Lesson video

Hi, everyone.

It's me, Miss Chu.

Welcome to today's lesson.

In today's lesson, we are going to be writing a free verse poem based on one of John Lyons' poems called "Carnival Dance Lesson".

This poem is a really fun and energetic poem and it has a lot of rhythm to it, so we need to try and emulate that in our free verse poem.

So when you are ready, let's get started.

Today's lesson outcome is I can write a free verse poem inspired by John Lyons' poem, "Carnival Dance Lesson".

The keywords are here.

My turn, then your turn: free verse, rhyme and rhythm.

Well done.

That was beautifully said.

Free verse is a form of poetry that does not adhere, that means it doesn't stick to regular metre or rhyme patterns, allowing for greater flexibility and freedom of expression.

Rhyme is the similarity of sounds between the ending syllables of words, creating a musical quality and pattern in a poem.

And rhythm refers to the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables, creating a musical and rhythmic flow in a poem.

The lesson outlined for today is split into two parts: preparing to write a free verse poem, and then writing a free verse poem.

So let's start preparing.

Free verse refers to a type of poetry that doesn't follow a specific rhyme scheme or structure.

It is composed of a more natural rhythm and it relies on the poet's creativity rather than following rules of traditional poems. There are several types of poetry that are beyond free verse.

So free verse poems aren't the only types of poems that we have.

We have an acrostic poem.

So an acrostic poem is where the first letter of each line spells out a word when you read it vertically.

We also have poems called haiku, which is the traditional Japanese form consisting of three lines with a syllable pattern of 5-7-5.

Often on the theme of nature.

A limerick is a five-line humorous poem with a very specific rhyme scheme.

So the rhyme would be A-A, B, B, A.

So we're looking at the last sound of that line.

So the first two lines would rhyme with each other.

So that's AA.

And then the next two lines rhyme with each other.

And then the final line in that verse would rhyme with the first two lines.

That's how that structure works.

True or false? There is a specific rhyme scheme in free verse poems. True or false? Pause the video and have a think.

Okay, so let's point together at the right answer.

It is false.

Yeah, you're right.

Free verse poems rely on the poet's creativity rather than following rules of traditional poems, or free verse poems rely on a traditional Japanese form.

What do you think? Yeah, it is that it relies on creativity rather than following any type of rule.

Let's review what theme and tone are.

The theme is the subject or main idea or the topic of the piece of art or literature.

Themes can be diverse, that means varied and they can encompass a wide range of subjects, from love, nature, and family to emotions or personal experiences.

The tone, which is the mood or the feeling that you get from a poem, is the overall mood, style or feeling.

The tone of a poem can be inferred by the reader.

Inferring or inference is to work something out from evidence and reasoning rather than from explicit statements or from what it explicitly says in the poem.

Let's read "Carnival Dance Lesson" now.

Are you ready? "Carnival Dance Lesson" "One two three, you can dance like me.

With arms held high, that's how you start, Let the music touch your heart.

One two three, you can dance like me.

You must be relaxed, I insist, wind with the rhythm, jerk your waist.

Shake up, jump up.

Bacchanal! Lehwe celebrate, is carnival.

One two three, you can dance like me.

Jump in the band Let us have some fun, happy times have now begun.

One two three, you can dance like me.

Boodum-di-dum-di-dum! You can dance like me." What did you think? Did you enjoy listening to that poem? I really liked how it had a rhythm and it made me feel like I was in the carnival and I was listening to the music.

John Lyons writes and paints a lot about carnival.

You can see here he's included illustrations to bring the poem to life and to enhance the words in the poem.

Now, I would like you to watch John Lyons read "Carnival Dance Lesson".

Enjoy <v ->"Carnival Dance Lesson" written in nation language.

</v> Nation language is like a patois.

It's not English as spoke as written, but English is spoken in Trinidad.

"Carnival Dance Lesson" "One two three, you can dance like me.

With arms held high that's how you start, Let deh music touch your heart.

One two three, you can dance like me.

Must be relaxed, I insist, wine me de rhythm, shake your waist.

Shake up, jump up.

Bacchanal! Lehwe celebrate, carnival.

