Hi, everyone! Today I would like to talk about Haiku. Have you ever heard about Haiku before? Haiku is a form of poetry, first made popular in Japan, which has become appreciated around the world. Haiku poems can describe anything, but are seldom complicated or hard to understand. Almost all Haiku has a dominant impression, or main idea, that appeals strongly to one of the five senses. A traditional Haiku is a seventeen-syllable ancient Japanese poem, that doesn’t need to rhyme. The poem structure is split into three lines of”5-7-5” (five syllables for the first line, seven syllables for the second line, and five syllables for the third line.) traditionally the words paint a picture for the reader about nature or season, or passage of time.
Consider this poem:
In the wide garden, (5)
I am dizzy with flowers. (7)
I choose a small vase. (5)
Vienen saltando (5)
Entre las hojas verdes (7)
Jazmines blancos (5)
Haiku by design is a simple form of poetry, it is an excellent place for young writers to begin and hone their skills as budding poets so me and Anna decided to teach our students how to write Haiku last December. We explained to the kids what Haiku is and how it is a brilliant way to express the beauty that is in nature. Pointing out the 5-7-5 rule regarding the syllable construction of Haiku and making sure that they understood how to determine syllables in words, and review with them how to use a dictionary to find syllables when necessary. It’s time to write their own poems. After the students finished writing their own poems in Catalan or Spanish, I translated all of their poems into Japanese and taught them how to write their poems in Japanese which was so difficult for them to learn to write. Anyway, we made it! The kids even had a go at drawing traditional Japanese drawings.
