Fifth Grade
Worksheets
Write a Haiku
Here is a type of poetry you need not fear. If you can count to seven, you can write a haiku! You don't have to worry about rhyming. You don't even have to think up a title! Let's get started! By the time you finish this lesson, you will have written a haiku.
Haiku is a Japanese verse form. In the English language, it is expressed as three lines of five, seven, and five syllables, in that order. (That is a total of seventeen syllables.) The pattern of syllables goes like this:
five syllables
seven syllables
five syllables
Nature is often the subject of haikus. A haiku may dwell on a season (such as winter), an element (such as rain), or a creature (such as a frog). Ideas can be found by looking outside at the weather or the land around you. You might look at nature magazines. Some calendars use beautiful photos of nature scenes. Pictures of nature scenes may trigger ideas for a haiku.
Haikus don't have to be a complete sentence. You only have seventeen syllables to work with. That's not a lot! In fact, those last two sentences put together had exactly seventeen syllables. Here is how they would look in haiku form:
You/on/ly/have/se-
ven/teen/syl/la/bles/to/work
with./That's/not/a/lot!
