Lesson Plan #: AELP-WCP0200
"Fill-in-the-Blank" Poetry
An Educator's Reference Desk Lesson Plan
Submitted by:
Monica Wagner
Email:
mlw8993@worldnet.att.net
School/University/Affiliation:
Lutheran High School of Indianapolis
Date:
August 21, 2000
Grade Level:
6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12
Subject(s):
-
Language Arts/Writing (composition)
Duration:
45-55 minutes
Description:
In this activity, students write poems of their own without having to create an all-new structure or rhyme scheme.
Goals:
For this lesson, students will analyze poetry based on structure and meaning. Students will also review parts of speech.
Objectives:
Students will be able to follow the structure of a given poem to create a poem of their own. Students will be able to place appropriate parts of speech in the "blanks" provided.
Materials:
-
Copies of short poems (
Reference:
Williams, William Carlos.
The collected poems of William Carlos Williams: 1909-1939
. A. Walton Litz and Christopher MacGowan, ed. New York: New Directions, 1986. ISBN: 0811209997)
-
Poem hand-outs
Hand-outs in .pdf format; requires free Adobe Acrobat Reader.
Click the icon to obtain the free Reader.
Procedure:
1. Choose a simple poem that is 10-20 lines in length.
2. Provide two copies of the poem to students: the original poem and the same poem in which you have removed several of the words and replaced them with "blanks."
3. Read the original poem with students and discuss the meaning and/or structure of the poem.
4. Have students create their own versions of the original poem, filling
in the blanks you have created.
5. If you wish, you can write the part of speech in each blank, so students can practice using appropriate parts of speech. You may want to provide additional guidelines about what words or phrases should go in the blanks.
Assessment:
The best way to assess students' poems is to read them and see if they make sense. If you wrote the parts of speech in the blanks, you can assess the poems based on whether or not the blanks were filled in with appropriate parts of speech.