Nonsense Poems Lesson Plans

Students write a nonsense poem after analyzing other nonsense poems. In this nonsense poems lesson plan, students analyze how poets take everyday life and language and turn it upside down to create new and strange meanings.

Students explore the limerick poem and analyze the poet Edward Lear. In this limerick poetry lesson, students analyze poetic devices, including rhyme, syllabification, and meter as well as the figures of speech of alliteration, onomatopoeia, and personification. Students analyze a nonsense poem and write their own limericks.

Students recognize poetic devices, including rhyme, syllabification, and meter. They recognize figures of speech, including alliteration, onomatopeia, and personification. Also, students comprehend the characteristics of a nonsense poem. Students write their own nonsense poems.

Reading through a range of different types of poems, learners identify the types of poems, recording distinguishing details of each. They complete multiple readings for fluency and comprehension, then watch the video link from BBC to further explore poetry. In an included worksheet, they find examples of similes, metaphors, alliteration, and rhyming. Students play "rhyme tennis," in which a child states a word and his/her partner generates a rhyming word. 

Students discover different types of poetry. In this poetry lesson, students read haikus, narrative, nonsense, shape, and rhyming poetry. They find the meaning of the poetry and analyze the linguistic devices used by the author. 

First graders become School Ambassadors to highlight important features within the school environment. They create posters to highlight individual rooms, objects, and adults within the building. These posters are the focus of an oral presentation to reaffirm to classmates the unique elements within the school and to orientate any new students, families, or visitors to the school.

Students use various reading strategies to increase fluency. In this reading strategies lesson, students read an article about New Year's Resolutions. Students use read-alouds, choral reading, and buddy reading to increase fluency. Students analyze word similarities and differences and create illustrations of the story.

Young scholars experience and enjoy the sounds of poetry. They perform "sound experiments" with sonnets. Also, they closely read and analyze a sonnet by Shakespeare. Write a brief analysis of how sound affects meaning in a sonnet chosen from the Sonnet Bank.

First graders examine a variety of poems in this six lessons unit. The rhythms, rhyme, and repetition found in many poems are identified. Various reading, writing, and speaking activities help the poetry in this unit "come alive."

Students listen to the reading of an alphabet book. They make up nonsense rhymes that fit the pattern in the book. Students observe pictures of silly rhymes. They write their own silly rhyme book.