Introducing Poetry: A visit from three talented 5^th graders

Poetry can be a difficult genre for kids.  Kids don’t always think they will like to write poems, but we do a lot of FUN things with poetry to help them fall for it!  Last year, I had a group of boys that LOVED to rap.  They spent a lot of time writing their raps – even when they had free time to do anything else!  To introduce our poetry unit, I invited some 5^th graders to perform a rap they wrote for the occasion.  It.  Was.  Magical.  The rap – about a stegosaurus and a t-rex, was full of rhymes and facts about the dinosaurs.  The kids loved it.  We wrote poems about food (after they write a poem based on the lesson we have done, they are free to write more poems on their own).  They must illustrate their poems and should always give credit to poets, if they copy poems in their notebooks.  Otherwise, the rules are pretty flexible.  Of course, we will spend time learning specific types of poems, where we will follow their specific rules.  But, for right now, we are having fun and creating!