Using ‘Iwalani’s Tree for
Teaching Poetry
Familiarizing ourselves with poetry
Poetry can seem intimidating, but many children are familiar with the rhyming lines of Mother Goose, Goodnight Moon, and Madeline. Continue reading
these with abandon! Not all poems contain rhyming lines. ‘Iwalani’s Tree is an
example of a free verse poem. It contains various poetic devices that children
of all ages can become attuned to.
I hope you can find natural ways to talk with children about the way words
work on the pages of ‘Iwalani’s Tree. Included here are some activities that can
be used at home or in the classroom to play with ideas about poetry.
If you would like to introduce children to poetry, it might be helpful to review
a few terms.
Contents
 Overview: Familiarizing ourselves with poetry
• Activities
 Rhyme
• Activities
 Other kinds of poetic sound
• Activities
 Other poetic devices
• Activities
 More advanced ideas about poetry
• Activities
Publication date: October 1, 2016
Suggested retail: $14.95
ISBN: 978-1-933067-80-3
BISAC:
Juvenile fiction
-general
-imagination & play
-nature & the natural world
Trim size:
Page count:
Binding:
8.5 x 11 inches portrait
32 pp
hardcover with jacket
Age group:
3-8 years
Previous books
by Author:
Sin and Syntax
Vex, Hex, Smash, Smooch
by Illustrator:
Koa’s Seed
Pele and Poliahu
Moon Mangoes
First, what is poetry, exactly?
It is a broad category referring to literary work expressing feelings and ideas
through a distinctive style and rhythm. Unlike prose, which flows in sentences and paragraphs, poetry generally flows in separate lines, which are often
grouped into verses.
Verses often, though not always, follow a certain metrical rhythm, and they
often contain rhyme. (As you read poetry with children, you can point out
how the lines and verses look different on the page from the paragraphs of,
say, Harry Potter.)
When we talk about the distinctive style of poetry, we are referring to the use
of poetic devices. One of the first is rhythm. The meter of a Mother Goose
poem leads us to a specific rhythm: “Jack be nimble,/ Jack be quick,/ Jack
jump over/ the candlestick.” You might count the syllables in those lines with
a child to underscore the notion of rhythm.
Sometimes lines do not possess identical meter, but are still rhythmic. In
‘Iwalani’s Tree, there are various instances of rhythmic phrasing: “A pool of
cool” is a rhythmic phrase, so is “where the land becomes sand.”
For parents interested in meter: “A pool of cool” contains two iambs, or
rhythmic feet each containing a lightly stressed syllable and a strongly
stressed one. “Where the land becomes sand” contains two anapestic
feet, each with two lights and a strong.
Using ‘Iwalani’s Tree for Teaching Poetry
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Activities
Telling stories. ‘Iwalani’s Tree contains stories based on legends from Pacific
cultures. Especially if your parents or grandparents come from a particular
corner of the country, or from another country altogether, can you tell a story
about that place? You don’t have to use paragraphs; try just using poetic lines.
Did you ever experience a scary event that made you fear you were going to
lose something you cared about? Draw a picture to accompany your story.
Repetition and rhythm. The poet Kenneth Koch taught poetry in a New York
public school, and he later wrote two books about teaching children poetry:
Wishes, Lies, and Dreams and Rose, Where Did You Get That Red? Koch habitually reminded students that dreams do not always make sense, and so their
poetry didn’t need to make sense, either. Wonderful idea! Koch also wrote
that he resisted asking children to use rhyme. He found that other devices
come more naturally to kids when exploring poetry. Koch and his classes had
success using repetition, particularly with poems that used the same words to
begin each line, such as “I wish....”
‘Iwalani likes to daydream at her tree. In the first line of the story, ‘Iwalani
says, “I like to lean on a low branch of a tree....” Try writing a poem beginning
each line with “I wish…” or “I like....”
Also, think about a daydream you’ve had, and try beginning each line of a
poem with “I dream....” Rhyme
The two phrases “a pool of cool” and “where the land becomes sand” contain
rhyme as well as rhythm. Rhyme is one of the most familiar and most important aspects of poetry.
Perfect rhyme refers to words in which different consonants are followed by
identical vowel and consonant sounds, such as in moon and June. Examples of
perfect rhyme in ‘Iwalani’s Tree include “wood … good” and “spot … hot” in
addition to “pool … cool” and “land … sand.”
We are used to thinking of rhyme coming at the end of lines in verse, as in
classic nursery rhymes:
Mary had a little lamb;
his fleece was white as snow.
Everywhere that Mary went,
the lamb was sure to go.
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Dr. Seuss also favors rhyme, as in these lines from Green Eggs and Ham:
I do not like them in a house.
I do not like them with a mouse.
I do not like them here or there.
I do not like them anywhere.
I do not like green eggs and ham.
I do not like them, Sam-I-am.
When rhyme happens within a line, rather than at the end, it is called internal rhyme: “where the land becomes sand.”
Activities
Play with words that rhyme. Collect pairs of rhyming words. Can you arrange
them into a story, poem, or even a song?
Other kinds of poetic sound
Sometimes, poets use vowels that echo each other without actually rhyming.
