CCSS ELA Standard: 2.RL.4

Let’s write a holiday song about order and chaos!

Can your students come up with a one-syllable word to sum up their time away from school? And then rewrite The Beatles’ song Help!?

Your students will turn the iconic painting The Scream into a vivid, sensory poem.

Repeating words can be what you want, if what you want is an interesting effect. (Psst, that’s an example of anadiplosis!)

Let’s take a classic Christmas poem and remix it to work with another holiday!

Sure, Dr. Seuss wrote for young students, but can older students analyze his writing and learn to mimic his style? THEN, they can produce Seuss-style poetry about any topic: Ancient China, the electromagnetic spectrum, Pride and Prejudice, and (yes) fraction division!

Is your students’ use of repetition limited to, “The girl was very, very, very fast.”? Let’s borrow some ideas from Shakespeare!

When students learn about alliteration, it’s hard to steer them away from goofy tongue-twisters. Certainly, there must be more powerful and practical ways of using alliteration. In this lesson, I draw on delicious examples from Shakespeare to show how a very advanced writer used alliteration. Then, I break those ideas down so students can try them out.

Ready to push kids beyond the boring, old ABAB rhyme scheme and into something a bit more complex?