Third Grade
Worksheets
The Rhyme Comes First - Backwards Poetry
Writing poetry is like playing with words and ideas. It's like putting a puzzle together without the picture on the puzzle's box. You don't know exactly what your poem will be like until you've finished writing and revising it.
This is especially true with backwards poetry. I created backwards poetry to help students have fun writing. It's easy to do. In a backwards poem, the rhyme comes first!
Since the rhyme comes first, you can use words that don't normally end a sentence. You will be able to write your lines without forcing a rhyme at the end.
Your backwards poem will be written in stanzas of four lines. You can choose the number of syllables that each line will have. You can create your own pattern. Perhaps you will use six syllables in the first line, and then you use eight syllables in your second line. Your stanza pattern would be 6-8-6-8. It's up to you!
Your rhyme scheme can vary as well. You may choose to use one of four patterns: aaaa, abab, aabb, or abba. An example of the aaaa rhyme scheme is fat, cat, sat, mat. Those could be the words that begin each line. An example of the abab pattern is art, my, smart, cry. An example of the aabb rhyme scheme is there, hair, girls, curls. An example of the abba pattern is own, whim, swim, alone.
