Lesson video

Hello and welcome to this lesson on creative writing in poetry with me Ms. Krzebietka.

Today, we're going to focus on planning our own poems, which was really exciting.

Before we get started with that, please can you make sure that you've gotten rid of any distractions? So if you've got a mobile phone, please make sure that it's turned off or put in a different room.

Please make sure that you're somewhere quiet, so that you can focus really well.

And please also make sure that you've got a pen and something to write with.

Okay, let's get started on planning our own poetry.

Before we get started with the main lesson, I'm just going to talk you through exactly what we're going to be doing.

So, first of all, we're going to start with a recap task, where we think about sound and rhyme and those techniques that we looked at for creating sound and rhyme last lesson.

Then we're going to think about how and why we plan before we start the planning process itself.

Next we're going to create our own plans.

Then finally, we're going to review your knowledge of planning with a quiz.

Okay, let's go.

So before we get started on the planning part of this lesson, we're going to do a quick recap task.

So what I'd like you to do is to read through the information on the screen, which is all about sound and rhyme.

You will notice there are some blanks, which you are required to fill in using your knowledge of what we did last lesson on sound and rhyme.

Pause now for me, read through very carefully and see if you can fill in the blanks.

You've got the starting letters there to help you out.

See if you can fill in the blanks, using your knowledge about sound and rhyme.

Off you go.

Brilliant job if you managed to fill in all of the blanks independently.

Don't worry if you didn't because we're going to go through them now, and now will be a really good time to add in those missing words.

Okay, listen carefully.

We can create sound in our poems by using onomatopoeia.

This is a figurative technique where words sound like the noise they describe.

Examples include swoosh, smash and whiz.

Poets might use a specific rhyme scheme to create sound and rhythm in their poems. Examples of popular rhyme scheme include ABAB and AABB.

Amazing work if you manage to fill in all of those blanks, especially the ones where I didn't give you the starting word.

For example, the examples of onomatopoeia, smash and whiz.

Those words that sound like the noise they describe, and also that second rhyme scheme, the AABB rhyme scheme.

Brilliant job, if you remembered those.

And they are both techniques we can use to create sound and rhythm in our poetry, okay.

So let's move into the main part of the lesson where our focus will be on the planning process.

And we'll be thinking about planning for our own poems. But first of all, let's think about why we plan in the first place.

Well, as you can see on the screen, there are four reasons why we plan.

And I'm just going to talk you through those now, so listen carefully.

So planning helps us to do the following things.

It helps us to organise our ideas.

It helps us to make links between our key ideas.

It helps us to identify our very best ideas, and it helps to keep our focus in the writing process.

So planning is really, really significant when we're thinking about writing, because what might start as lots of disorganised ideas in our head through the planning process can be made into something really helpful and really useful that will help us to write the very best poem or the very best short story or whatever it might be.

It will help us to write the very best version of that thing, okay.

All right, so there are four options on the screen.

What I would like you to do is to read through the options and to decide what does planning not help us to do? One of those options is something that planning does not help us to do.

Can you work out which one it is? Pause now, read through and then decide.

Well done if you said that it's option three.

Planning does not help us to describe the sounds of rhyme in poetry.

It does help us to organise and make links between key ideas.

It does help us to identify our very best ideas and it does help to keep our focus in the writing process.

Well done if you said planning has nothing really to do with the sounds of rhyme in poetry.

So how can we plan then? We talked about why we plan, but how can we plan? Well, there are many, many different ways of planning, but what I'm going to introduce you to in this lesson are two ways that have worked for me and that have worked for other peoples that I've worked with in the past.

Okay, so one of those ways of planning is through mind maps and the other is through lists.

So okay, and these are two ways that you organise your ideas on the page in order to help you when it comes to writing your actual poem.

Okay, and we're going to try and use either one of these later on when you come to plan your own poems. Okay so, mind maps and lists are ways of helping us to plan.

Alright, let's see if you were listening carefully.

So which two of these are not helpful ways of organising our ideas? So two of them are ways in which we can plan and organise our ideas on the page, and two of them are not helpful ways of organising our ideas.

Pause now, read through the options and make your decision.

Off you go.

Amazing job if you said that the two of these which are not helpful ways of organising our ideas, are option two and option three.

Not planning at all, doesn't help us really.

Doesn't help us to organise our ideas and that can lead to us having to do lots of draughts of a piece of writing, because actually the first time we do it, we don't get all of our very best ideas cause we haven't planned.

And then option three, lots of notes in different places that are not in any particular order, that's probably just going to make the writing process harder because you know that you've got lots of ideas floating around, but they're not in any order, they're in different places, and so that will probably make the writing process harder rather than being helpful.

