Welcome to This Lesson:

Nash-ing the Animals

wordplay for writer's notebooks with Ogden Nash's inspiration

This lesson was created by NNWP Teacher Consultant Dena Harrison. Check out all of Dena's online writing lessons by clicking here.

The mentor poet:

Ogden Nash's poetry style inspired this lesson!

This is a writer's notebook-friendly lesson! This lesson has been recently revised to incorporate the creation of a writer's notebook page as part of the learning process. A teacher model of the notebook page can be seen at left. In addition, this lesson has been synthesized with another WritingFix lesson; both lessons together work to create an even better notebook page. Click here to learn about synthesizing this lesson's big idea with another WritingFix lesson's big idea.

A great classroom resource!

Three-Sentence Overview of this Lesson:

Everyone loves the poetry of Ogden Nash!  His silly style and word play entertain people of all ages.  For this mini-lesson, students will discuss some of Mr. Nash’s poetry on animals and write their own short poem(s), imitating his style, in their writer’s notebooks.  Teachers: click here to read the entire lesson plan.

6-Trait Overview for this Lesson:

The focus trait in this writing assignment is word choice; students will have fun playing with words and silly rhymes based on the animals of their choosing.  The support trait in this assignment is idea development; students who are struggling for a spark to get them writing will simply need to click on the interactive button below to find an animal that interests them.  Once they have their chosen animal, they can begin looking at either www.rhymezone.com or a rhyming dictionary for interesting rhyming words that they can utilize in their poems.