Poetry is an easy way to incorporate writing into your weekly plans. Once I teach a style of poetry, my students are able to choose it during Work on Writing time. Last week they couldn’t wait to write acrostic poems about topics of their choice. This week they will be learning how to write cinquains.
This is a template I created to help them create their cinquains. It is just one activity in my Winter Writing Activities packet.
This word bank contains many of the words students often ask how to spell. I like to display it in our writing center. You could also print one for each student to keep inside their writing notebook.
Another form of prose that I like to use with my young writers are variations of Important Poems. This is modeled after Margaret Wise Brown’s book titled The Important Poem. Any topic can be used for these poems. I just modify the sentence starters to fit the topic.