One two three, you can dance like me.

Jump in the band, let's have some fun, happy times have now begun.

One two three, you can dance like me.

Boodum-di-dum, boodum-di-dum! Boodum-di-dum, boodum-di-dum! You can dance like me.

<v ->I'd like you to think about what the main themes</v> and the tone of the poem "Carnival Dance Lesson" are.

I'm going to pause the video and I'd like you to speak to the person next to you and think about these two questions.

Off you go.

I loved listening and popping around and hearing what everyone had to say.

I heard some people saying that the main themes are carnival dancing, music and fun.

Do you agree? Thumbs up if you agree.

Yes, absolutely.

The main theme of this poem is about carnival dancing and generally having fun.

It has a positive, happy, and energetic tone.

There is a lot of movement described in the poem.

Thumbs up if you agree.

Thumbs to the side if you're not sure or thumbs down if you disagree.

Yeah, I agree.

It definitely has a lot of movement.

It talks about arms being held high.

"That's how you start.

You've got to wind the rhythm.

Shake up, jump up." So there's a lot of movement in this poem.

Let's look at the rhyme and rhythm of the poem again.

"One, two, three, you can dance like me.

With arms held high, that's how you start, let the music touch your heart.

One, two, three, you can dance like me.

You must be relaxed, I insist, wine with the rhythm, jerk your waist.

Shake up, jump up, Bacchanal! Let we celebrate is carnival.

One, two, three, you can dance like me." And I'm going to pause there and just think about the rhyme.

So now look at the last word or the last sound in every line.

And where can we see the words that do rhyme? Three, me, start, heart, three, me.

And then it skips and it's bacchanal, carnival, three, me.

So yes, this poem does have rhyme.

Let's just focus now on this refrain.

"One, two, three, you can dance like me." This is a repeated rhyming refrain and it's repeated three times in just in this part 'cause we haven't looked at the other part of the poem yet.

But within this part that is repeated three times.

So it's called a repeated rhyming because it rhymes.

Refrain.

So can you say that? "Repeated rhyming refrain." Well done and repeat.

A repeated rhyming refrain is a line or a set of lines that recurs throughout a poem.

And the point of it is that it emphasises the main idea or the emotion that you get from the poem.

And this repetition sort of helps to make it more memorable for the reader and it adds a kind of sense of unity to the whole piece of writing.

Let's have a look at the rest of the poem now, "Jump in the band, let us have some fun, happy times have now begun.

One two three, you can dance like me.

Boodum-di-dum, boodum-di-dum! You can dance like me." So let's have a look now again at the rhyming structure.

Fun, begun, three, me and then it goes back to me.

So yes, it does follow.

It does continue throughout the rest of the poem.

And then we've got that repeated rhyming refrain again.

"One, two, three, you can dance like me." And then again, finally at the end, "You can dance like me." And what is this part here? "Boodum-di-dum, boodum-di-dum." What do you think that is? What it shows me is that the heartbeat of the people at carnival is really intrinsically linked with the music and the feeling of carnival.

Let's think about what we could include in our free verse poem inspired by John Lyons' "Carnival Dance Lesson".

We could include in ours a repeated rhyming refrain, just like how he did.

So his was "One, two, three, you can dance like me." We could maybe think of our own one.

We could maybe have a repeated beat too, like a rhythm, like how he had "Boodum-di-dum, boodum-di-dum." And also we need to include rhyme and rhythm.

"Shake up, jump up, Bacchanal! Lehwe celebrate is carnival." So we need to think about a few rhyming words in our verses as well.

What should be considered in a free verse poem based on "Carnival Dance Lesson"? Should there be any rhyme at all? No rhyme at all? A repeated rhyming refrain, rhythm and beat, a specific rhyme scheme like a limerick? Which one of these do we need to think about using an our free verse poem? Pause the video and have a think.

Okay, hopefully you've had a think.

So, it definitely needs to have a repeated rhyming refrain because that's similar to "Carnival Dance Lesson".

So let's think of one for that.

We want to also have a bit of rhythm in our poem and a beat.

We want to include a beat 'cause he had that in his poem.

