Learning about poetry has so many benefits. Firstly it widens children’s reading horizons. It also gives them an opportunity to explore vocabulary and language, encourages them to create and can inspire them to write. The creativity gives our students space to experiment with words and performing poetry allows them to learn about voice, pitch and volume.
Recently our Year 4 students have been learning about poems which explore form. In particular, they focused on haiku and cinquain poems. The students learned what imagery and onomatopoeia are and that intonation, volume and tone are important in performance of poetry. By the end of this unit, our students had performed poetry, using deliberate intonation, volume and tone changes and written poems, using imagery and onomatopoeia.
Our students also got to learn some rich and interesting vocabulary including wrathful, obscure, seething and deluge. They also compared and contrasted the structures of cinquain and haiku poems such as the ones below. Students delved deeply into aspects such as word choice, line structure, engaging the senses and of course syllable patterns.
This unit of learning has been one of the highlights of this term for students. Our students thrive when given the opportunity to create and this was so evident in the poems they created and in their performances of poetry.
Alan McCarthy
Primary Principal