This week, the children have been learning about renga, free verse and narrative poems for poetry week.
On Monday, the children learnt about renga poetry, which is a traditional form of free-verse Japanese poetry. The children learnt about how renga poems are made up of tankas, consisting of short poems. Each tanka is made up of a stanza (three lines) and a couplet (2 lines), each having a certain amount of syllables. The children enjoyed reading some examples and clapping out the syllables in each line.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, the children were introduced to a different type of poetry. We looked at an example of a free-verse, narrative poem, which does not follow a specific pattern and tells a story. On Wednesday, the children wrote their own poems, starting with the lines ‘the river is a …’ and comparing the river to different nouns. The children enjoyed illustrating their poems and even performing some to the class.
