Last Friday my first-year high school students and I read about the loss of wildlife and the importance of biological diversity for the health of our planet. We also experimented with diamond-shaped poems using nouns, adjectives and verbs to describe one or two topics. Diamante poems are a useful tool for having elementary and pre-intermediate EFL students engage with the language, have fun with words and unleash their creativity.
We started with the two most recurring words in our lesson, wildlife and biodiversity, and created a simple collective poem:
Then we decided to set a class challenge for teachers and students: creating a diamante poem choosing two endangered or extinct species (an animal and a plant). The following is an example:
By Maria Rita Pepe and her students at Nereto (TE), ItalyIISS “G. Peano – C. Rosa”