With two weeks left before the competition closes we concentrated last Friday on Haikus. They are a message dense poetry form consisting of three lines. Each line has a specific number of syllables. The structure of a haiku poem is:
Line 1: Five syllables
Line 2: Seven syllables
Line 3: Five syllables
Once all the students had organised their thinking around haikus, we added another level of difficulty by introducing tankas for the Grades 5 and 6 students. Tankas have the same number of lines and syllables at the start as a haiku, and have a further two lines each of seven syllables.
Our haikus were good, as you will see, but we need to work more on our tankas.
After that we all moved on to try our hand at free verse. Again we will need to work more on this format.
What follows are a couple of samples of free verse from our students who still need a blog:
Music
Makes me feel happy.
It’s opposite to violence.
It’s so peaceful.

Video games
Makes me think of Minecraft and Call of Duty
Is the opposite of books
Can be described as awesome fun
Makes me feel tired, happy and angry