Welcome to this Lesson:

Between
Repeated
Lines

using repetitive lines to organize poems about family members

This lesson was presented at the 2007 Pinon Poetry Festival by Northern Nevada Writing Project Teacher Consultant Kim Polson.

The mentor text:

Fathers, Mothers, Sisters, Brothers: A Collection of Family Poems is a nice 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 discussing several poems that feature repeated lines from the collection Fathers, Mothers, Sisters, Brothers: A Collection of Family Poems, student writers will brainstorm ideas for interesting lines to repeat in poetry.  Students will choose one line to repeat in a poem about a family member.  Students will use the repeated line to help them plan and organize a poem about someone they love. Teachers: Click here to see the entire lesson plan.

6-Trait Overview for this Lesson:

The focus trait in this writing assignment is idea development; writers will develop strong and interesting details in between their repeated lines.  The support trait in this assignment is organization; writers will decide how to structure their poems around their repeating line.