Transcript

Teacher: Today were going to do some poetry.  Were going to do my favorite type of poetry.  Does anybody know what my favorite type of poetry is? 

Student: Syllables. 

Teacher: No, my favorite type of poetry is poetry about me.  But before we start poetry, we have to know a couple things about how to build a poem.  So the first word Im going to ask you, is do you guys know what this word means? 

Student: So its like how many spaces are in the word? 

Teacher: How many spaces are in the word.  How many syllables does the word hippopotamus have?  Oh, I see different people counting different ways.  How many syllables is that?  

Student: Five? 

Teacher: Howd you count that? 

Student: You put your hand under your chin, and you say the word hippopotamus, and how many times your chin hits your hand is how many syllables there are. 

Teacher: Alright, lets do that together. 

Teacher and Students: Hip-po-po-ta-mus 

Teacher: Ah, that works.  Now, a mistake I see students making, is they always add a syllable at the end.  So for example, the word what, dont count, dont say, whatah.  Does the word whatah have two syllables?  Doesnt have two?  How many syllables does it have? 

Student: One 

Teacher: Just one.  So were going to write a special kind of poem today called the haiku. And now a haiku poem doesnt necessarily have to rhyme, but there is a rule for syllables that we have to follow.  Our first line has to have five syllables.  So a haiku is a poem with five, seven, and five syllables.  So all you have to worry about is counting the syllables in the words you use.  But were going to make it a little bit trickier because you guys are already experts in parts of speech.  So another word I want to ask you if you know what it means, this word right here.  And what is an adjective? 

Student:  Something that describes a noun? 

Teacher: Something that describes a noun.  So that means were writing a poem about a noun.  Who is a noun that we will be writing about? 

Student: You? 

Teacher: Me, yes, [Teachers Name].  Before we can write our poem, I want to include in the recipe for our poem, three adjectives describing [Teachers Name]. So you guys have to help me out.  Give me three adjectives that describe [Teachers Name]. My goal is now to take these three adjectives and put them in my poem.  Now I have a couple of choices.  I could put one adjective per line; I could put all three adjectives on one line.  But the only rules I have to follow is, I have to stay in the syllables.  So Im going to start with the first one, Mister Singh is, I only have one more, smart.  Were going to check that.   Lets all try that together on the count of three on our chins.

Teacher and Students: Mis-ter-Singh-is-smart. 

Teacher:  Did I get five?  Give me thumbs up if I got five. Excellent.  So now I took care of smart.  Now Ive got to find another way to put in handsome and put in funny.  Could somebody give me a line?  And try to make it seven syllables.  Instead of using Mr. Singh, what else could I say instead?  Its called a pronoun.  Well start our sentence with he.  He-can-be-ver-y-hand-some.  So we got handsome out of the way, now funny.  Remember, we only have five syllables to give a sentence about funny. Student:  He is a funny man. 

Teacher: He-is-a-fun-ny-man, ahh, close. 

Student: He has funny jokes? 

Teacher: He-has-fun-ny-jokes, it works!  What we have done is weve made a haiku about my favorite topic, me! What you are going to do now, is you guys are going to pick a noun, or a person that you know it could be someone in your family, it could be one of your favorite teachers, it could be somebody in your class, and youre going to pick three adjectives to include in a haiku about them... Yesterday we were working on a haiku poem.  I was very impressed with the work that you gave me, including the art. Now, before we share some of this work, who can remind me what a haiku poem is? 

Student: Its a poem with five syllables, seven syllables, and five syllables. 

Teacher: So how many lines in total is a haiku poem? 

Student: In total, there are three lines. Teacher: Three lines.  We included something in our poems.  We kind of mixed something into our poems. 

Student: Adjectives? 

Teacher: Adjectives.  And what is an adjective? 

Student: Something that describes a noun?  

Teacher: Something that describes a noun.  So you guys had to write about a noun, and use some adjectives to describe it.  So I picked a couple of ones that I feel the class might like to hear.  The first one is from [Students Name], and he wrote about his brother Mark. So, [Students Name], can you come up and read it to the class?  And I want you to take note of what adjectives he used, because he actually used more than three. 

Student:  Mark you are strong and tall, Mark oh Mark you are cool, Mark you are so buff.  

Teacher: Okay, so what adjectives did we hear in his poem? 

Student: Strong? 

Teacher: Strong is also an excellent adjective, and I think I heard one more. 

Student: Cool? 

Teacher: Cool, yah. And do you want to show your artwork?

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