Stacie Wiatt challenged her fourth grade students at Mathews Elementary School to create Christmas-themed poems using a variety of poetic techniques.
The students wrote cinquain poems (five-line poem with a 24682 syllable pattern); acrostic poems (where the first letters of each line spells out a word or phrase vertically that acts as the theme or message of the poem); diamante poems (an unrhymed seven-line poem where the beginning and ending lines are the shortest and the middle ones are longer, giving it a diamond shape); haikus (traditional Japanese poems with a 5-7-5 syllable pattern) and a final version that Wiatt called “grammar poems” that allows the students to practice using all things grammar: nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs and similes.
Here are a few examples of each. First, cinquain poems:
Candy Canesby Noah DeForge
CandySweet, YummyEating, Sucking, LickingFun to Eat ThemSweets
Stockingsby Noah DeForge
SocksSoft, FurryWearing, Having, HoldingNice to Feel ThemTightsHere a...