Diamond Poems

Last week, all the children did was choose a wild animal they liked and try to draw it, studying still images and pre-approved YouTube videos clips. This week we began by watching this smashing little weasel film and talking about 'what made weasels weasly'. We identified verbs like bound, leap, spring, and compared the weasel's shape to other long thin things, and discussed the personality of the animal, how it was fierce and energetic and courageous.

Next I gave out blank templates (see below) and the group wrote a poem about a weasel together on the board using that format. 

That was our opportunity to quickly revise nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs. 

I had made three templates available: the one below was aimed at confident Y4, 5 and 6 students, while there was a shorter one for younger children, and finally a simple diamond outline to fill in with whatever words the children liked if they didn't feel up to identifying with the grammar. 

Here's a poem about a 'devilish' shrew. Below, a squirrel is described as a 'fugitive' which I think is lovely.

One of the advantages of very short, structured writing is that it gives the children the confidence to edit their own work.

And if any errors are made by the children in classifying parts of speech - if an adverb's accidentally been placed in the adjective line - that doesn't matter because the finished poem will still hang together.