Panda poems

Overview

This session is a follow-up to the fact-finding activity where children can use their knowledge of pandas to write a poem. Poetry is a fantastic tool to express emotions and put a point across powerfully. There are some ideas and examples included but children should be given full freedom to write however they wish. Encourage them to take risks with their writing and to use it as a way to explore their own feelings about pandas – to express how much they like them or to provide a way to speak about the problems they face.

Intro

This is the poetry follow-up activity to the Panda fact-finding. It would help to do the fact-finding activity first. Giant pandas make great subjects for poems. Look through the ideas and example with children and support them to have a go at writing their own panda poem. This can be their own version of my example, something in a similar style, one of the other suggestions, or completely their own ideas.

What you need

• Access to notes from research
• Access to ideas and examples
• Pen and paper or alternative way to record poems

What to do

• Step 1: Look through the ideas and examples
• Step 2: Children write a panda poem

Step 1: Ideas and examples

Look together at these ideas and examples of panda poems before children go on to write their own poem.

Panda kennings poem

A kennings poem puts two words together in each line. These words describe someone or something and follows the pattern and rhythm in the example below. You can find examples of these online and in poetry books. You can also look at the Wild Literacy Pirate Kennings Poems activity page for more help and ideas.

Kennings example

Mountain-dwelling
Bamboo-chomping
Tree-climbing
Great-swimming
Baby-cutey
Big-beauty
Still-endangered
Giant Panda

Panda acrostic poem

You could also try an acrostic poem. Acrostic poems spell a word that is relevant to what the poem is about with the first letter of each line. These don’t have to rhyme, but they can if you want to. For a panda acrostic poem, you could use the letters PANDA as the first letter of each line. Other words you could use are BAMBOO, CHINA or BEAR. What you have found out in the fact-finding activity will help you find some good words you could use.

To see some examples of acrostic poems follow this link or look online.

Step 2: Children write their own poem

Children can choose one of the styles of poetry from the examples above or a different style they’d like to try. You can look at other styles of poetry in the Wild Literacy poetry section.

Poems can be a powerful way to put across the dangers pandas face and how terrible it would be to lose these wonderful creatures. If this is something you feel strongly about, you could write a poem to help others understand your feelings about these great bears.