Mentor Text Tip Tuesday: Haiku Magnets

Tip: Make Haiku Magnets

I love writing haiku with my students. One of the tricky parts about writing haiku is getting to them to be highly selective with their word choice. I ban words like cool, awesome, great, fun. But sometimes it’s hard to for them to know what kind of words are examples of good word choice. So, we borrow from haiku. I took my collection of haiku books. Then I typed up the words from the haiku one by one and mixed them up.

I got this idea from the poetry refrigerator magnets, but I didn’t want to pay money for something that I wasn’t sure would be perfect for haiku in elementary school. I also wanted to have multiple sets. So I made my own.

Haiku Fridge Magnets Screenshot — Click on the image to download the PDF to print your own haiku magnets.

I made multiple copies, laminated them, cut them out, and put magnets on the back. Now my students can create their own haiku using really, really good words.

A few notes:

* You don’t have to magnetize them. Just having them laminated and cut apart works well on the floor or on desks. But if you want to make it a literacy workstation, I recommend magnetizing them and letting students work at filing cabinet.

* Students may have difficulty using ONLY the magnets. They may not have the exact word they are looking for. Instead, have them use these as a resource. They can use these as a word bank to help them and insert some of their own words as well.