Poetry by the Shannon 3rd class poetry 4th class poetry 5th class poetry 6th class poetry

Poetry from 5th class 1. Sinann's Dance Starting with a story and photos 5th class also role-played the story of Sinann and the magical well, and the salmon of wisdom guarded by its arrogant, selfish, bossy, proud guardians. Her dancing with the waters became the Shannon, bringing life to the land. The girls explored the concept of personification and discussed ways that we could tell her story and the story of the Shannon. We also shared photos and our own stories about the Shannon. Collaborative Poetry The girls created a poem in three sections in the words of Sinann. The first three lines began “I remember” The second three lines began with “Once I was .... now I am” The last three lines began “I wish” 2. River Words Starting with an idea ~ Haikus and Cinquains In the first session the Sinann's Dance poems were structured to be narrative poems telling Sinann's own story. We thought we might try some very short poems where every single word had to be chosen with care. First we collected as many river nouns as we could, estuary, weir, stream, brook, etc. These would give us our topics. Collaborative Poetry The class learned about “Cinquains”. These are five lined, unrhymed poems with only eleven words. Line 1: a noun and the subject of the poem Line 2: two adjectives describing the chosen noun Line 3: three verbs ending in “ing”. Line 4: a four word phrase Line 5: one word, a noun, connected with the subject of the poem. Some of the girls chose to undertake “Haikus” instead. Haikus are three lined, unrhymed poems, of seventeen syllables. Line 1: five syllables Line 2: seven syllables Line 3: five syllables 3.Reflections Starting with a pictogram poem and some photos The girls looked at a couple of examples of pictogram poems. One had the words arranged in the form of a water drop. Another was in the shape of a tree reflected in water. The words in the reflected part of the poem were the same but upside-down. One word, the trunk of the tree, linked both. We also looked at photos containing reflection. In the case of one photo, in particular, it was difficult to identify which way up it should go. Collaborative poetry In pairs, the girls tried out some reflection poems for themselves. They chose shapes that would be symmetrical when reflected in water, the setting (or rising) sun, a leaf, a water lily, mountain peaks etc. They created an image of words within the chosen shape which was then reflected below. One word was changed in the reflection to create a ripple in the water. Download the worksheet for these poetry ideas.