Page 143 - Resources and Support for the Online Educator

74 Chapter 4: Poetry

of a biopoem or histopoem has a prescribed focus, guiding students to
summarize the information from a variety of perspectives. Biopoems and
histopoems are great to use in social studies, science, and with literature.
Blackout poems are artistic creations that repurpose a text into a blend
of words and images. Writers keep visible the words on a page to use and
then black out or obscure the words that are not needed, sometimes with
elaborate illustrations.
Found poems are created by rearranging words from an existing text to
create new meaning. Found poems are like word collages.
Free verse is a poem that does not follow any rhyme scheme, meter,
rhythm, or specific form. There are no rules with free verse poems.
Haiku is traditional Japanese poetry that follows a specific format.
These seventeen-syllable poems are often about nature and don’t rhyme.
Haiku’s three lines follow a five-, seven-, and five-syllable pattern.
Limericks have strong rhythms and rhymed verses. These five-line poems
are often funny or tell a joke. The Poetry Foundation identifies the rhyme
scheme of limericks as “AABBA, in which the first, second and fifth line
rhyme, while the third and fourth lines are shorter and share a different
rhyme” (n.d.).
Odes celebrate a person or thing and date back to antiquity. In Greek, ode
means to sing.
Sonnets come in many styles, but all typically have fourteen lines
written in iambic pentameter. The rhyme scheme depends on the type
of sonnet. For instance, Shakespearean sonnets have a rhyme scheme of
ABAB CDCD EFEF GG across three quatrains (four lines in a group) and a
couplet (two rhymed lines) at the end.

Artifacts and tangible items, such as photographs, objects, other poems or
quotes, can inspire students when writing poetry. Students can model other
poems, mimic examples, and write about their own observations, experi-
ences, and memories. Writer Lillian Morrison pointed out, “Writing poetry
can be a way of pinning down a dream; capturing a moment, a memory, a
happening. It’s a way of sorting out your thoughts and feelings” (as cited in

Excerpted from Chapter 4, “Poetry: Traditional, Visual, Makerspace.”

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