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Grades level iconsGrades 5–6
Session time icon1 Session: 1 Hour Each
Genre information iconPoetry
Resource type iconLessons

Rules, Rules, Rules

Mindy Misener, 826michigan
Students learn how poetry can “break the rules” then practice breaking the “rules” in their own poems by challenging the expectations, assumptions, and principles their work set up.
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Lesson Instructions
What Your Students Will Learn

Your students will learn how poems use “rules” to both set and disrupt expectations and be able to recognize the “rules” in their own work and learn how to also break them.

Common Core Standards
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.5.3 Common Core Standards Icon
Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, descriptive details, and clear event sequences.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.5.3.B Common Core Standards Icon
Use narrative techniques, such as dialogue, description, and pacing, to develop experiences and events or show the responses of characters to situations.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.5.3.D Common Core Standards Icon
Use concrete words and phrases and sensory details to convey experiences and events precisely.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.5.5 Common Core Standards Icon
With guidance and support from peers and adults, develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.5.10 Common Core Standards Icon
Write routinely over extended time frames (time for research, reflection, and revision) and shorter time frames (a single sitting or a day or two) for a range of discipline-specific tasks, purposes, and audiences.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.6.3 Common Core Standards Icon
Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, relevant descriptive details, and well-structured event sequences.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.6.3.A Common Core Standards Icon
Engage and orient the reader by establishing a context and introducing a narrator and/or characters; organize an event sequence that unfolds naturally and logically.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.6.3.B Common Core Standards Icon
Use narrative techniques, such as dialogue, pacing, and description, to develop experiences, events, and/or characters.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.6.3.D Common Core Standards Icon
Use precise words and phrases, relevant descriptive details, and sensory language to convey experiences and events.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.6.5 Common Core Standards Icon
With some guidance and support from peers and adults, develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.6.10 Common Core Standards Icon
Write routinely over extended time frames (time for research, reflection, and revision) and shorter time frames (a single sitting or a day or two) for a range of discipline-specific tasks, purposes, and audiences.
Introduction :

Here’s one way I like to read poetry (or just about any literary text): look for the rules that the poem sets up, and then look to see where and how those rules get broken. As a really simple example of what I’m talking about, let’s look at the first two lines of Jim Daniels’ poem “Short-Order Cook”:

“An average joe comes in
And orders thirty cheeseburgers and thirty fries.”

The surprise of the second line comes from the “rule” set up in the first — that the man who comes in is an average joe. Not every poem is so explicit about how it breaks its own rules, of course, but generally speaking, one thing that makes reading poetry so rewarding is figuring out both what the rules are and how the poem plays with them.

This lesson encourages young writers to identify the rules in their own poems and to then experience the joy of either smashing the rules outright or finding a graceful way to reimagine them.

Session 1:

Students will discuss the “rules” of poetry and practice recognizing them in their writing.

You Will Need
  • Paper and writing utensil for each student
  • A “hat” (or any other vessel) full of strips of paper identifying “people”: mother, teacher, scientist, astronaut, cook, grandfather, bus driver, dancer, painter, little brother, etc. Have enough so that each student will receive one.
  • Another “hat” full of strips of paper identifying “places,” either proper nouns (New York City, Mount Everest, your town or state) or general settings (pool, garden, highway, office building, etc.) Again, have one per student
  • Jim Daniel’s poem “Short-Order Cook”
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