Do we want a rhyme scheme like a limerick? No.

'cause we don't want to follow a specific set, a structure of a rhyme scheme.

So we're not going to tick that one.

And also no rhyme at all? No, we need to make sure there's some rhyme in our poem.

Let's remind ourselves what we could describe about carnival.

So when we describe scenes or experiences, we like to use our senses.

So the sense of sight, sound, smell, touch, and maybe how we feel and taste.

So things that we could include about what we could see at carnival: other people, we could describe the colours, the costumes, the movement.

We could say that we could hear the music, the laughter, the chatter.

Also, we could smell meat cooking, the flowers, popcorn, maybe.

We could taste food and drink and we could maybe touch costumes, people, instruments.

And again, the feeling of emotions.

This is an example of a vocabulary map generated using our five senses.

So for what we could hear, we could say that we could hear the energetic, melodic tunes that echoed through the streets, and we could smell the fragrant, sticky, caramel popcorn.

Maybe one example of what we could see is the vibrant, colourful costumes that were adorned with feathers and sequins.

And then for taste, we could say, we could taste the sweet, rich, shaved ice treats and fruit juices.

And then perhaps for touch, we could maybe, this is more of a sense, I guess we could sense and touch the vibrant pulsation of rhythmic vibrations.

So it's not something we can actually physically touch, but we can feel it through our bodies.

Let's do an I do and then you do.

Let's practise writing a sentence using one of the senses from the vocabulary map.

So I'm going to use the sense of taste.

So I'm going to use sweet, rich, shaved ice treats and fruit juices and that scaffold there to help me to write a sentence.

So I've got "hmm, comma, mm, ice treats." So I'm going to think of two adjectives that I could just take them straight from that plan there.

And I'm going to turn it into a sentence.

Okay, I think I've got one.

Sweet, delicious, shaved ice treats were sold on every street.

"On every street corner," maybe I could add to it.

Now it's your turn.

You are going to practise writing a sentence using one of the senses from the vocabulary map.

You're going to use the same sense of taste.

And you can use my ideas of sweet, rich, shaved ice treats and fruit juices and use the scaffold there.

You could use "mm, comma, mm, fruit juices" or you could use "mm, comma, mm, ice treats," or you could come up with one of your own.

I want you to pause the video and have a think about what your sentence could be.

Okay, well done for giving that such a good go.

I saw some people writing things like this.

"Refreshing, cold fruit juices quenched the thirst of party revellers." Your task now is to use a five senses vocabulary map to write a simple sentence and a compound sentence about carnival.

You can use all of these ideas or you can come up with your own ideas.

Here is an example of a sentence that I've written.

"The smell of sweet, sticky caramel popcorn permeated the air." This is an example of another one that I've written.

"Energetic calypso music boomed through the streets." Use the sentence scaffolds here.

"The mm mm", so you are thinking of two adjectives to write your expanded noun phrase and then your main clause.

And then for your second sentence, you need to think of the same, the expanded noun phrase, the two adjectives with your noun, main clause.

And then you're going to join it with "and" to think of another main clause.

Pause the video and give this a go.

Well done.

That was fantastic.

Let's look at some examples of what people had on their mini whiteboards.

I saw "The vibrant, colourful costumes dazzled the rowdy crowds at carnival." Brilliant, well done.

And then I saw someone else write for their compound sentence, "The performers were adorned with colourful feathers and sparkly sequins." So that's their first main clause.

That's their first simple sentence.

And "They danced joyfully in the electrifying atmosphere." Now that we've prepared to write a free verse poem, we're now actually going to write our free verse poem, which is super exciting.

In order to do that, we need to follow the success criteria because that will help us to write the best free verse poem.

I have described different aspects of carnival using my five senses, so I'm going to use my sense of sight, sound, taste, smell, touch.

And I've carefully chosen descriptive vocabulary.

So I've chosen some ambitious vocabulary to write some expanded noun phrases as well.

I've included a repeated rhyming refrain and I've considered the rhythm and beat of my poem.

So there's lots here to think about.

But we are really ready to do this.

