Lesson Plan: Cinquains

Lesson Level: All levels   Duration: 45 Minutes

Lesson Title: Cinquains¹

Grammar and Vocabulary

collocations

noun and adjective phrases

vocabulary of emotions and feelings

Lesson Objectives

Students will, by creating poems to a fixed format, develop adjective/noun collocations and develop the use of adjectives describing feelings and emotions.

Materials Required

None

Preparation

Check that you have an understanding of the didactic cinquain form by a) having a look on the internet and b) writing a few following the pattern in the lesson plan.²

Procedure

1

Play Quicklists with these categories “animals, food, places, sport,”

Procedure : Draw four columns oon board with category headings.

Students pass ball. As student gets ball must stand up and give a word for category that is NOT already on board.

Should catch, answer and throw as quickly as they can.

Teacher adds word to the lists

Next student has next category.

Stop when each list has ten items. (or columns are full)

Make sure you leave plenty of room on board, more lists will be needed and space to write the cinquain.

2

Choose or have a student choose one of the words

Write it on the board.

3

Elicit and list words to describe it. (Adjectives) – List about ten

Choose two and write as line 2 of the cinquain

4

Elicit three word phrases to describe it. – List about 5 on the board , you might need to do some or all these yourself depending on the level of the class and the amount of feedback you get.

Choose one and add as line 3 of the cinquain.

5

Elicit emotions or emotional responses – List about ten

Choose four and add as line four of the cinquain.

6.

Write Line 1 again as Line 5 of the cinquain

Read out the poem, explain again how it was written and check understanding.³

7.

Get each student to choose a word and write about it.

Use ball toss to select students to read their poems.

Be prepared to help students or read for them if they are too shy.

Notes

1. A didactic cinquain is a form of five line poetry. It is normally a syllable counting form with two syllables in the first line, for syllables in the second line, six syllables in the third line, eight syllables in the fourth line and two syllables in the fifth line. For stronger or higher level classes you can explain about syllables and insist on this requirement. For weaker or lower level classes use a word counting form with one word (no matter how many syllables), two words, three words, four words, one word as the line structure. There is a lot of information to be be found on the internet by searching for “didactic cinquain” or the wider form “cinquain”.
   
   
2. They are very easy to write. Here is a single example.

Tiger

Hungry, prowling

Orange and black

Scary, fearsome, noble, handsome

Tiger

3. Below is a complete example of how the poem in note two might be constructed.

Once the quick lists are on the boar the word “Tiger: is chosen from the animals list and written on the board.

Tiger

Eliciting ten words to describe “tiger” results in “striped, orange, hungry, animal, giant, prowling, jungle, eating, running, climbing”

Two are chosen and added.

Tiger

Hungry, prowling

Eliciting five three word phrases results in “orange and black”, “lives in jungle”, “eats other animals”, “like a monster”, “dangerous and powerful”.

One is chosen and added.

Tiger

Hungry, prowling

Orange and black

Eliciting emotional responses results in “scary, angry, nice⁴,fearsome, great, noble, glorious, handsome, beautiful, cute⁴”

Four are chosen and added and the first line is written again.

Tiger

Hungry, prowling

Orange and black

Scary, fearsome, noble, handsome

Tiger

And the poem is complete.

4. In my experience the words “nice” and “cute” seem to come up to describe just about everything, especially every animal.