Subjects
Arts & Humanities
--Language Arts
--Literature
--History
Grade
3-5
6-8
9-12
Brief Description
A perfect culminating activity for your biography, history, or literature unit.
Objectives
Students will
Keywords
acrostic, poetry, biography
Lesson Plan
This lesson might be used
• as a culminating activity for your Biography unit.
• as a book report" after students have read biographies; the acrostic should draw on information/facts that students learned from the biography they read.
• as an introduction to or culmination of the study of a period in history; you might assign each student to learn about -- and share what they learned about -- one famous person (or event, or concept) from the period.
What Is an Acrostic Poem?
Explain to students that an acrostic poem -- sometimes called a name poem -- begins with a subject or topic (a persons name, an event, a concept, a word). Each line of the poem begins with a letter from the subject and describes the subject in some way. Sometimes the lines of an acrostic are single words, and other times they are phrases. Unlike many other types of poetry, the lines or phrases in an acrostic poem usually do not rhyme.
You might share with students this acrostic poem, which also serves as a nice example of an acrostic. It is used here with permission from its author, Dr. Tonya Strickland.
Acrostic Poetry
An acrostic poem
Can be about anything,
Really.
Of course, some people like to
Start each line as a sentence,
Though
I prefer weaving words into a
Creation that is more freeform.
If you plan to have your students write biography acrostics, you might share a few samples of this form:
Acrostic Lesson Resources
The Web page What Is an Acrostic Poem? offers some tips for writing acrostics that you might share with students.
Following are some additional lesson resources:
Assessment
You might use or adapt one of these acrostic rubrics to guide your assessment of student work:
• Biography Acrostic Poem Rubric
• Acrostic Biographical Poem Rubric
Lesson Plan Source
EducationWorld.com
Submitted By
Gary Hopkins
National Standards
LANGUAGE ARTS: English
GRADES K - 12
NL-ENG.K-12.3 Evaluation Strategies
NL-ENG.K-12.4 Communication Skills
NL-ENG.K-12.5 Communication Strategies
NL-ENG.K-12.6 Applying Knowledge
NL-ENG.K-12.8 Developing Research Skills
NL-ENG.K-12.12 Applying Language Skills
SOCIAL SCIENCES: U.S. History
GRADES K - 12
All Eras
SOCIAL SCIENCES: World History
GRADES 5 - 12
All Eras
TECHNOLOGY
GRADES K - 12
NT.K-12.1 Basic Operations and Concepts
NT.K-12.3 Technology Productivity Tools
NT.K-12.4 Technology Communications Tools
Find links to more history lesson ideas in these Education World archives:
Find links to more language arts and reading lesson ideas in these Education World archives:
Education World®
Copyright© 2010 Education World
08/21/2010