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The first two weeks of the school year is called "The Honeymoon"~during this time you and those boisterous students attempt to develop some sort of relationship with each other. While the English teacher in me wants to jump right in to the curriculum and start teaching my subject, the teacher in me knows it's important to establish ground rules, develop routines, and pre-assess my students. Here is a poetry lesson that can be taught during the first few days of school that will serve the purpose of teaching curriculum and developing a relationship because you will get to know something about your students.

This mini-lesson is called "From List to Poem". First you need to do a quick informal assessment, so you ask the students "What do you know about poems?" Give your students the time to discuss this either with a partner, a small group, or large group. You could even have the students write their responses on a "dinner plate" graphic organizer and then share their responses with the whole group afterwards.

Once students have developed their prior knowledge, you are ready for the explicit teaching part of your lesson. Tell your students that poems are different from stories (as they've already discussed or shared on their graphic organizers). Because poems are meant to sound a certain way, poets are very aware of how they look on the page.

Model this lesson for students by sharing a poem or several poems with your students. An excellent example is "Doing Laundry on Sunday" by Brigit Pegeen Kelly. Ask the students several questions to spark discussion and prior knowledge: Do you see how some lines are much longer than others? Do you see how the poet set groups of lines off in stanzas? Go on by telling the students that the poet did that on purpose because she wanted to say what was on her mind. When you write your own poems, you will want to use the white space on your paper in a creative way.

Now you will model for students how to generate a list of words that pertain to a particular topic. For our purposes today, I'm going to use the topic "poetry":

• musical
• stanzas
• verses
• rhyme
• rhythm
• nature
• beauty
• song
• flowing
• recited out loud
• haiku
• sonnet
• Robert Frost
• Emily Dickinson

Hopefully, you can see that your list is a brainstorm. Write whatever comes to mind and encourage the students to do the same. The important thing is that the students generate a list of specific nouns, action verbs, strong adjectives, and adverbs that create a sense of activity. You might even stop and have the students generate their own list in their journals~you could choose the topic or allow the student to choose his own topic.

Now model for students how your list of words help you create a poem about poetry. You can always look back at your sample poem for inspiration.

Here is what I just came up with as I'm sitting here thinking about this lesson:

Breathing in with poised pencil, 

I allow the words to flow onto 

my waiting page.

Frost and Dickinson 

guide my words 

as music guides the lyrics.

Lines, stanzas, and verses

take shape as 

the rhythm of my thoughts

move from my heart 

to my hand.

See...great it's not, but believe me your students will be impressed. Now, allow students the opportunity to write a first draft of their own poem in their journals. I usually allow about ten minutes for this activity. Encourage your young writers to be creative in their poetry forms. Reassure them that it is just a rough draft~they can choose not to use this poem as their finished product or not. Some students are going to ask if their poems need to rhyme. Refer them back to yours as a mentor text.

When time is up, have your students "turn and talk for two" about what they've written. Examples of questions that they might ask of each other: Have I used the "right" words to express myself? Does the poem "look" like a poem? What image is created in this poem? What other words could I use? What decisions did you make about using the space on your paper?

If you wish, you could have the students publish their poems on the class blog or a student-teacher social media site like My Big Campus or Twitter. If you decide that this will be a grade, you will want to create a rubric to show students what you expect in the final product. But, you don't have to do any of these things~you can walk around during SSW (Silent Sustained Writing) and read your students' drafts of the poems in the journal.

Remember, the honeymoon only last for a couple of weeks; you need to use this time productively as a way to get to know your students, assess their mastery, and begin teaching your content.

Melissa