To start off our quatrain poetry day, I will tell the students what a quatrain is. Quatrains are very similar to couplets only they come in sets of four lines. Having 4 lines allows quatrains to have many different and exciting rhyme patters. For example: aaaa, aaab, abbb, abab, abba, aabb, etc.
I will pass out different poetry books that I have in my class library and also check out some poetry books from our school library. I will give each table (group) a few of the poetry books and ask them to find as many quatrains as they can and determine the rhyme pattern in the poem. We will make it into a game to keep the kids motivated and give each table a point for finding a quatrain poem and correctly identifying the rhyme pattern. Of course I will be the judge. :)
Today we will work on the quatrain poem section of their Pocket Poetry Guides. We will read through the description page on quatrain poems and also the steps on creating quatrain poems. We will then work together as a class to create a quatrain poem together. This will help them understand the steps to creating a quatrain poem so that they can create one on their own.
After we have created our class poem, I will then give students time to create their own quatrain poem. As the students are working I will walk around helping those who need help coming up with ideas or need help in general. Those who finish quickly I will challenge to write another quatrain poem.
During writing time, I always have the kids keep what we call a level 0 voice. Level 0 means that there is no voice at all. It is quiet work time. I feel strongly that when students are asked to write, the environment needs to be one where they can think and not be distracted. Most of the time I encourage collaboration in my classroom, so a level 0 voice is not expected all the time, but it is during writing.
To wrap up our lesson, I will allow students who would like to share their poems to do just that. We have a castle theme in my classroom this year, so when I have the students share their writing they share from our royal reader thrown. It gets kids excited about sharing their work.