The Poetry Project

With testing finally behind us, we can finally concentrate on the more creative aspect of fifth grade writing...POETRY!

With some hesitancy, the students have stepped into the very diverse and somewhat challenging world of poetry writing.

We began slowly with Haiku, which is a poem that consists of lines that are written according to a specific syllabic rhythm. This is a very structured method of writing poetry. Its origins are Japanese, and is a very easy introduction for novices, as the poems do not use rhyme. There are three lines of five, seven and five syllables each. The poem usually talk about some aspect of nature, although we have explored other types of Haiku as well.

A Couplet, Triplet, and Quatrain are types of poems that require rhyming in different forms. Perhaps the most popular type of poetry used, the couplet has stanzas made up of two lines which rhyme with each other. A Triplet poem has the same idea, except with three rhyming lines instead of two. A Quatrain poem has four lines in a stanza, of which the second and fourth lines rhyme with each other and have a similar syllable structure.

This week, we began writing a Cinquain poem. This is another unique type of poetry style. As the name suggests, it is made up of five lines. The first line is just one word, which is often the title of the poem. The second line has two words which describe the first line. The third line has three words, and is mostly the action part of the poem. The fourth line is four words describing the feelings. And the fifth line, again, has just one word which is the title of the poem and a synonym.

Yesterday, we discovered something called a Diamond Cinquain, which is a Cinquain written in the shape of a diamond. This will segway nicely into today's poetry, which will be a Shape Poem...a topic which will be written in a particular shape.

Keep your eyes open for more poetry as the year comes to a close!