This Lesson's Title:

Animals Not to [Verb] with...

writing four four-line animal poems to make your reader giggle

This lesson idea was built for WritingFix after being proposed by Nevada teacher Michelle Dow at an SBC-sponsored inservice class.

The intended "mentor text" to be used when teaching this on-line lesson is the picture book Don't Take Your Snake for a Stroll by Karin Ireland. Before writing, students should listen to and discuss the writing style of this book's author.

Check out Don't Take Your Snake for a Stroll at Amazon.com.

Washoe County teachers, click here to search for this book at the county library.

Three-Sentence Overview of this Lesson:

In Karin Ireland's delightful book, an odd-looking boy takes his unusual pets to common places with uproarious results.  Student writers, inspired by Don't Take Your Snake for a Stroll, will compose four original poems about activities that shouldn't be done with interesting animals.  Poems will follow an a-b-c-b rhyming pattern, and writers will choose their favorite poems and illustrate them. Teachers: Click here to see the entire lesson plan.

6-Trait Overview for this Lesson:

Students can easily spot and replicate Karin Ireland’s sentence fluency pattern, which they can replicate; the trick is...can they capture a rhythm that flows in their original poems.  Students should be strongly encouraged to use select adjectives and verbs to build strong word choice skills in their four-line poems.