(1) Poetry Lesson 6
(2) Poetry Lesson 6
Rain (p.20) from One Big Rain: Poems for Rainy Days
“Speak Clearly” (p.134) from The Bill Martin Jr. Big Book of
Poetry
Very good! Today we’re going to examine
onomatopoeia a little more closely. As we know,
onomatopoeia is the use of words that sound like
the action they represent. Let’s pause for a
moment and listen to the noises around us.
One of poets’ goals is to draw readers into the
action of their poetry. We learned about three
tools that a poet can use to do this: repetition,
alliteration, and onomatopoeia. Who can tell
me how a poet uses repetition?
Allow student responses, provide some examples, and repeat
the question for alliteration and onomatopoeia.
Have the class sit in silence for a minute and reflect on the
classroom noises. After 1-2 minutes write on a chart paper a
prose description of the noises that students heard.
There are a lot of noises in this school. What if
we wanted to use action words to describe each
of these noises instead of using full descriptions?
What words can you think of?
(3) Poetry Lesson 6
(4) Poetry Lesson 6
All kinds of actions and things can be
represented by onomatopoeia, not only words
that you know, like “tick tock” or “buzz.” Let’s
look at a poem with recognizable onomatopoeia:
the sound of rain. Then we’ll look at
onomatopoeia that is completely invented by the
poet: the sound of people talking with their
mouths full.
Allow time for student’s responses to the poem Rain
and the ways that rain makes different sounds.
Display “Rain.”
Can you find some of the onomatopoeia that
Sigborn uses?
List “plip, plop” “trip, trop,” “drip,” and
“chucketing.”
Rain makes different sounds. Let’s make
different rain sounds as we read the poem.
Sigborn Obstfelder wrote this poem including
onomatopoeia with variations of the sound that
rain makes. What are some ways that rain
makes different sounds?
(5) Poetry Lesson 6
(6) Poetry Lesson 6
Guide students to participate with the following actions:
*Clapping at plip, plop /snapping at trip trop
In “Speak Clearly,” Martin Gardner invents the
poem’s onomatopoeia. He probably listened to
a kid talking with his mouth full and wrote down
how it sounded.
Soft and rapid patting on legs for rain, rain
*Medium patting on legs for bucketing rain

*Soft patting again for rain, rain, rain
Clapping and snapping again at the end for plip, plop and
trip trop
Write “Vewee goo,” “Uggle gluggle skwilk,” and “ifoo arstilla
ungwy fello” on chart paper.
What do you think this means? Read the poem
with me and act out loud the parts where we
might be talking with our mouths full.