Poetry/Lyric Writing Lesson for Third Grade

I've done poetry/song writing with my students at several age levels. I think our most successful project was last year in third grade. The list below is the basic outline of what we did.

1. We decided on a subject. In this case it was Thanksgiving for all three classes.
2. We voted on "serious or humorous" categories and brainstormed words. We had a big chart page covered with words in each class before we finished this step.
3. Students used words from brainstormed list to create a line or fragment of poetry.
4. From there we continued to add lines, sometimes voting on which suggestion we wanted to use in our poem. Sometimes a "refrain" phrase would pop out at us, leading us into choosing our song form.
5. Volunteers sang a melodic fragment, we added what worked for our tune, and I wrote down what they sang. We sometimes voted on tunes too.
6. I notated the melody, and students copied it onto staff paper.

We ended up with a nice variety in our songs. One was serious and in verse/refrain form. One led itself right into a nice little scale song (i.e., the "Thanksgiving Dinner Song" in the Idea Bank). The third song is what I believe is called "through composed."

This was a pretty ambitious project for us, and it took several weeks to finish. The final product, however, was very satisfying to the students, and this year's third graders are also enjoying the compositions they inherited.

A simpler first grade project we do is to take the rhyme "Jean, Jean, Dressed in Green" and change the words. If "green" becomes "red," a new action sentence and rhyming words must be chosen by the students. I notate this on the overhead, and students only "read" it, although it could be taken to the writing stage for them.