As the following activity will show, this form of writing can bring an invigorating style to your ordinary classroom activities, regardless of your subject area or your students' grade level.

Poetry, for those not totally familiar with the conventions of the language-arts classes, is a generic term for forms of writing using highly specific words and phrases to instill images in the reader’s mind. Some poetry follows particular forms and patterns, and other types of poetry can be free flowing. Poetry can be simply individual (though connected) words or phrases, or found in complete sentences. As you can see, there is no limit to the types of poetry that can be created.

Short, simple poems require a great deal of student thought, because the kids must carefully choose the best words to fit the poem. These can be fun for students to write as reviews for tests or the end of chapters. You could also use them to in place of your normal writing assignments to add variety.

Feel free to change the poem form to suit your activity or class. For example, you may want to change the number of details or examples, or the number of lines. If you have creative (or advanced) students, you may even want to require the lines to rhyme.

Here's a short, simple poem form:
Name the topic