All right, so when it comes to writing your own poem, what we've got on the screen are some prompts.

Okay, now a prompt is something that you can look at or think about that might help you and give you an idea for your own writing, okay.

So there are three prompts.

You will recognise two of them from our previous lessons on creative writing poetry, but I've changed them slightly to give you a bit of a wider scope of what you can write about.

So the first prompt is this, write about an important sporting event.

The second prompt is this, write about a really busy beach or an exciting holiday.

And the third prompt is to write about your favourite animal.

Now, if you would like to, you can write a poem about something completely of your own choice.

That's absolutely fine, but those prompts are there to help you and to guide you if you want them.

So what I'd like to do now is to take a moment and to pause and to choose which prompt you are going to base your poem around, and you would like to use as an idea for your poem, or if you want to write a poem about something of your own choice and have a think about what it is that you're going to write about now.

So pause and think very carefully about that and then resume.

Okay, I'm hoping now then you've got a good idea about what you want to write about in your poem.

So what I thought I would show you before you go and plan your own poetry is an example of what a mind map might look like as a plan for your poem.

Now on the worksheet that's attached to this lesson, you have got the template for this mind map, okay? So you don't have to draw this out.

You just need to open the worksheet and access it in there.

But I just want to talk you through exactly what I've done here.

So I think the most important thing in our planning process is to decide what we're going to write about in each stanza.

So I decided that I want three stanzas.

Okay, and I think that's a good number of stanzas for you to go for as well.

If you are using one of the prompts or even if you're doing your own or idea, I think three stanzas is a good starting point for writing our own poetry.

Okay, so I'm going for three four line stanzas.

Remember stanzas are the verses in our poems. And I decided exactly what I'm going to write about in each stanza.

So in stanza one, I'm going to describe the way a tiger looks in my poem.

Stanza two, I'm going to describe the way a tiger moves.

And in stanza three, I'm going to describe how I feel about tigers.

So that's the focus for each of my stanzas that I've decided on.

All right.

I've decided that my rhyme scheme is going to be the AABB rhyme scheme.

Remember I said, you don't need a rhyme scheme, but if you would like a rhyme scheme, I've suggested the AABB or the ABAB rhyme scheme.

Okay, so I've gone for AABB.

I'm going to use figurative language.

And what I've done just to remind myself of the techniques that I can use is I've made a list of the techniques that I know of.

So I put simile, metaphor, personification, onomatopoeia in the figurative language box.

And what I might do as I'm writing my poem is sort of tick those off as I go through so that I can see when I've used them and I can make sure I'm using them.

But they don't have to go.

I'm not giving myself a specific place of where I want to put them.

What I'm doing is saying to myself, I want to use those wherever it might be in my poem, okay.

And then finally in the middle, I put exactly what my poem is going to be about.

You probably start with that.

That's a good starting place to put in the middle, the main idea about what your poem is going to be about.

Okay, so my poem is going to be about a tiger.

I've gone for the favourite animal prompt.

And then what's mapped around is obviously all of those ideas that I've organised, and that will help me when I come to write my poem, okay.

If you've decided that actually mind maps aren't your thing, and you'd like to organise your ideas in a list for your plan, then what I've done here using the busy beach prompt is I've shown you exactly how you can do that.

And again, you can find the template for this plan on the worksheet.

Okay, so refer to that when you come to plan, if you want to use a list.

So just like with the mind map, what I've done is I've decided exactly what I'm going to write about in each stanza, okay.

And what time written down first in my list is the number of stanzas again that I am going to use.

Remember stanzas are our versus in our poetry.

So I'm going to have three stanzas and I'm going to have four lines per stanza.

And then I've gone through, and I've decided what I'm going to write about for each stanza.

This is really important in both ways of planning, because this is what's going to help you when you start writing and maybe your mind goes blank, all you have to do is refer back to your plan and see exactly what it is that you decided you were going to write about.

So stanza one, I'm going to focus on the sounds on the beach.

Stanza two, I'm going to focus on the colour and sights.

Stanza three, I'm going to focus on how the beach makes me feel.

So I've got my ideas for each stanza of my poem.

I've decided for this poem, I'm going to use the ABAB rhyme scheme.

And then again I've just made a list of the figurative language techniques I want to use, but I'm not saying I'm going to use them in a specific place.

I'm just putting them there as a reminder, that I would like to use them in my poetry.

Okay, so if you're not somebody who likes doing mind maps and lists are more your thing, then that's an example of how you might plan using the list.

Okay, so both prompts are available on the worksheet.

Okay, if you feel confident and ready, what I'd like you to do is to open the worksheet now.

Pause the lesson, to open the worksheet, and to have a go at planning.

