Teaching Students to Write Simile Poems

How to Teach Poetry Writing to Students

Sep 8, 2009

To teach students to write a simile poem, the teacher should model, model again, and then guide students through the writing process as they write poetry of their own.

Writing is a building process. As students move from words, to phrases, to sentences, to paragraphs, to stories they can learn to paint vivid images in the readers' minds. One poem that enables students to grasp the role of poetic devices, like rhythm and alliteration, is a poem of similes. By creating this poem, students will learn to create phrases that move the audience.

Examples of Simile Poems

To create effective poetry, students need to study examples, or touchstones. The following is a simple simile poem that will show students the poem's form. The first line is the title or topic. The second is the narrowed focus. The third, fourth, and fifth lines are places the topic occurs. The sixth line is the word like to begin the similes, and the seventh, eighth, and ninth lines complete the similes. The tenth line is an -ing verb that tells what is most important about the topic, and the last line completes the thought that began with the verb.

After studying the example, students need to discuss the qualities of effective poetry as they relate to the poem, Breathtaking Books.

Before students create their own poems, teachers should guide them through a class poem that follows the form of the example. Also, as students follow the writing process to create their poems, the teacher should model each step by writing a poem of her own. As the teacher prewrites, drafts, revises, edits, and publishes, she should think aloud.

Teaching Students to Prewrite

To select their own topics, students should brainstorm things for which they have intensely strong feelings. After selecting a topic, they can narrow the focus by investigating exactly what they hate or love about the subject.

In the next step of prewriting, teachers lead students as they brainstorm many, varied, and unusual places where the topic occurs. Students should begin each place with a preposition and then add effective adjectives and/or adverbs.

Next, they should complete the following sentence: My topic is _______________(soft, magnificent). After completing the sentence with varied ideas, students should select three adjectives that best describe the topic of their poem. Using these adjectives, students create similes to develop clear images. For example, for the topic drugs, a student might choose deadly as one of their descriptions. The simile might be, "like a deadly gun that ends life without warning."

To sum up what is most important about their topic, students should brainstorm -ing verbs that best show what the topic means to them. After selecting their strongest verb, students complete the thought and add adjectives and/or adverbs.

Teaching Students to Draft Simile Poems

Using their prewriting ideas, the teacher and the students can write their poems. As the teacher writes, she should think aloud, using the following questions to help students develop an understanding what a writer might be thinking.

To assist in this activity, the following example can be used by teachers and students:

Around the deep, dark corners of the mind, as it contemplates the impact of a multitude of egg sacs – each brimming with tiny murderesses, fully equipped to embark on a destructive voyage into an unsuspecting, unprepared world

Amidst tangled webs, ever-weaving treacherous traps to ensnare unsuspecting prey

In shadowy places, as their hourglasses count down the hours…the minutes… and… then...the seconds until the next victim’s untimely demise

Before having students revise and edit their poems, teachers should have them look at a non-example. Analyzing a less effective poem will allow students to take their own poems to new heights. In this non-example, some of the pictures are unclear and some of the language needs to be more precise. Have students use likes and wishes to evaluate how to make improvements in this poem.

To teach students to write a simile poem, teachers need to focus on poetic devices and the steps of the writing process. By analyzing an example and a non-example and by modeling throughout the process, teachers can lead students to discover unusual ways to describe the usual. By selecting topics on which they have intensely strong feelings and painting pictured that share these feelings, students can create effective poetry.

The copyright of the article Teaching Students to Write Simile Poems in Lesson Plans & Materials is owned by Jean Kamuf. Permission to republish Teaching Students to Write Simile Poems in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.