List Poems

Learning Sequence:

1. On the whiteboard, prepare a simple table as follows:

Adjectives | Nouns | Verbs

You may like to give students a copy of the table or have them to make their own by folding a piece of paper.

2. Begin the activity on the mat, in front of the whiteboard. Share with students that they will be creating list poems about the plants and animals they saw on country.

3. Choose three students to volunteer things (nouns) they observed on country. Populate the middle column with these examples.

4. Choose three more students to volunteer adjectives to describe the nouns, and three to volunteer verbs. Add these to the table, for example:

Adjectives | Nouns | Verbs

Lazy | Lizards | Basking

Tall | Marri Trees | Swaying

Noisy | Cockatoos | Screeching

5. Instruct students to repeat the exercise individually to fill tables with at least 5 of the plants and animals they observed. Once their table is complete, help students to check their spelling and word classifications.

6. Students may then combine the words into Differentiation ideas phrases and create good copies of their poems  with illustrations, for example:

On Country We Saw

Black skinks sleeping

Hungry ants marching

Spiny echidnas hiding

Bright banksias flowering

Fast wrens flitting

Extension ideas

More capable students may like to vary their sentences and try using alliteration and/or creating similes, such as leaves with lines like rivers, or whispering soft skinned eucalypts. They could also extend their phrases by adding more detail, e.g. Black skinks sleeping under shady rocks.

Students could also translate the nouns into Noongar language.

Differentiation ideas

Create cards using different colours for each type of word. Have the students arrange the cards in order. If needed, add simple images or Makaton symbols to the cards.