What is a Poem? Fact sheet

WHAT IS A POEM?

FACT SHEET

A poem is a piece of writing that uses imaginative words to share ideas, emotions or

a story with the reader.

A person who writes a poem is called a poet.

Many poems have words or phrases that sound good together when they are read aloud.

Most poems for children rhyme or they have rhythm (just like music) or repetition.

But a poem doesn’t have to rhyme!

People have been writing poetry for over 4,000 years, but they were probably making

up verses to recite in front of audiences long before that.

In Ancient Greece, some poems were sung or performed with music – just like a song.

William Shakespeare, William Wordsworth, Christina Rossetti, John Keats, Robert Louis

Stevenson and Emily Dickinson are all famous poets from history. Have you heard of

them? Look out for Christina Rossetti’s What is Pink? poem in Storytime Issue 12 and

Robert Louis Stevenson’s Bed In Summer in Storytime Issue 3.

Modern children’s poets you might know include Michael Rosen (his poem Where

Broccoli Comes From was in Storytime Issue 13), Brian Moses (The Budgie Likes to

Boogie is in Storytime Issue 25), Benjamin Zephaniah, Jackie Kay, Roger McGough,

Allan Ahlberg, Roald Dahl, John Agard, Jack Prelutsky and Shel Silverstein. Can you

read a poem from each of the poets listed above or ﬁnd their poetry being performed

on YouTube? Which one is your favourite and why?

See the rest of our worksheets to become a brilliant poet!

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There are many different types of poetry. Here are some you might know...

DIFFERENT TYPES

OF POEMS

NARRATIVE POEMS tell a story. You could say that Julia Donaldson’s books, such

as The Gruffalo, are narrative poems. In Storytime Issue 1, we featured The Owl and the

Pussy-cat by Edward Lear, which is a narrative poem.

In SHAPE POEMS (or CONCRETE POEMS) the words are arranged to look like the

thing you’re writing about. You could write a poem about a snake in a long wiggly line or

a poem about rain inside a raindrop shape. For example:

NONSENSE POEMS feature made-up words, characters or places, and are funny.

In Storytime Issue 4, we featured the nonsense poem On the Ning Nang Nong by

Spike Milligan. Other well-known nonsense poets are Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear.

Raindrop

Racing down

the windowpane

Raindrop can’t stop

It’s in the fast lane - whee!

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In ACROSTIC POEMS when you look at the ﬁrst letters of each line of the poem, they

spell out a word vertically. This word links to the subject of the poem. It doesn’t have to

be the ﬁrst letter that stands out – it could be the last letter of each line, or a letter in the

middle. Also, acrostic poems don’t have to rhyme. Here’s an example:

Creamy and sweet

A big birthday treat

Kids love to tuck in

Eat it with a grin!

FOUND POEMS use words you’ve found somewhere. Turn to random pages in a

dictionary and choose words, take the ﬁrst sentence from your favourite book, or rip

out random headlines from a magazine or newspaper, then use the words you’ve found

to make a poem. It’s a bit like a collage with words!

HAIKUS are Japanese poems. They don’t have to rhyme, but some do. Haikus always

have three lines. Line 1 has 5 syllables; line 2 has 7 syllables; and line 3 has 5 syllables:

In school I can learn

to climb and scale and conquer

mountains of knowledge

LIMERICKS are short, funny poems with ﬁve lines. They always start with the words

“There was a…” and end in a silly way. Lines 1, 2 and 5 rhyme with each other, and lines

3 and 4 rhyme too. Edward Lear’s limerick There Was an Old Man with a Beard was in

Storytime Issue 12:

There was an old man with a beard,

Who said, “It is just as I feared,

Two owls and a hen,

A lark and a wren

WORD

WISE!

Syllables are the sounds that make up

words. ‘Cat’ has one syllable, ‘cattle’ has

two syllables (cat-tle) and ‘catalogue’

has three syllables (cat-a-logue).

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There are many clever

tricks you can use to help

you write great poems.