What I'd like you to do is I'd like you to watch me write the first part of my free verse poem, inspired by John Lyons' Carnival Dance Lesson".

And I'm going to show you how to use the success criteria to help me to write my free verse poem.

And then you are going to have a go.

Are you ready? Okay.

My success criteria is stuck in, I've got the poem in front of me.

I've described different aspects of carnival, so I'm going to do that throughout my poem.

I've chosen descriptive vocabulary, so I'm going to refer to my vocabulary map for that.

And I've included a repeated rhyming refrain.

So I think I might start with that because in John Lyons' poem, he's got "One, two, three, you can dance like me" as his first, the introduction to his poem.

So the first two lines of his poem is his rhyming refrain.

So that's what I'm going to start mine off with.

So his is "One, two, three, you can dance like me." It's got a rhyming refrain.

So I've got to think of something that's similar, but I don't wanna do "One, two, three" because that would be copying his.

So I might do "Three, two, one", and then I've got to think of something that would rhyme with one.

So let me start with that.

So.

"Three, two, one.

." And it's about carnival, so maybe something about having fun.

"Come and have some fun." "One" and "fun", that does rhyme.

So I'm going to use that as my repeated rhyming refrain.

I've got to make sure that I'm repeating this later on in the poem.

What else does he have that we could use? So he's got "with arms held high, that's how you start.

Let deh music touch your heart." So he's got some movement there.

I think I need to include some movement in my second verse.

So instead of "arms held high", I might do jump high, jump low.

Yes, "Jump high, jump low.

Dance with me." It maybe we could have something.

Me.

I've got to think of something to rhyme with me.

It is time for us, something about me.

Flea.

party, maybe party.

"It's time for us to join the party." "Jump high, jump low, dance with me, it's time for us to join the party." Let me see what else he had.

What did he have in his.

"Let deh.

." So instead of "the", he wrote, "deh".

So let's copy that because then it's more in line with his poem and you can hear the accent.

"It is time for us to join deh party.

Let's repeat our rhyming refrain.

"Three, two, one, come and have some fun." What is his next verse? "You must be relaxed, I insist.

Wine with the rhythm, jerk your waist." So again, he's got movement in there, but I think what I might do is I'm going to refer to my vocabulary map, which is over here.

And I'm going to just have a look at what things I can see and hear and maybe feel.

So my five senses map.

So I'm gonna say something about the feathered costumes, the tunes, and feeling the beat.

So my first line could be "Feathered costumes.

Oops, "costumes everywhere." And remember that first, he doesn't rhyme the end of the first line.

So "You must be relaxed, I insist.

Wine with the rhythm, jerk your waist." So that one doesn't actually rhyme.

So I don't need to make mine rhyme, but I think I'm going to try and make the last two lines rhyme.

"Melodic tunes.

." so something about what I can hear.

"echo the streets." Something that rhymes with streets.

I don't have to make it rhyme, but I want to.

"Melodic tunes echo the streets.

." Streets, feet, beat.

Oh, something about beat.

Every, uh, feel the beat.

"Everyone can feel.

." And then instead of the, I'm gonna put "deh" again.

"deh beat." "Feathered costumes everywhere, melodic tunes echo the streets, everyone can feel the beat." "Three, two, one, come and have some fun." So I'm gonna repeat that bit again.

"Three, two, one, come and have some fun," exclamation mark.

And let me have a look at my senses map again for a minute.

So I've included what I can see and what I can feel and hear.

I think now I want to include something about what I can maybe smell or taste.

Yeah, so cooking meat, caramel.

So oh, meat, sweet.

Meat and sweet rhyme.

Oh, so I'm going to do, I need to include something about meat and sweet.

Okay.

Maybe how everyone feels.

I might say excitement, "Excitement and energy.

loud.

The sizzle.

Maybe sizzle, sizzle.

"Sizzle.

." I'm going to use repetition.

"Sizzle sizzle of cooking meat", or cooking barbecue meat.

I'm just gonna use meat there.

And then what's gonna rhyme with meat? Something about sweet "Caramel popcorn smells so sweet." "Excitement and energy loud, the sizzle sizzle of cooking meat, caramel popcorn smells so sweet." Excite.

