Catch a Little Rhyme: A Lesson Based on Eve Merriam's Poem

The 13-page lesson, "Catch a Little Rhyme," is a fun activity to do with 5th to 8th-grade students while reinforcing poetic language and technique.  In this lesson, students will write a poem, learn how to revise it, and then present it in small groups, or to the whole class in a poetry slam. The lesson includes detailed lesson plans for how to write the poem, how to teach students collaborative revision, and how to conduct a poetry slam. The lesson can take anywhere from 2 to 3 days depending on whether you do the poetry slam.

Eve Merriam’s poem, “Catch a Little Rhyme,” is a perfect introduction to writing rhyming poetry.  For some students, rhyming comes naturally.  But for others, rhyming in a poem is a struggle.  Some students will attempt to force a rhyme or lose the rhythm of the poem in order to create the rhyme.  Students often get stuck and write very simple rhymes.  This lesson teaches students how to write a rhyming poem and how to avoid the pitfalls of a forced, trite, or cliched rhyme.  In addition, it’s a great poem for discussing the importance of verbs and personification, and how an author's word choice determines the mood and tone of the poem. Finally, it’s just a fun poem, and although students often find it challenging to write the poem, in the end, they have fun and enjoy sharing their poems and listening to other students’ poems.  Students enjoy this activity because it is, as many have told me, fun to write a silly poem that is challenging structurally. 

The lesson includes:

--a detailed lesson plan with learning targets and objectives aligned to the Common Core Standards

--a link to Eve Merriam's poem (because of copyright laws, the poem is not included)

--an original template using Eve Merriam's poem as the basis

--student examples

--group revision worksheet