Category: News

Onomatopoeia Poetry Lesson Plan

This lesson plan uses excerpts from famous poems to demonstrate how onomatopoeia can be used in a poem. Students will closely read the poem excerpts to identify the onomatopoeia words. They will then choose three onomatopoeia words from a suggested list to use in a poem of their own.

comic book sound effects

Onomatopoeia refers to words that sound exactly or almost exactly like the thing that they represent. Many words that we use for animal or machine noises are onomatopoeia words, such as “moo” for the sound a cow makes and “beep-beep” for the noise of a car horn. Words like “slurp,” “bang,” and “crash” are also onomatopoeia words. Even some ordinary words like “whisper” and “jingling” are considered onomatopoeia because when we speak them out loud, they make a sound that is similar to the noise that they describe.

Poetry often uses onomatopoeia words because they are so descriptive. This type of word helps us to imagine the story or scene that is happening in the poem.

Here are two examples that show how famous poets have used onomatopoeia in their poems. In these poem excerpts, the onomatopoeia words are underlined.

Pony Magazine 2013 Poetry Contest

Pony Magazine Poetry Contest for Kids

Live in the UK? Love horses and ponies? Creative? Want to get your writing published in a magazine? PONY magazine is offering the fantastic chance for you to become a published poet! Whether you have been writing for years or are a total beginner – they would love to read your horsey poetry!

To enter the competition all you need to do is get creative and write a poem about anything to do with horses. Have a favourite riding moment? A beautiful pony you love? Tell them about it!

Please Don’t Read This Poem: A Poetry Activity Using Invisible Ink

There’s nothing so exciting as a secret!  That’s why private messages written on folded paper, passed to friends who you know will keep your secret, are so thrilling… There’s a chance the note might get intercepted, and the information will get leaked!

This is a secret note

The following poem is about a poem that nobody is supposed to read. It’s a secret, but not a very good one, because everyone keeps reading it, even when the author asks them to stop!

Six Great Ideas for President’s Day Poems

George Washington

Presidents Day is celebrated on the 3rd Monday of the month every February in the USA. It marks the birthday of the first American President George Washington (which was actually on February 22nd, but we like to have our holidays on a Monday!)

In fact, that’s Great Idea Number One:

  • Write a poem called ‘I’d like to have a holiday on a Monday!’ Think about the annoying things about Mondays, and the awesome things about holidays. What do you normally do on a Monday? What could you do differently if it were a holiday?

Classroom Poetry Charades

Kids love to get up and get moving, which is great because  movement can help reinforce learning.  Most children also love games.  Put movement and games together, and you have a high energy activity that can be done quietly in any classroom: Charades!

Poetry Charades

The following game of charades uses the twenty-seven activities found in the poem “I Don’t Know What to Do Today.”  It’s simple to prepare, exciting, and teaches children that poetry is fun while helping them reinforce important skills like memorization, cooperation, and word association.

Exploring Ballads

When people hear the word ‘ballad’ today they often think of mushy love songs, but ballads have a much greater history. While most poetry is concerned with evoking emotions and feelings, the ballad is a vehicle for story-telling, and has been with us since medieval times.

The words are set to music to become a song, and follow a simple rhyming pattern and a set meter (or rhythm).

Each verse has four lines, and the poem can have as many verses as necessary to tell the story. Some famous examples are ‘Beowulf’, ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ and ‘The House of The Rising Sun.’*

Because a ballad can tell any story, they are a great way of fitting creative writing tasks into your curriculum.  Here are some exercises you can use to explore the form:

Evoking the Senses in a Poem

Evoking the Senses: How to Capture an Atmosphere in Your Poem

See Hear Speak

The best poems draw in their audience, and spark the imagination.  If you want to conjure up a complete world for the reader when writing about a particular place or time, you can call upon each of the five senses to create the correct atmosphere.

This short lesson will give you an example of how you can use this technique in your own poetry!

How to Write a “Roses are Red” Valentine’s Day Poem

Valentine’s Day is a perfect opportunity to tell the people we care about how much they mean to us. The tradition of sharing our feelings by giving cards dates back to the 15th Century in Europe, and the messages were all originally written as poems!

Roses are Red

The oldest surviving example of a Valentine’s poem is written in French, but the most famous Valentine’s poem of all is in English:

Roses are red.
Violets are blue.
Sugar is sweet,
And so are you!

The best thing about this poem is that it is so simple to adapt by changing just a few words.

Writing Your Own “Roses are Red” Poem

Some people buy pre-printed cards, but homemade cards always mean a bit more, especially when you’ve written your own personalized poetry inside!

How to Write an Apology Poem

A poem can do a lot of things. It can tell a funny story, describe an interesting image, or present an idea. Some poems are written in the form of a “direct address”—that is, the speaker in the poem is talking directly to a specific person. An apology poem is one that uses direct address as a way to apologize for something that the speaker has done or said.

One of the most famous examples of an apology poem is by William Carlos Williams. The title of this poem is “This Is Just to Say.” As you read the poem, decide for yourself whether the speaker is actually sorry for what he has done.

Twenty Fun Writing Prompts for Children

If you’ve ever had “writer’s block,” you know how awful it feels when you just can’t seem to get started on a piece of writing. Sometimes it helps to warm up your writing muscles, similar to the way that an athlete would stretch before a game or a musician would tune an instrument. For a writer, one of the best ways to warm up is to do five minutes of freewriting. Using a writing prompt to get you started, write as quickly as you can without stopping for five minutes. You can always edit what you wrote later, but you’ll capture some great ideas when you’re writing as fast as you can.

Here are 20 ideas for fun writing prompts that you can use if you’re feeling stuck—or if you’re just looking for interesting ideas for a new story or poem. There’s no wrong way to respond to any of these prompts, and you can let your imagination go wild. You’ll know you’re getting “warm” when you’re really having fun!