Leigh Anne Eck has invited Slicers to come to a blog party about words. Where would poets be without words? I am not a word nerd, but I am a word collector. I love to play with sounds in poetry, especially alliteration. I subscribe to two word-of-the-day emails, and work with gifted students on how words are created and carry different meanings. Words are fun for me.
Here are some suggestions for activities to do with students around word play.
- Definito poem: My friend and fellow Inkling (writing group) created this form. The poem form is 8-12 lines written for children that defines a word. The defined word appears in the last line. I wrote a definito last year during National Poetry Month around the word shenanigans.
2. Wandering Word Poem: I first learned about this word exploration form from Nikki Grimes in this Today’s Little Ditty post. Take a word for a walk, exploring all the ways it can be used, literally and figuratively.
3. Pi-ku: On Pi Day each year (3/14) we write pi-ku which is a poem with the syllable count of pi: 3.14159…
I played with the sounds of p-words.
P-popping
Margaret Simon, pi-ku
words
popularly
drop
perpetuity
How do you “play” with words in your writing? If you work with students, I hope you can use the forms I’ve shared here and just let them play with poetry.
Reflections on the Teche 