ESL Student Level: High Beginner+ Description: Poems for vegetarians and carnivores alike. A
string of words with matching endings and
beginnings. Choose either letters or sounds for the word boundary matches
(it gets confusing if both are allowed).
SAMPLE SAUSAGE POEMS -- WITH MATCHING LETTERS
Good dogs shouldn't tell lies.
Twenty yellow waterlillies skunked
Donald Duck's snake.
Students work individually or in pairs. They examine example poems
and explain what's happening at the word boundaries.
Optional: Students and the instructor choose a topic or starter
word and write a sausage poem together .
Students write their own poems completely "from scratch" or with
starter words suggested by the instructor. Students
can use dictionaries, as necessary, to check spelling.
Variation: Write the poems so that the first and lsat word
of the poem also have matching sound/letter boundaries. In this way,
the poem can be written in a complete circle!
FOLLOW-UP ACTIVITIES
Students' work can be pinned up or compiled in a class anthology.
Illustrate poems with handrawn or computer-generated images.
Leslie Opp-Beckman, Technology Coordinator and ESL Instructor
E-mail:
leslieob@uoregon.edu 5212 University of
Oregon,
American English Institute Eugene, Oregon 97403-5212 USA
Leslie Opp-Beckman, copyright 1994-2003. Permission to copy
and
distribute for in-class, non-profit use only.
URL: http://www.uoregon.edu/~leslieob/pizzaz.html
This page last updated: 13 August 2003