You will find each of the three prompts and each of the two ways of planning attached to those prompts on the worksheet.

Okay, so you can decide whichever you want to use.

You will also find a mind map planning sheet and a list planning sheet.

If you've decided that you want to go with your own idea, you will find those planning sheets on there too.

Remember, once you finished planning to return and complete the quiz, okay? So don't leave the lesson without completing the quiz.

But if you feel, yep I'm ready to plan, I know exactly what I'm going to write about, and I want to get started on my plan, then you can leave this lesson and go and do that now on the worksheet, and then complete the quiz.

If not, and you want a few more ideas then stick around cause we're going to go through some extra activities that will help you.

So when we were going through then talking about planning, you might've thought I don't actually know what I would write about for each stanza, so what we're going to do now is to help you come up with some ideas of what you could talk about in each stanza, so that when you come to plan, you have got those ideas ready, and you can write them down.

And that will help you eventually with writing your poem.

So we've got our three prompts on the screen.

And what I would like you to do is to pause for me.

And I want you to make a list of things that we could talk about for each of these prompts.

So let's do all three because then whatever you decide, you've got lots of ideas.

So I want you to make a list of what we might see, hear, and feel at an important sporting event.

Then I want you to make a list of things that we might see, hear, and feel on a busy beach or on an exciting holiday.

Then I want you to make a list of how your favourite animal looks, moves, and makes you feel.

So I would do all three, just so that you've got options when it comes to planning your own poem.

However if you actually think I've already decided on one prompt from the three, then just choose one and write a list of the things that I've asked you to write for that prompt.

Okay, pause now.

You've got some ideas already to get you started in on list.

And off you go.

So here are some things that you might have said for each of the prompts.

So at an important sporting event, you might hear cheering.

You might see crowds of people.

You might feel the adrenaline running through your veins.

You might feel excitement.

You might hear the referee's whistle.

You might hear your teammates shouting, and you might feel nerves.

So they are all things that we could use as ideas to talk about in our poetry.

Next, if you're on a busy beach or an exciting holiday, you might smell candy floss.

You might feel energetic.

You might feel amazed.

You might be able to touch the soft sand.

You might be able to feel the warm sun.

You might be able to smell the fresh sea air.

You might feel relaxed or you might feel a bit claustrophobic actually, if it's a really busy beach and there are people everywhere, then your poem might take a slightly different turn or perhaps have a turning point in it.

And finally, if you're going for your favourite animal, then I'm not sure what your favourite animal might be.

But in this case, based on a tiger, we might talk about its swift movements.

We might talk about being amazed by it.

It's agility or the fact that it's agile.

It might move in a winding way.

It might wind, for example, through trees, through your forest.

You might be desperate to see it.

It might be mighty, steady, and magnificent.

So what you've got there are a whole host of ideas of things that you could talk about in your poem to do with these three prompts, okay? So if you were going to take those ideas and put them into a plan for your poem, how might that look? What we've done that for each of the three prompts here.

So if, for example, you went for the first prompt, then you've got ideas for your three stanzas that you could possibly use.

Stanza one could be all about the sounds you can hear sounds.

Stanza two could be what you can see and stanza three might be how you feel.

For the next prompt, stanza one could be the sounds that you can hear.

Stanza two might be what you can see and stanza three might be how you feel.

And finally, for the final prompt, stanza one could be the way the animal looks.

Stanza two, the way the animal moves and stanza three, the way the animal makes you feel.

So if you are thinking of ideas to focus on each of your stanzas, then these are some ideas that you might use, and you also might think about these words as well.

And putting those in there as part of your plan, just to remind you of what it is that you want to talk about and some things that you could use in your poem, okay.

So what I'd like you to do now then is to go to the worksheet and to have a go at using the ideas that we've just been through to help you to plan your own poem using the planning sheets that are available for you.

You will also find the three helpful prompt sheets that I've just been through in that worksheet as well.

So they will help you.

All right.

Pause, and off you go.

Remember to resume after you've finished planning.

Fantastic work in planning your poems today.

I hope you realised just how important and helpful the planning process can be.

We're going to write our poems soon which I'm really, really, really excited about.

If you'd like to share the plans that you've been coming up with, we'd love to see them.

So please ask your parent or carer to share them on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter tagging @OakNational and using the hashtag #LearnwithOak.

If you don't want to share online, then maybe you could ask your parent or carer to share your work with your teacher and I'm sure they'd be super, super impressed with what you've been doing and would love to see the amazing things you've been getting up to.

Finally, there is a quiz attached to this lesson, which is all about the planning process and we'll test your knowledge of that.

So please make sure that you complete that before you leave the lesson.

Great work.

And I can't wait to plan our poems. Bye.