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Humorous Poems
Objectives
To articulate and justify answers, arguments and opinions.
To learn to appreciate rhymes and poems, and to recite some by heart.
Resources
Laptop, PC or tablet | Mini whiteboard and pen | Drawing and writing pencils | Highlighters or colouring crayons | Sticky notes
📄 Daily Phonics Activities | 📄 'Twas Midnight | 📄 Goodnight | 📄 Letter Formation Ideas
Vocabulary
Words in bold can be found in the 📄 Year 1 English Glossary
poem | humour | humorous | rhyme | playing with words
Today's Lesson
Phonics
Over the next three steps, your phonics activities will be personalised revision activities for your student.
All the instructions are included on the 📄 Daily Phonics Activities sheet.
Reading - Introduction
Explain to your student that sometimes humorous poems can play with words or ideas to make them funny.
Read the poem 📄 'Twas Midnight. What did they think of it?
Read it again but slowly, then discuss it further.
Draw out that it puts one idea in your head, for example, a barefoot boy, but then gives a contradiction, for example, a barefoot boy with shoes on. Discuss other contradictions in the poem.
Now read 📄 Goodnight to your student.
Ask: ‘How is this poem playing with words?’
Explain that the verbs don’t match the action, which make the lines very funny.
For example: I took off my stairs.
Look at other examples that don’t match. Why might the person have got all of their words muddled? It tells us at the end that he or she had a fright so they might have been too scared to think!
Read through the poem again together.
Main Activity
Using the poem 📄 Goodnight, your student should try to ‘correct’ the poem to make the lines make sense.
They should choose two pairs of lines, for example, 1 and 2, 3 and 4 or 5 and 6.
Lines 5 and 6, for example, are:
I turned off the bed,
I jumped in the light.
They should then discuss how these can be swapped to make two lines that make more sense! So, for lines 5 and 6, they should be:
I turned off the light,
I jumped in the bed.
They should rewrite the two lines correctly, making sure that the second line is underneath the first.
Extra Challenge
Can your student rewrite the entire new version of the poem?
What to Notice
While they are doing this activity, remember to praise your student for the skills they are using.
For example:
‘You worked hard to reorganise those words today’
‘I can see you sounding out that word really carefully.’
Handwriting and Spelling
Children’s handwriting develops at different times. Have a close look at your student's recent writing. Are there letter shapes that they still need to work on? If there are, please continue to choose one or two letters a day this step to focus on.
You may find your student needs to practise letters shapes they find tricky many times before they feel confident. Remember to use the 📄 Letter Formation Ideas resource.
Please revisit any spellings from Year 1 which you feel your student may need to practise more. These could be words that you see them misspelling still in their independent writing.