Simple, Fun, and Effective: Verb Poem

Sometimes it is the simplest activities that turn out the best. Don't you think?

Several weeks ago, we were studying verbs.  Another fabulous teacher on my team, pulled out her verb file and we started digging.  Why reinvent the wheel, right?  Maybe we already had something great.

It turns out we did. It was simple. It was direct.  And it required the kids to use verbs correctly in the past tense and allowed them to be creative. We found "The Verb Poem." Original source unknown.

This one page simple guide required students to finish each sentence stem to create a poem.

On Sunday I ....
On Monday I...
On Tuesday I...
On Wednesday I...
Etc.

You get the idea.  

Here are some of my very favorite student examples:

On Monday I fell through a portal.
On Friday I slurped a Slurpy the size of my house. Brain freeze!
On Tuesday I walked along the yellow brick road.
On Monday I jumped of the wing of an airplane. 
On Thursday I galloped all the way to the moon.
On Monday I flew to the fortress of solitude.
On Tuesday I baked an apple pie for God.
On Wednesday I traveled to Egypt and sat on a pyramid.
On Friday I saw Percy Jackson.
On Monday I played video games with a dinosaur named Davy Bob.
On Tuesday I hung out with Superman.
On Wednesday I saw the hump day sign.
On Friday I beat up black ninjas.
On Thursday I ruled the world.
On Saturday I rode a penguin down a hill.
On Thursday I tiptoed into a volcano.
On Sunday I jumped so high I broke the ceiling.

Again...you get the idea. 

Didn't they do a great job?  I just love what they came up with and had to share with you guys.

You can't always say you enjoy reading a writing assignment from every 4th grader in your class, but I enjoyed reading every single on of these.

The teaching possibilities for this poem are endless. We used it for past tense verbs, but you could go back and talk about strong verbs.  You could add adjectives or adverbs. You could expand each day and add details. The possibilities are endless. So simple, yet so effective and so fun.  I just had to share. To download the template we used from TPT, click here.

If you download and use, I would love to hear some of your favorite one liners from your class. Please comment below. We are going to put all our poems together and make a class book. 

Enjoy!