Shape Poems

As Grade 2 students continue to explore the genre of Poetry, we decided to experiment this week with Shape Poems. What is a shape poem? We looked at objects and talked about how each object has an identifiable simple shape. For example, the sun is the shape of a circle, a house can be the shape of a pentagon or an ice cream cone can be a triangle with a round top. A shape poem is a poem that follows the outline of a simple shape to create an picture of an object.

Students thought about shapes as they chose a topic for their poem. Once students had a topic, they then brainstormed ideas and made a list of words and phrases they thought might work for their poems.

Students were given a blank sheet of paper. With a pencil, students then lightly drew the shape of their object/topic. Students then wrote their poem following the shape outline. Students were encouraged to ‘stretch’ their ideas/sentences using interesting words and phrases in order to fill all of the space needed to complete their shape(s).

Here are a few examples of our Shape Poems:

Bertha’s Ice Cream Shape Poem

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Insiyah’s Flower Shape Poem

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Jodie’s Butterfly Shape Poem

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Sage’s Moon Shape Poem

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Edward’s Tree Shape Poem

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You can practice creating your own Shape Poems online:
readwritethink.org – shape poem creator
wildaboutwoods.org – concrete poetry maker

Please leave us a comment to let us know what think of our poems AND if you or your class have also created Shape Poems, send us your website information and we will link you or your class to our site.