This is also called assonance. In ‘Iwalani’s Tree, we find assonance in the long
“e” sounds in these lines: “beach … sea” and “knees … dream.”
What if the consonants echo each other, rather than the vowels? If similar
consonants appear at the beginnings of words, this is called alliteration:
“branches that bend and bellow” and “sounds of the sea and the sand.”
One playful and powerful device is known as onomatopoeia. Here the sound
of the word imitates or suggests the source of the sound that the word describes. We often name animal noises using onomatopoeia. Think of “oink,”
“meow,” “roar,” and “chirp.” Stories often call a horse’s steps “clip-clops” and
the beat of a clock a “tick-tock.” Can you find the onomatopoetic words in
‘Iwalani’s Tree? How about “yowl,” “smash,” “howl,” and “crack”?
Activities
New sounds. Have fun making up words for the sounds that water makes.
Listen to a river, the shower, a sprinkler, or raindrops falling from a gutter
into a puddle. What kinds of sounds do you hear in a city, and what words
might suggest those sounds?
Hawaiian words are sprinkled throughout ‘Iwalani’s Tree. Do you or people in
your family speak another language? Use some words from another language
to describe the place where they live.
What if you could invent your own language? What would it sound like? Describe breakfast using words in your made-up language.
Using ‘Iwalani’s Tree for Teaching Poetry
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Other poetic devices
Some poetic devices have less to do with sound than with sights. This is called
imagery. When we read “deep dark rainforest,” a picture comes to mind,
doesn’t it? Simile uses the image of one thing (a brown coconut with bright
white meat inside) to describe another thing “lightning cracking the sky
open.”
Personification involves giving human qualities to something nonhuman. It
is common in children’s stories. Think of Olivia, the piglet who wears a red
bow, red snow boots, and even a red sailor dress with black-and-white striped
tights. In ‘Iwalani’s Tree, the ironwood itself is personified: The sound made by
the wind in her needles becomes a voice, and that voice is used to express the
dream of running down the beach.
Activities
Imagery and description. Think of a special spot—one you go to when you
want to be alone. How would you describe that spot? What things are there?
Are there sounds you associate with the place? Does the sun, or the wind, feel
a certain way?
Find a tree in your neighborhood with distinctive bark, leaves, pine cones, or
acorns. Describe those features using words for colors, textures, and sizes.
Personification. ‘Iwalani imagines that the tree has a voice—and later arms
and legs. Can you think of 5 to 10 verbs that describe the way humans do
things? Can you apply those verbs to objects you see? A tree can stand,
crouch, tower, or lean. What can a house do? How about a car?
Think about your special spot again. Imagine that the objects there could talk.
What would they say?
More advanced ideas about poetry
A rhyme scheme refers to the pattern of end rhymes in a stanza. In “Mary
Had a Little Lamb,” the scheme is ABCB.
The most basic rhyme scheme is “AAAA.” Shel Silverstein uses it in “Overdues”:
What do I do?
What do I do?
This library book is 42
Years overdue.
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Another common scheme is ABBA. It is harder to find in children’s poetry,
but in “My Ship and I,” from Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of
Verses, this pattern appears in lines two through five of each verse:
O it’s I that am the captain of a tidy little ship,
Of a ship that goes a sailing on the pond;
And my ship it keeps a-turning all around and all about;
But when I’m a little older, I shall find the secret out
How to send my vessel sailing on beyond.
For I mean to grow as little as the dolly at the helm,
And the dolly I intend to come alive;
And with him beside to help me, it’s a-sailing I shall go,
It’s a-sailing on the water, when the jolly breezes blow
And the vessel goes a divie-divie-dive.
O it’s then you’ll see me sailing through the rushes and the reeds,
And you’ll hear the water singing at the prow;
For beside the dolly sailor, I’m to voyage and explore,
To land upon the island where no dolly was before,
And to fire the penny cannon in the bow.
In a couplet, two lines rhyme and share the same meter. Rhyming couplets
were favored in Early Modern English poetry, and Shakespearean sonnets
often ended on rhyming couplets to emphasize the theme. Sonnet 18 is one of
the best-known examples (the rhyming couplet is shown in italics):
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
Here are rhyming couplets from “The Wind,” in A Child’s Garden of Verses:
I saw you toss the kites on high
And blow the birds about the sky;
And all around I heard you pass,
Like ladies’ skirts across the grass—
Using ‘Iwalani’s Tree for Teaching Poetry
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O wind, a-blowing all day long,
O wind, that sings so loud a song!
I saw the different things you did,
But always you yourself you hid.
I felt you push, I heard you call,
I could not see yourself at all—
O wind, a-blowing all day long,
O wind, that sings so loud a song!
O you that are so strong and cold,
O blower, are you young or old?
Are you a beast of field and tree,
Or just a stronger child than me?
O wind, a-blowing all day long,
O wind, that sings so loud a song!
Activities
Read poetry together with others—Dr. Seuss, A Child’s Garden of Verses, or
any other of your favorites. Can you identify patterns of rhyme in the poems?
Using ‘Iwalani’s Tree for Teaching Poetry
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