Poetry Unit

I used an inquiry-based approach for my Poetry Unit during my practicum. Our big question for the unit was: “What makes a poem?” On the first day, students examined a folder of poems in groups and came up with criteria that made up a poem. We examined the harder poems such as imagery poems as a class. At last, we created the following criteria for what makes a poem: special way of organizing the words, pattern/rhythm, creates an image, silly/funny, and/or rhymes.

We used those criteria to examine each type of poems we studied. For example, when we were studying riddle poems, students were able to tell that a riddle poem was a poem because it was describing a single topic. Throughout the unit, students were able to identify characteristics of a poem with different kinds of poetry we studied independently or in small groups. They were also able to discover the different patterns on their own. For example, students looked at the criteria and discovered the syllable pattern in Haikus!