RHYMING

To make your poem rhyme, the words at end of the lines should sound the same or

very similar, e.g. cow and now. Not all poems rhyme, but it’s a fun way to get started

with poetry. When two lines of poetry rhyme with each other, it’s called a rhyming

couplet. Here’s an example:

Twinkle, twinkle little star

How I wonder what you are

Notice how these two lines have the same amount of syllables? The rhyme

wouldn’t work as well if the ﬁrst line was a lot shorter.)

ALLITERATION

This means using lots of words that start with the same letter or sound. Alliteration

sounds good when you read it out and it gives your poem rhythm. For example:

On the pavement his paws go pit-pat

Could it be Claude the cool kitty cat?

ASSONANCE

This is similar to alliteration, but instead of repeating the letter at the start of each

word, you repeat similar sounding vowels inside the words. This is another good

way to give your poem rhythm. For example:

To d ay the sleigh ﬂew off again

Right through the big blue moon

Write a Poem! POETRY techniques 1

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POETRY

TECHNIQUES

REPETITION

You can repeat the same word, phrase or even line to get your idea across or to give

your poem a more dramatic ending. This also helps to give your poem rhythm. See

how repetition brings rhythm to Edward Lear’s The Owl and the Pussy-Cat (read it in

full in Storytime Issue 1):

The Owl looked up to the stars above,

And sang to a small guitar,

“O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love,

What a beautiful Pussy you are,

You are,

You are!

What a beautiful Pussy you are!”

SIMILES

Poems are a great way to use your imagination, and similes allow you to compare

two things using the words ‘like’ or ‘as’ (as cold as ice, as light as a feather).

Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star has a good ‘like’ simile in it:

Up above the world so high,

Like a diamond in the sky

METAPHORS

Metaphors are used widely in poetry. When you use a metaphor, rather than saying

something is ‘like’ another thing, you say it is that thing. For instance, you might say

someone is a ray of sunshine, or describe tree branches as a ‘wonderful stair’, like in

the poem Climbing by Amy Lowell (from Storytime Issue 21).

PERSONIFICATION

In poems, you can use your imagination to bring objects or animals to life and

describe them like you would describe a human. For example, in the nursery rhyme

Hey Diddle, Diddle, ‘the dish ran away with the spoon’ and, when it’s sunny, people

often say ‘the sun has got his hat on and he’s coming out to play’. T.S. Eliot’s Old

Possum’s Book of Practical Cats with characters like Macavity the cat is a good

example of the personiﬁcation of cats.

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Write a Poem! rhyming for beginners 1

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Rhyming is fun and easy to do –

especially with the help of online

rhyming dictionaries like www.

rhymezone.com. But before you

use something like this, use rhyming

to test and expand upon vocabularies.

Say, for example, you want to make up a rhyme about a cat. How many words

can you think up with an –at ending to rhyme with cat? Ask everyone to come up

with as many rhyming words as they can. Write them all on the board. Here are

some simple ones to get you started:

Fat Hat Mat Pat Rat Sat

See if you can come up with four short lines using words that rhyme with cat.

Remember: if each line has a similar amount of syllables, it sounds and reads better:

There was never a cat

Quite as podgy and fat

As the cat that has sat

On my favourite top hat

Try rhyming some other simple words, such as dog, pet, snow or chair and see

our Rhyming Sheet and Poetic Pairs Sheet for some simple poetry exercises.

Instead of rhyming every line in a four-line poem, try rhyming just lines 2 and 4:

The puss from next door

Is podgy and fat,

I know as it sat on

My favourite top hat!

Or rhyme lines 1 and 2 and come up with different rhymes for lines 3 and 4:

There was never a cat

Quite as ﬂuffy and fat

As the cat on my lap,

Which is taking a nap!

