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Young Student Reading A BookI stumbled upon “Mirror Mirror” and “Follow Follow” in the Scholastic book order this past month.  Being a lover of fairy tales I added them to my cart.  I was happily surprised and amazed as I read these reversible verse poems.  We had viewed one in church, but I did not realize it was a form of poetry.  It is always exciting to stumble upon something new.

In honor of the close of poetry month, and for something different as this long winter is never-ending, I decided to try this with my fourth graders.  I read the books aloud and showed some of the poems with the document camera.  We had a conversation about phrasing, word choice, and the use of punctuation and point of view.  The kids were excited and intrigued at the idea of creating their own reversible poems.

The first step was theme.  I had each student take a page from their writing journal and divide it into fourths.  They wrote one theme in each quadrant.  Then they brainstormed by listing: nouns, verbs, adjectives, sounds, smells, sights, feelings, and tastes associated with each theme.  This gave them a list of words to pull from in step three.  Brainstorming got their creativity flowing.

The second step was the poem.  The students selected a theme from their list that had many ideas.  If they had a theme with few ideas they knew this was not something they had enough information or passion for to write a reverse poem.   The students used free verse to write about their theme.   I encouraged them to just write, not think about the reverse poem.  They decided a point of view that fit their theme and wrote.  It is important to stress using point of view and just writing a short poem that expresses that point of view.  Starting is always the scariest part.

The third step was the reverse.  The students folded a new paper in half.  They then wrote their first poem in the left hand column.  It is important to understand the poem will read the same way backwards by line.  Some students thought they needed to reverse the entire poem and read it backwards.  The ides with the reverse poem is to use the lines backwards.  Next they reversed their poem in the second column.  Be sure they are rewriting the lines from the bottom up, not changing anything.  This allowed the poems to mirror each other so the next step was more manageable.  Reflecting the poem was a lesson in creativity, word choice, and point of view.

The fourth step was reflecting.  The students looked at the poems side-by-side and used their list of words from the brainstorming activity to edit.  They moved words and phrases around, changed punctuation, and edited the second poem so it reflected the first from a different point of view.  It is important that anything changed in one column is changed the same way in the second column.  Some things to think about are removing articles, changing verb tense, splitting up lines differently, and using punctuation to change the meaning.  Voice is important in this creative step.

We had a blast writing our poems.  It was a fun and different way to approach writing and I noticed every student was engaged and motivated to write.  Some students were able to complete more than one reverse poem.  The challenge was in the reverse and point of view.  But we all had fun!4

Example:

Step 2:  Influencing their behavior teachers and students give power to minds and shape futures.

Step 3:

Column One:

Influencing their behavior

teachers and students

give power to minds

and shape futures.

 

Column 2:

and shape futures.

give power to minds

teachers and students

Influencing their behavior

Step 4:

Influencing behavior

teachers and students

gives power

minds and

shapes

the future.

 

The future

Shapes

Minds and

Gives power.

Teachers and students

Influencing behavior.

 

Student Examples:

Showing Pigs

By JD

It’s fun

showing pigs

we make friends

we win, we lose

It’s intence

 

It’s intence

we win, we lose

we make friends

showing pigs

It’s fun

 

Costume

by MB

I am a human,

dressed,

in a costume,

as a penguin

 

As a penguin,

in a costume,

dressed,

I am a human.

 

by DT

One day

Dylan

met

Jordy Nelson

at a Football game

 

At a Football game

Jordy Nelson

met

Dylan

one day.

 

Lori Rice is a fourth-grade teacher at West Elementary in Wamego, Kansas, who has taught K-2 reading...

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