Diamante Poems

A few days ago while browsing online for lesson plan ideas, I came across this site.

It’s part of Read Write Think’s online community that plays host to thousands of lesson plans.

The link provided above takes you to an interactive part of RWT’s site where students can make Diamante Poems, which are poems that form diamonds after specific words have been added.

The way the site works is that students are prompted to enter specific types of words…topics, adjectives, etc., until the poem is finished.

Then, students get a final copy of their poems, which they can save or print.

I had to check try things out for myself (can’t let the kids have all the fun).  I opted for the antonym poem, comparing knitting to cooking.  Here’s what my final product looked like…

The Instructions That Were Given To Me:

Line 1 – Your beginning topic (mine was knitting)
Line 2 – Two adjectives about knitting
Line 3 – Three -ing words about knitting
Line 4 – Four nouns or a short phrase linking your topic or topics
Line 5 – Three -ing words about cooking
Line 6 – Two adjectives about cooking
Line 7 – Your ending topic (mine was cooking)

This was a lot of fun to do.  I know it will increase my students’ vocabularies as well as their grammar knowledge.  I think it would be a lot of fun for a child to do at home as well.

My classes will LOVE this activity.  My students really enjoy hands-on activities, and I cannot wait to post their work on my walls.

I’m either going to use this as a technology center or will have my students create these via hard copy.  All I’ll have to do is change up the types of words I want them to use (adjectives, adverbs, etc.).