RHYMING

FOR BEGINNERS

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Play Pass the Poem. Divide your class into groups of four and give each group

one easy word to rhyme. Ask the children in each group to work together to come

up with as many rhyming words as they can, then ask each child to write one line of

a four-line rhyme and see how the ﬁnished poem turns out. Get everyone to perform

their poems when they’ve ﬁnished. Download our Pass the Poem Sheet to help you

create your masterpieces.

When coming up with your own rhymes, think about which rhyming words make

the funniest or best rhyme – or choose words that inspire you and give you ideas.

These make a good starting point.

Now test everyone’s new poetry skills on our Finish The Poem Sheet, have a

go at some shape poems on our Shape Poem Sheets, create a found poem using

our Found Poem Sheet and try out an acrostic on our Acrostic Poem Sheet.

Read the poems we’ve featured in Storytime magazine for more poetry

inspiration. See what types of poems and rhymes you can spot! Also check

out these great Poetry Resources:

• www.brianmoses.co.uk for poems by our poetry competition judge, Brian Moses,

and poems from school children.

• www.youtube.com/user/artiﬁcedesign/videos – Michael Rosen’s YouTube

channel. Also Michael’s new book What Is Poetry (Walker Books), out October

2016, gives tips on how to write poems.

• www.lovereading4kids.co.uk/genre/poe/Poetry-.html – poetry book

recommendations for under 7s from LoveReading4Kids.

• www.childrenslaureate.org.uk/usr/library/documents/main/tips-on-writing.pdf –

poetry writing tips from Booktrust.

• childrenspoetryarchive.org – inspiring poems for kids.

How many rhymes can you ﬁnd for these words? Write them down in each box.

CAR

FEET

BLUE

NAME CLASS

FLY

Write a Poem! Rhyming Sheet

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Can you pair up the rhyming words? Draw a line between them.

Fruit bat

Beware

NAME CLASS

Rhyme

Seaside

Canoe

Pig

Frog

Bee

Brown bear

Bog

Pea

High tide

Doormat

Peru

Big

Time

Write a Poem! Poetic Pairs Sheet

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Pass the poem around so that each person can write his or her own line!

Line 1

Line 2

Line 3

NAME CLASS

Line 4

Write a Poem! Pass the Poem Sheet

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NAME CLASS

Frankie the frog,

Lived in a bog,

Sat on a log,

Barked like a _______

Can you give each of these poems a missing word or line that rhymes?

The words you need to rhyme with are in bold.

In this box

There is a fox

And he is wearing

_________________________

Find a penny,

Pick it up,

Spend it on a

___________________

If you ever meet a monster,

Here’s what you should do:

Shake his hand and tell him

_____________________________

Let’s play outside,

Let’s go for a ride,

Let’s climb, let’s shout,

Let’s ________________

You might think that on my back,

I’m carrying a school rucksack,

But there’s a secret tucked in there,

_____________________________________

Write a Poem! Finish the Poem Sheet

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NAME CLASS

Pick a shape and write a

poem about it inside

the shape!

_________

___________

________________

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Write a Poem! Shape Poem Sheet 1

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NAME CLASS

Pick a shape and write

a poem about it inside

the shape!

_____________________________________

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________________

______________

Write a Poem! Shape Poem Sheet 2

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NAME CLASS

Pick a shape and write a poem about it inside the shape!

___________________________

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Write a Poem! Shape Poem Sheet 3

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NAME CLASS

Write an acrostic poem about the word below. It doesn’t have to rhyme!

TIP!

Before you start, write down

all the things you can think

of when you see this word.

When you’ve ﬁnished, write an

acrostic poem about your

best friend or favourite

animal too!

H______________________

O______________________

L ______________________

I_______________________

D______________________

A______________________

Y______________________

Write a Poem! Acrostic Poem Sheet

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NAME CLASS

Make up a poem using words cut out of newspapers and magazines.

Stick them in the Found Words box, then write your poem in the large box.

MY Poem

found words

Write a Poem! Found Poem Sheet

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NAME CLASS

Write a Poem! My Poem

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NAME CLASS

Draw a character or scene from your poem here!

Write a Poem! My Poem Picture

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