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ELA 4: Acrostics 53 Views
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Description:
Acrostics are kind of like crossword puzzles mixed with poems. They're pretty much a literature geek's dream come true.
Transcript
- 00:04
[Coop and Dino singing]
- 00:13
When you first started learning about poetry, did you have any idea there would be so many [Girl standing at the front of a class teaching poetry]
- 00:18
different kinds of poems?
- 00:19
And not just any poems…poems with rules and structures, that make the whole thing
- 00:23
kind of feel like a math equation.
Full Transcript
- 00:25
Are you just plain sick of it? [Boy in bed with a thermometer in his mouth]
- 00:27
Well, that's too bad, because here's another one!
- 00:29
But never fear!
- 00:30
This one is pretty fun.
- 00:31
Well… [Poems skydiving]
- 00:32
We think all poems are fun.
- 00:33
To each his own.
- 00:35
Acrostic poems are just what they sound like – poems that go "across."
- 00:40
And that’s about all there is to it.
- 00:41
Have fun!
- 00:44
Whoops…
- 00:45
We forgot to do the explaining part, didn’t we? [Girl explaining acrostic poems]
- 00:47
All right, here goes.
- 00:49
An acrostic poem means a poem that takes one word and then uses each of the letters in
- 00:53
that word to spell out other words, so that the poem ends up looking sort of like a crossword [Coop teaching acrostic poem rules]
- 00:58
puzzle.
- 00:59
In case you can’t envision that perfectly in your head, let's check out an example.
- 01:02
How about we write an acrostic poem using the word “acrostic”?
- 01:06
First, we have to come up with a word that relates to the word “acrostic” and starts
- 01:10
with the first letter, A.
- 01:11
Since we think acrostic poems are amazing, let's use that. [Girl with thumbs up writing acrostic poem]
- 01:15
The words you choose can be words that remind you of the first word, or words that describe
- 01:18
how it makes you feel, or pretty much anything.
- 01:21
Come up with a word for each letter of your starting word, and you get something that
- 01:25
looks like this.
- 01:26
Acrostic: Amazing, Cool, Radical, Outstanding, Silly, Tricky, Imaginative, Clever.
- 01:33
Pretty neat, huh?
- 01:34
Of course, you don't have to always make each letter the first letter of your new words.
- 01:38
You can arrange your acrostic poem however you please, so that it uses whichever letters [Acrostic poem rearranged]
- 01:42
you want.
- 01:43
And if you're feeling extra-confident, you could even try to tell a story with it, like
- 01:47
this one about a vampire.
- 01:49
Even vampires make apple pie for dessert.
- 01:51
See how each word intersects with our main word, VAMPIRE, in different ways? [Vampire acrostic poem in a book]
- 01:55
You can do that, too, if you'd like.
- 01:57
The best part about acrostic poems is that they work with any word in the world. [Poems shaking hands with the Earth]
- 02:01
Seriously, scientists have yet to find a single word that can’t be acrosticized.
- 02:05
So give it a shot!
- 02:07
And if you’re suffering from a little writers’ block, technically, this counts: [A boy in class moving a writing block]
- 02:10
School School School School School School.
- 02:12
Though your teacher probably won’t like it very much. [Boy hands teacher acrostic poem]
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