Holding up a red box adorned with a red satin bow I remind my students, “Great writing is a gift.”
I’ve discovered that the Japanese form of poetry, haiku, is a perfect way to teach students that practicing poetry will improve their prose.
Any sentence can be transformed to a haiku:
Three lines, word picture in seventeen syllables, haiku are small poems.
Three-lines, word picture
in seventeen syllables,
haiku are small poems.
5 syllables + 7 syllables + 5 syllables = 17 syllables
We begin our brainstorming:
“What do we see on the outside?”
red box
enormous satin bow
sunshine gleaming
“What do we imagine?”
something small inside
something special
I open the box to reveal a single folded piece of notebook paper. The students’ eyes are wide. I unfold the paper and show them the gift is a poem.