haiku for all seasons

Second Grade Work

Haiku is one of my personal favorite poetry genres, rich with images, spare of words. Teaching children to write Haiku is not difficult, and it gives them a little practice with syllabication. It's a great supplement with units on seasons, animals, habitats, or other science topics!

For this lesson, the Haiku writing is only the first part; to me, they are incomplete until illustrated. I have done this lesson with second graders, at-risk students, English language learners of all elementary grades, and with fourth and fifth graders. The basic format of the lesson is identical for each of these groups; differentiations are made for specific needs. For example, a little more work on syllabication with second graders and English-language learners, and a push for more rich and detailed vocabulary with older students.

Second Grade Work

It's important to help students understand that Haiku does not tell a story, but simply presents an image for the reader to visualize. And I always tell students that it's more important to get a clear, beautiful image than to have the exact syllabication, so a little fudging is allowed. 

I always do a shared writing activity first, writing a Haiku with students. I model making a word bank, trying out different words, testing the syllables, and trying substitute words if the syllabication is not correct. But that 5-7-5 pattern can be tricky, especially for little ones, so I do make sure they know it's ok to leave a syllable out or add an extra, if they can't make their image work with the words they want to use.

Fourth Grade Work

Children can write a Haiku pretty quickly if they have an abundant word bank, so I do like to have them try two or three and then choose their favorite for publishing with illustration. Most often, I have students do a torn paper collage for the illustration, but cut paper collage, drawings, and even just a colorful tissue paper collage are just as beautiful.

Illustrated Haiku is a wonderful way to integrate Art with Language Arts, and it also can easily connect to Science as well. Any nature-oriented subject matter is appropriate, and the results make a beautiful, colorful, and maybe even informative bulletin board display.

This lesson, Illustrated Haiku for All Seasons, is available in my Teachers Pay Teachers store for those who would like step-by-step directions.
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the great 3-hour book cover project

I have a friend who teaches third grade, in whose class I have done several art lessons this year. A week or so before our last art session, he asked me if I would teach his students how to make better covers for the books they wrote because the ones they had done were very boring. He asked for a lesson that addressed design, lettering, etc. So here's the result, from yesterday. This was one 3-hour session:

These are the book covers they started with:

This is "roughly" the lesson I gave, with the books I used for samples of exciting, interesting covers. I talked about the layout of each one of these, pointing out how the lettering was done, and how the illustrations and title were placed on the cover:

As they worked, I made some design suggestions. Some of the students had a very hard time with arrangement, with titles smooshed against the top of the page and illustrations along the bottom, so I referred to the books I had brought with me, showing how the titles and illustrations seemed to "go together" rather than be separate from each other. I suggested simplicity, leaving out drawings of complete people (too small on the page) and trying to hone in on something important. Mostly, they were to try to make their book cover interesting so that it would invite someone to want to read their book.

They worked on folded white construction paper, so that when their work was done, we could just slip the whole thing over their book, turning their old book cover into a title page. When everyone was finished, I had them do a little writing about the activity; I asked them to tell what a book cover needs, what they did to make theirs interesting, and then to look up at the "new" wall and tell whose book they might like to read.

I think they did a great job, considering they had only three hours! Their teacher was happy, and so were they!
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