Begin by teaching your students a simple rhyming poem or song such as ‘The Ants Came Marching’.
The ants came marching one by one, hurrah, hurrah
The ants came marching one by one, hurrah, hurrah
The ants came marching one by one
The little one stopped to suck on his thumb
And they all came marching out in the big parade.
Brainstorm substitutes for ‘ants’. It could be another creature (bears, dogs, spiders, birds), a person (girls, boys, bakers, soldiers, grandmas, Aussies) or an inanimate object (robots, planes, trains).
Now brainstorm movements or other actions. Dogs could be barking, birds could be flying, babies could be crawling, robots could be clanking, trains could be chugging or tooting.
| Noun | Verb |
| planes | zooming |
| snakes | slithering |
| babies | snivelling |
Next brainstorm words that rhyme with each of the numbers one to ten. They could also be near rhymes so ‘bun’ and ‘fun’ rhyme, but ‘tongue’ and ‘drum’ are near rhymes.
For each rhyming word brainstorm a verb or verbal phrase. For example, you could stick out your tongue, eat a bun or have some fun.
| Verb/Verbal phrase | one | Verb/Verbal phrase | two | Verb/Verbal phrase | three |
| bask in the | sun | tie up its | shoe | dodge a | bee |
| beat a | drum | ride on a | roo | turn the | key |
| paint something | blue |
Brainstorm in small groups. At regular intervals ask students to share their thoughts and encourage other groups to add any ideas they don’t have onto their own lists.
Teach students how to use the thesaurus function on the computer and then encourage them to make use of the thesaurus to generate interesting words and to include those words that they wouldn’t usually use.
Once multiple examples have been generated, students can create their own poem/song based on the structure of the original rhyme.
Help students publish the poems in some format. Check out the Publishing Ideas post for ideas.