April is Poetry Month (Haiku)

Grade Level: 3-5

Texas School Library Standards: 

Strand 3: Reading – School library programs promote reading as an essential skill for learning, personal growth, and enjoyment which are essential skills for college, career, and community. 

Dimension 1: The library encourages students to read a variety of literature for information and pleasure. The library provides access to physical and virtual collections of high quality, current resources in a variety of formats (print, audio, electronic) and platforms (readable on most devices) that reflect input from stakeholders.

Materials: 

• Preselected poetry books

• Preselected Haiku poems 

• Colored paper

• pencils

Instructional Procedures: 

• Share with students that the month of April is National Poetry Month

• Share with students preselected poetry books and show them where they may find other poetry books in the library 

• Tell students that today they will be focusing on a specific poem type (Haiku is always a fun one to start with) and read a few of those types of poems

• Discuss with students what they notice about those types of poems

• Ex. If your focus is Haiku, then you will probably discuss the following

• Where that type of poetry originated from

• The format of the poem (Haiku = 3 lines with the first and third line containing 5 syllables and the second line containing seven syllables

• Don’t have to rhyme

• Written to evoke a mood or instance

• Share with students that they will try writing one of their own haiku poems

• Provide students with pieces of colored paper to choose from and pencils

• Students will spend a bit of time trying their hand at writing a haiku poem

• Be sure to walk around the tables offering assistance in helping students count out their syllables correctly for the specific line in the poem they are working on

• If time allows, students may draw a picture to go along with the poem they wrote. 

Suggested Instructional Strategies:  

• Close read 

• Modeling

• Realia 

• Word wall

Assessment:

• Assessment of the ability to correctly create a haiku poem using the correct format and syllabication