One mini-lesson that I have done is on finding a strong ending for a poem. For this lesson I used two poems I wrote as a shared writing with my language group four years ago. Both are about spiders, and they use many of the same words. As a group we came up with words and phrases that came to our minds when we thought about spiders. Then I recorded as we put together a poem using those words and phrases. One poem ends with the phrase "Long legs weaving, A beautiful web!" We agreed that was a strong ending for the poem which we titled Cool Spider. Then I took some of the words from the end of that poem and put it at the beginning of a second poem. Drawing from the same brainstormed words and phrases, we completed the second poem. It ended with "A little bit scary." I asked if we could find a stronger way to end the poems. One student suggested, "I think I'll go now!" The others liked this ending, so the new poem became Scary Spider. Two poems, similar words, yet they leave the reader with very different feelings. Here they are:
Cool Spider
Big fuzzy spider
Creepy and crawly
A little bit scary.
But what is it doing?
Long legs weaving
A beautiful web!
Scary Spider
Big fuzzy spider
Long legs weaving
A beautiful web
But creepy and crawly
A little bit scary.
I think I’ll go now!
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