Welcome to this Lesson:

Ballads about Relatives

four-line stanzas that
explore a family member

This lesson was presented at the 2007 Piñon Poetry Festival by Northern Nevada Writing Project Teacher Consultant Heather Clark.

The mentor text:

Family Reunion is a great anthology of poems about different families and family members. A great mentor text to inspire your students to find poetry in their own families.

Three-Sentence Overview of this Lesson:

After looking through Mary Quattlebaum's Family Reunion, student writers will focus on the two poems from the collection that are ballads.  Students will brainstorm family members and rhyming words they associate with them, and they will prepare to write ballads about those family members.  Students' goal should be a series of four-line ballads about one family member, or four or five short ballads about four or five different family members. Teachers: Click here to see the entire lesson plan.

6-Trait Overview for this Lesson:

The focus trait in this writing assignment is sentence fluency; fitting original words into the ballad's rhythm scheme is a great way to develop sentences that flow.  The support trait in this assignment is word choice; encourage your students to choose interesting words to rhyme with as they compose their four-line poems.