Letter Poems Deliver: Experimenting with Line Breaks in Poetry Writing.

Managing Editor, ReadWriteThink, International Reading Association, 800 Barksdale Rd., P.O. Box 8139, Newark, DE 19714-8139. E-mail: [email protected]. For full text: http://www.readwritethink.org/lessons.

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9

Practitioners; Students; Teachers

Elementary Education; Lesson Plans; Letters (Correspondence); Literary Devices; Poetry; Punctuation; Writing Instruction

Letter poems make poetry accessible, meaningful, and fun. Letter poems are also an apt medium for exploring a defining characteristic of poetry--line breaks. Students explore letter poems and experiment with writing letters as poems, using the placement of line breaks to enhance rhythm, sound, meaning, and appearance. During the two 40-minute sessions, students in grades 3-5 will: explore and discuss various poems to demonstrate a growing awareness of how line breaks affect rhythm, sound, meaning, impact, and appearance, and can substitute for punctuation in letter poems; and demonstrate their understanding of line breaks and how format creates dramatic effect by writing their own letter poems. The instructional plan, lists of resources, student assessment/reflection activities, and a list of National Council of Teachers of English/International Reading Association (NCTE/IRA) Standards addressed in the project are included. A rubric, "Dear Grandma" as letter and poem, and a sample list of letter or e-mail addresses and purposes are attached. (RS)

2004

ED480885