Creating a Poem Together To demonstrate the process of what goes into creating a poem, the whole class collaborated

to write a poem together. In the previous lesson, the revising lesson, using the dandelion poem, we talked about rhyming patterns. From that, we devised our own rhyme scheme. As we started developing the scheme, I noticed it was a loose form of a sonnet (a form whose parameters have been much loosened in American poetry in the last 40 years.) As a result, we made up our own rhyme scheme for a sonnet. About Sonnets Sonnets are usually 14 lines long, have an introduction of an idea, a volta (a turning of events) and then a conclusion. Thats the basic structure. There are many types of rhyme schemes (Petrarchan, Shakespearan, Spenserian) or you can use no rhyme pattern at all. Different rhythmic patterns can apply as well, such as iambic or anapestic. Rhythm is a more challenging aspect to teach to younger students, so I just talk about keeping the flow of the poem going. If most of our lines are medium length, we dont want to have one that is very short, unless it is for a specific purpose (and not just because we cant think of anything!) Often the subject of a sonnet is a pastoral scene, or love, or love in a pastoral scene, but it doesnt have to be about those things, either. 14 lines is a good length for a class collaboration because it isnt too short, ensuring everyone can contribute, but it isnt too long, so it wont take more than two days to complete. The students had their commonplace books open so they could write down the lines as I wrote them down on the overhead projector. I like doing this in old fashion marker and paper/OHP so that students can see the crossing out, the rearranging, the scribbling, the doodling, etc that goes into drafting a poem. I asked them all to think of a starting line then chose one person to share theirs. We built our poem off of that one line.

Things that came up as we wrote: Someone would come up with a good line, but it didnt rhyme with the pattern we set out to follow. This is a great opportunity to show students how to work with the idea so that it fits with the poem. If we think of the painting metaphor, its like a painter saying there should be a tree there and starting to sketch a pine but realizing a maple would look more elegant with the colors. The student came up with a good image, of say, the hunting bear in line 6 now being full but the line doesnt rhyme. So I say something like, Good image, but we need the last word to rhyme with lake and someone else says, Belly ache! so we come up with Bears are now full and have a belly ache. Someone would come up with an interesting line, but it doesnt fit with the scene we developed. We had a forest scene going with butterflies, wolves, shrews, and bees. Suddenly someone wants to have a monkey swinging from a tree. So I asked him to take a look at the other animals in the poem and think about where this poem takes place. It doesnt take place where monkeys live. So, I told him to write that line down in his commonplace book and use it for an idea for his own poem, perhaps one about a jungle or a zoo, for later. Then I asked him to think about what else might be in a tree in this scene. He said a bird. I asked what kind, someone else said a cardinal and then we had the beginning of line 9. I dont want to discourage ideas but I do want students to take care of their poems and not think of the easy way out of a writing predicament. I want them to do justice to their poem so that they are really choosing the best words in the best places We stopped about half way through the beginning and let the poem rest for a day. When we went back to it the next day, we re-read what we wrote and wrote down things we noticed in the poem. I asked: What was there already? What was missing? Which way did we want to go? What could we add? What literary functions, like similes and alliteration, could we use? From there we finished up, addressing the same issues of rhyme scheme and theme as we wrapped up our poem. We used the rhyming

dictionary as a resource and our prior knowledge of wildlife in a forest.