Lesson plans that use common nursery rhymes teach students the importance of syntax, connotation, metaphor, and other poetic devices in the writing and analysis of poetry

April is National Poetry Month! This is the perfect time to teach students how to read and write poetry. However, students are often intimidated by poetic forms and lack the confidence to analyze poetry. Modern poetry can be a particularly tough sell if students have a limited understanding of the forms and devices that poets choose for an intended effect.

Re-introduce students to memorized nursery rhymes to give names to poetic forms. When students understand how word choices, line breaks, rhyme (or lack thereof), and rhythm impact even the simplest of poems, they will feel more confident reading and writing poetry on their own

Nursery Rhyme Poetics

Content Areas: poetry analysis, poetry writing

Key Words: figurative language, simile, metaphor, rhyme scheme, couplet, meter, trochee, denotation, connotation

Class Activity:

• First, write a commonly known rhyme on the board or overhead projector.

Example:

Twinkle, twinkle little star,

How I wonder what you are,

Up above the world so high,

Like a diamond in the sky,

Twinkle, twinkle little star,

How I wonder what you are.

• Spend some time discussing what poetic devices are present in the original. For instance, you might point out that this traditional nursery rhyme creates rhythm through the repetition of the word “twinkle” and through rhyming couplets that create an AABBAA rhyme scheme. Likewise, each of the seven syllable lines are written in Trochaic form (a repetition of a two-syllable stressed, unstressed pattern), a common metrical foot in English nursery rhymes. The rhythm and rhyme are predictable so that the piece is quite easy to memorize. Finally, a simile in line four compares the little star to a diamond.
• Even if you have to explain or review vocabulary such as couplet, trochee, or simile, the simplistic form of the nursery rhyme is familiar and will encourage confidence in your students.
• Now ask your students to provide original alternatives to the original words and phrasing. Again, write the resulting poem on the board or overhead transparency.

Example:

Glittering, particle of light

I question

Soaring above the world

Gem of the heavens

Shining small glimmer

I inquire

Questions for Discussion:

1. How do the word choices change the images and meaning of the familiar nursery rhyme? Do the changes tell a new story or paint a new mental picture?
2. Are there any lines that feel awkward? Why? How can these lines be changed to make them “feel” better?
3. Does the changed poem have a clear mood? Would other word choices establish a clearer tone?
4. Can students change the poem again for an entirely different feeling?

• Now work with students to once again change the poem.
• Discuss how meaning and imagery changes when the words and lines are manipulated.

Example:

Glittering particle

Shining

Light in sky,

Questions,

Earth’s eagle

Soaring

Gem of sky

Shining glimmer

I inquire

Questions for Discussion:

1. Note how the words at the ends of line sometimes create duplicitous meaning. For instance, discuss the word “particle” as used in this poem. Is the “glittering particle shining,” so that the word “shining” is used as a verb, or are the “glittering particle” and “light of the sky” two noun phrases describing the same star? Does the star have a question, or is the star the question?
2. How do the word choices change the tone and the meaning of the poem? Why are denotation and connotation both so important to poetry analysis?

Group Activity:

• Now break students into pairs in order to create their own original poetry from other well known nursery rhymes. Ask students to neatly write the resulting poetry on transparencies so that they can be shared with the class.

Related activities: garden poetry, figurative language activities