Stop and Smell the Roses Under the Poet-Tree!

Poetry is always such a great unit to work on in First Grade. We have so many creative, artistic and enthusiastic students ready to dabble in the wonders of poetry! Right now, we are writing poems during our writing unit, and also reading poetry for our reading unit! The connection between reading and writing poetry is great. It gives us the opportunity to dive in deep to the many different characteristics of poetry.

After having introduced different types of poems over the last few weeks, we are now writers of Haikus, Cinquains, list poems and shape poems. We can identify the different characteristics of each type of poem, and we learned that not all poems need to rhyme!

Today we added a great ingredient to this poetry pie! We started thinking about words, objects and phrases through the use of our 5 senses. We used bins filled with objects to explore and observe through each of our senses. Here are some photos of us during the exploration!





Now that we are familiar with our senses and how to use them to explore the world around us, we are ready to write from a whole new perspective. Adding descriptions of smell, taste, touch, and more will make our reader imagine and visualize exactly what we are describing in our words.


Poetry doesn't always mean the same thing to everyone. Something that one person visualizes from a description might not be the same observation another student makes. That's the beauty of poetry. There is no right or wrong answer!