cake words in their writing. We open up our writer’s notebooks and look for examples of rice cake words and try to replace them with salsa words.