Poetry Activities – a Five Senses Approach
Lesson Plans for Senses-based Poetry Writing Ready for a Field Trip
Feb 2, 2009
Poetry writing is a difficult task to teach. There is a great deal of resistance and also a tendency for students to think poetry must rhyme – hence the production of awful "birthday card" verse. This “Come to Your Senses” exercise is senses poetry that helps by-pass that problem.
Value of a 5 Senses approach to Poetry Writing
A good poem, as well as being cerebral, taps into as many senses as possible to help the reader/listener re-create the poet’s experience. When the senses are made the very basis of the poem, it’s impossible for them to be overlooked in the effort to get words and meaning onto the page.
This exercise uses a formula to help students focus on a sensual expression of the world around them. It can be left in formulaic form or can be used as the basis for developing better lines.
Age Group for Poetry Writing Lesson
Suitability for these poetry lesson plans – high school, college and adult education. It could be adapted as upper primary school poetry activities, as well.
Pre-Writing Activities
Ensure that students have a clear understanding of what the five senses are.
Explain that the senses are one's means of experiencing the world, and hence the best means to convey that experience to others in writing.
Conduct some 5 senses activities.
Read a few short extracts from a variety of poems that make use of the senses. Have the class identify which of their senses are being tapped.
Field Trip for Poetry Writing
While this exercise could be conducted in the classroom, it is better carried out on a field trip or excursion, even if that field trip is into the playground, the gymnasium while another group is using it, or onto the sports field.
It can be a field trip specifically organised for a poetry writing exercise, or can be incorporated in a field trip that was designed for another purpose such as visiting an historical site or conducting an ecological study in a forest or park.
Poetry Lesson Preparation
Create an A4 sheet headed “Come to Your Senses”
Space these headings evenly down the page:
- I can hear:
- I can see:
- I can smell:
- I can feel:
- I can taste:
- A summary of how I feel about this place:
Prepare sufficient copies of this sheet for the whole class.
Lesson Plan Procedure
- Discuss activity with class before they are allowed to spread out
- Take class to suitable area – open parkland, shopping mall, forest, seaside, school playground
- Ensure students spread out, so that distracting contact and talking is minimised
- Students’ instructions are to sit somewhere (perhaps in yoga pose), close eyes and run through all senses except sight, finding out what they can detect about their surroundings without vision.
- After 5 minutes (or as soon as teacher feels boredom has set in), suggest they look around and register surroundings with sight.
- Distribute worksheet, ensure everyone has working pen/pencil, and set students to write.
- Students write at least one full phrase for each sense and are encouraged to write more than one phrase. (The sense of taste can be struck out, if it seems unlikely that students will encounter something to taste.
- Teacher checks that students are writing and can make suggestions to slow responders.
Post-Field Trip Classroom Activity
On returning to the classroom, or at next lesson, students are encouraged to edit what they have written, arrange the phrases in any order, and if they have written more than one phrase under any heading, to select one or two of the best. The finished poem consists of what the student wrote after the heading. The heading is not included.
Students can read out their compositions to the class, or teacher read them for effect … to suitable background music.
Sample Result of Poetry Activity
The valley hides under a grey blanket
Wood smoke stings my nose
Up on this hill, a chill wind tugs my scarf
Someone down there is chopping wood
They tell me my grandfather lived here once.
Clearly, there will be a range of results from minimal effort/minimum word count through to enthusiastic creative writing. Most students seem pleased with what they have been "tricked" into producing. Students are also amazed at how many different takes there are on one scene. If someone is looking for tried-and tested lesson plans for poetry, this is one of the best poetry ideas around.
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