Haiku Story Summaries and NCTE

If you are attending the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) conference in Denver, check out my author panel entitled "Threads of Possibility." I'm honored to be presenting with Colorado authors Beth Anderson, Jolene Guitaerriez, and Dow Phumirik. Joining us from New Mexico is Laurel Goodluck. I will be sharing a poetry writing activity from my book, Story Frames for Teaching Literacy: Enhancing Student Learning through the Power of Storytelling. 

The activity is from Chapter 10: Poetry: Exploring the Power of Language and Story Through Verse. Here are two examples from the book that use poetry to create a mini-book summary.

Can you tell what these two poems have in common? 

1. They are both based on narrative non-fiction picture books that are biographies.

2. They are both haikus with a 5-7-5 syllable structure

But there is more. Each line follows a specific pattern. Use this pattern with your students to create Haiku Book Summaries.  The example below is based on Six Dots: A Story of Young Louis Braille

Haiku Book Summary

Line 1: 5-syllable prepositional phrase

In a cold, damp school

Line 2: 7-syllable subject with adjectives out of order

Louis Braille, blind and alone

Line 3: 5-syllable verb phrase/predicate

Created a code

During the presentation, I will also share haiku based on the picture books of the other panelists. Here is one below from Beth Anderson's book, Hiding in Plain Sight: Kate Warne and the Race to Save Abraham Lincoln. This haiku is also a story summary. The book is illustrated by Sally Wern Comport and tells the story of a female detective who helped save President Lincoln from an assassination plot on his way to his inauguration. I always learn an interesting tidbit of history from Beth's books.

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