A Personal Cinquain Activity

A cinquain is a short 5 line poem. It is a great way to teach parts of speech, parallelism, and poetry with one lesson.

1. Choose a person. I have used Greek Gods and Goddesses, fictional characters, movie stars, and the students themselves.
2. Brainstorm words about the person for about 1 minute.
3. Follow this formula to make a CINQUAIN using your words.
   • Line 1: Write the person's name.
   • Line 2: From your list, choose two words that describe your person. These should be adjectives.
   • Line 3: From your list, choose three action words that relate to your person. Put them in -ing form.
   • Line 4: From your list, create a phrase or sentence that describes your person.
   • Line 5: Rename your person without using what was in Line 1.
4. Now format your cinquain so that it is centered on the page. You may experiment with font size and color.
5. Print out your poem.

Here are some examples:

Basic cinquain directions taken from here

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