I think I might repeat loud as well, just to emphasise how loud it was.

"Excitement and energy loud loud, the sizzle sizzle of cooking meat, caramel popcorn smells so sweet." And then I could say "Three, two, one, come and have some fun." But actually what I might do here is I might include a beat.

So what did John Lyons has as his beat? "Boodum-di-dum! Bodum-di-dum!" It's like a heartbeat.

"Boodum-di-dum! Bodum-di-dum!" I'm going to use a similar beat.

Maybe I'll do "Bidi-dum-dum, dum-dum." "Bidi-dum-dum-dum-dum." So I'm going to do "Bidi-dum-dum dum.

Bidi-dum-dum-dum-dum.

Bidi-dum-dum.

Bidi-dum-dum.

Yeah, that's it.

"Bidi-dum-dum-dum.

"Bidi-dum-dum-dum." And I'm going to repeat that because he does, he repeats his twice there.

"Bidi-dum-dum-dum.

And then his final, I think I'm going to stop there.

His final line was, "You can dance like me." So what's my final one? "Come and have some fun." So I'm going to use that as my final line.

"Come and have some fun." And then that is the end of my poem.

Let me just check that I've described.

Have I described different aspects of carnival? Yes.

I described what I can see, hear, feel, what I can smell, maybe taste.

So definitely I can tick that one off.

And I've chosen descriptive vocab.

I've said feathered.

I could probably add feathered and sequined costumes.

I can add, come back and edit.

But at the moment I'm really happy with what I've got.

I've included a repeated rhyming refrain.

So one, two, three, three times I've done it.

And then at the end, the final line, and then the rhythm and beat.

So I've got a beat here.

"Bidi-dum-dum-dum! Bidi-dum-dum-dum!" So that's my beat.

And then the rhythm, "Three, two, one, Come and have some fun.

Jump high, jump low, dance with me.

It's time for us to join the party." "Three, two, one, come and have some fun.

Yeah, I'm really happy with the rhythm of my poem.

Okay, now you are going to have a go at writing a free verse poem, inspired and based on John Lyons' poem, "Carnival Dance Lesson", using this success criteria to help you.

When you are ready, you can pause the video and have a go.

Okay, now what I'd like you to do is I'd like you to help me to check that I've included everything in my success criteria.

"Three, two, one, come and have some fun.

Jump high, jump low dance with me.

It's time for us to join the party.

Three, two, one, come and have some fun! Feathered costumes everywhere, melodic tunes echo the streets, everyone can feel their beat.

Three, two, one, come and have some fun! Excitement and energy loud loud, the sizzle, sizzle of cooking meat, caramel popcorn smells so sweet.

"Bidi-dum-dum-dum! "Bidi-dum-dum-dum! Come and have some fun." So let's just check.

I've got a repeated rhyming refrain, "Three, two, one, come and have some fun." And I've repeated it three times in my poem.

I've got my beat, "Bidi-dum-dum-dum! "Bidi-dum-dum-dum!" So that's similar to what he has in his poem.

I've also got rhyme: one, fun, me, party.

One, fun, streets, beat, one, fun, meet, sweet, and the final one, fun.

I've also included "loud loud," "sizzle sizzle," which is an extra poetic device that I've included in my poem but John Lyon didn't choose to include in his.

So now it's your turn to tick off your success criteria.

Have you described different aspects of carnival using your five senses? So I did.

I chose very specific and ambitious descriptive vocabulary.

I included a repeated rhyming reframe and I considered the rhythm and beat of my poem too.

So now I want you to pause the video and make sure that you have done all of those things too.

To summarise, free verse refers to a type of poetry that doesn't follow a specific rhyme scheme or structure.

Writing a free verse poem relies on the poet's creativity rather than following rules of traditional poems. The themes and tone of a poem can be inferred from analysing the structure and language of the poem.

Descriptive vocabulary using the five senses enables the poet to paint a vivid picture for the reader.

Both rhyme and rhythm contribute to the overall musical quality of a poem by emphasising certain words or emotions.

I really enjoyed writing my free verse poem.

I hope you did too in this lesson.