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Lesson Title:

Rules of Haiku: Guided Inquiry

By:

Carridy Koski, Rebecca Laverdure, Nina Marks, and Lynn Williams

Featured Children's Literature Title:

Grass Sandals: The Travels of Basho

Objectives:

Students will analyze haiku poems to discover the rules for writing haiku poetry.

ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Model Content Standards:

Reading and Writing

Standard 1. Students read and understand a variety of materials.

Standard 5. Students read and recognize literature as a record of human experience.

Geography

Standard 2. Students know physical and human characteristics of place, and use this knowledge to define and study regions and their patterns of change.

Standard 5. Students understand the effects of interactions between humans and physical systems and the changes and meaning, use, distribution, and the importance of resources.

Plan for Assessment:

Students will synthesize a chart with the rules of haiku poetry.  They will be able to analyze poems using the class-generated chart and determine if they are haiku or not.

Students will be able to use the class-generated chart to write and analyze their own haiku poetry.  Teacher will analyze student created haiku based on three simple rules discovered by the students.  For example, "juicy words", content relating to nature, and the 5-7-5 repeating pattern.

Notes:

This lesson is written for a first or second grade level.  The completed chart of rules for haiku will take three to four twenty-minute lessons.  The amount of lessons needed depends on the level of your students and their past experience with guided inquiry.  The text Grass Sandals should be paced accordingly over the lessons.

Materials:

Text- Grass Sandals: The Travels of Basho, Pictures of Yamadera (attached powerpoint), Waraji grass sandals (if available), additional Basho haiku poems (optional), chart paper, chart paper markers, haiku poems on page 3 and 5 written out large enough for children to see easily from where they sit, character for mountain (found on page 3) written large enough for children to see easily from where they sit, highlighter tape.

Implementation:

This is an interactive read-aloud lesson.  The children should be on the carpet with easy view of the chart.  They should be seated by pre-determined discussion partners or teams.

Introduction- Before Reading:

1. Help children build or tap into their prior knowledge.  Discuss how books and poems have been records of history for thousands of years. Discuss how photography is a recent invention and how writing was used to record visual images before photography.
2. Introduce the cover of Grass Sandals and let the students know that this tale has pieces taken from many of Basho's journeys written long ago.  Basho went on many trips during his lifetime and often wrote about his journeys.  "This book is about Basho and some of the trips he took long ago through Japan.  He did not have a camera on his trip so he wrote poems to capture what he was seeing.  The book has three different kinds of writing: text, poems, and kanji." Show the students the kanji of mountain and discuss how it is Japanese and a symbol representing a mountain.  Ask the kids to look for all three forms of writing as you read.
3. Introduce the blank chart and let students know they will be examining closely the poems in the book looking for similarities among the poems.  Introduce the term haiku and let the children know it is a specific form of poetry with specific rules.  Introduce that they are looking for the rules of haiku as we read the poems in the book together.  Let them know that all the poems in the book are haiku.
4. Show students pictures of Yamadera and, if available, show students actual grass sandals.  Discuss the pictures and sandals using "juicy"/descriptive words.

Read Aloud - During Reading:

1. Start to read the story.  On page 2 and 3, point out the text, kanji, and haiku poem.  Read the poem a second time asking students to visualize.  After the second reading show the students the large print version of the same poem.  Read a third time with the students as a shared reading.  Ask them discuss with their partners or teams which words helped them visualize.  Give two to three minutes for discussion.  Have group highlight or underline visualization words.  Discuss what they discovered. Re-direct if necessary.
2. Ask the students what else they notice about the poem.  Give discussion time in teams and highlight the findings.
3. Continue to read the book.  Stop at the second poem and repeat the poem asking the students to visualize.  Again pull out the large print version of the poem and repeat the process used on the first poem.
4. Once both poems are highlighted hang them side by side and ask the students to compare them.  They are looking for similarities and differences.  Give three to four minutes of discussion time in groups.  After discussion have the groups report out to class what they found.  Once all students have heard the findings of the class ask them what the rules of haiku are.  Give discussion time.  Chart the class findings on the blank chart.
5. Continue to read the book stopping at each poem.  Read each poem several times and have discussion teams decide if it follows the rules on the chart or not.  Give a chance to add or subtract haiku rules from the chart with each poem.  If children are having trouble discovering the rules of haiku guide the discussion of the poems and point out important features.

CHECK TIME as you read! If 20 minutes – conclude today’s learning and continue tomorrow.

After reading:

1. Review the rules on the chart. Make sure the students included simple imagery using the senses – sight, touch, sound, smell, taste and/or feelings, there are no similes or metaphors, and use “strong” or “juicy” words. Haiku tell of one specific event or observation and are written in the present tense. No time passes during haiku poems. Haiku also breaks punctuation and capitalization rules.
2. After they have the sense of haiku then introduce that pattern of 5-7-5 and 17 syllables. Add this to your chart. Tell the children of the pattern and have them clap out the two large print poems.
3. Review the chart and add or subtract any necessary rules.
4. Have students write haiku poems about something they feel connected to nature (as Basho did) during independent writing. Have students self assess their poems by comparing them to the criteria on the chart and the two large-print poems.

Extensions and Cross-Curricular Ideas:

• Geography – Map Basho’s journey on a map of Japan.
• History – Discuss other events happening in the world around the same time as Basho’s journey.
• Word Work – Discuss syllables and have students clap out spelling words, friends’ names, content words, etc...
• Extend the writing to make illustrated hanging scrolls with the haiku poems. 
• Publish the poems into a class book.
• Have your students teach haiku to another class.
• In centers, have students sort poems into haiku and not-haiku piles.
• After a field trip, have students borrow Basho’s idea and write haiku of what they saw.

Resources and References:

Basho, Matsuo. “Narrow Road to the Interior.” Narrow Road to the Interior and Other Writings.” Sam Hamill, trans. Boston: Shambhala Publications, Inc., 2000, xxxii-36.

Burleson, Patricia. “The History and Artistry of Haiku.” Japan Digest. National Clearinghouse for United States – Japan Studies. Indiana University, October 1998.

Spivak, Dawnine. Grass Sandals: The Travels of Basho. Demi, ill. New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 1997.