This Lesson's Title:

Poems of Condition

a how-to-be poem
that is built with conditional clauses

This lesson was created for WritingFix after being proposed by Northern Nevada Writing Project Consultant Rebekah Foster.

This on-line writing prompt is based on the poetry of Rudyard Kipling. Before writing to this assignment, students should hear and discuss the poetry of this great poet.

Click here to learn more about this poet.

If you are a Washoe County teacher, click here to search for a collection of works by this poet that you can check out from the county library.

Three-Sentence Overview of this Lesson:

In Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If,” the author strings together several adverb clauses in order to tell the reader what he or she needs to do to grow up and become “a Man, my son!” While describing all the conditions that need to be met, Kipling finds a balance between contrasting character traits. Students will practice writing poems using the conditional “if” clause while guiding the reader on how to be a certain person. Teachers: click here to read the entire lesson plan.

6-Trait Overview for this Lesson:

The focus trait for this writing assignment is sentence fluency; students will practice creating and punctuating adverb clauses as sentence starters. The support trait for this writing assignment is idea development; students will balance contrasting character traits and in the conditional mood.