Poetry Activity Book — Listen, My Children

Objective

Students will review and use five poetry-related vocabulary words (from the poems "Things" and "Life Doesn't Frighten Me") and apply the poetic device of repetition by planning and writing an original poem that repeats a word or line for effect.

Materials

• Activity Page 3.1 (Vocabulary for "Things" and "Life Doesn't Frighten Me") — copies for each student
• Activity Page 3.3 (Poem with Repetition: Planning) — copies for each student
• Activity Page 3.4 (Poem with Repetition) — copies for each student
• Pencils
• Blank index card or scrap paper (for exit ticket)

Warm-up (~5 min)

1. Hand out Activity Page 3.1. Read the five vocabulary words and their definitions aloud, one at a time: shore, sandhouse, frighten, counterpane, charm.
2. After each word, have the class repeat the word and definition together.
3. Ask for one or two student volunteers to try using each word in a spoken sentence (no writing yet — just oral practice).

Main Activity (~25 min)

1. Explain to students that poets often repeat a word, phrase, or line in a poem to create rhythm or emphasize an idea — this is called repetition.
2. Hand out Activity Page 3.3 (Poem with Repetition: Planning). Model the organizer on the board (or describe it aloud): a center circle for the poem's topic, and smaller circles around it for words or lines the student might repeat.
3. Have students choose a topic for their own poem and write it in the center circle. Encourage them to try to work in at least two of the vocabulary words from Activity Page 3.1 (shore, sandhouse, frighten, counterpane, charm) somewhere in their planning.
4. Students fill in the smaller circles with words or short lines they could repeat throughout their poem.
5. Once planning is done, hand out Activity Page 3.4 (Poem with Repetition). Students write their full poem on the lines provided, using the repeated word(s)/line(s) from their planning page and including at least two vocabulary words from the list.
6. Circulate and help students who are stuck by pointing back to their planning page circles.

Wrap-up / Exit Ticket (~10 min)

1. Ask for 3–4 volunteers to read their poem (or just their repeated line) aloud to the class.
2. Collect Activity Pages 3.3 and 3.4 from all students.
3. Exit ticket: On an index card or scrap paper, each student writes one vocabulary word from today's list (shore, sandhouse, frighten, counterpane, charm) along with its definition, from memory, without looking back at Activity Page 3.1.

If Time Remains

Have students look back at their finished poem on Activity Page 3.4 and circle any two words in their own poem that rhyme with each other, writing the rhyming pair at the bottom of the page — similar to how Activity Page 2.2 asks students to find rhyming pairs in "Clarence" and "A Tragic Story."