Here are some of my favourite poems for the punctuation-poem challenge. These poems are imaginative, playful and fun! Eloïse gives punctuation marks personalities. Such imagination! Lucy tells a story with punctuation marks as characters. Daniel has a comma crew. Emilie brings the full stop to life and Gemma animates the exclamation mark. Alex poses a question. Seth does an acrostic full stop poem. A glorious mix.
Hard to pick one to give the book to but I am going to send the book to Lucy as I loved the inventiveness of her poem story and the roles punctuation marks played. Thanks to Scholastic I am sending her Punctuation Mark by Brenda Ellis (2014).
The Full Stop
Try writing a poem about the humble full stop.
It doesn’t make noise, it’s just silence you’ve got.
Sometimes he creates suspense, dot, dot, dot.
Sometimes he stops to let you take a breath,
Otherwise the sentence would go on forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and cause great death.
I wish we could take a breath like the humble full stop.
Try writing a poem about the humble full stop.
Emilie T, Year 7, aged 11, Balmoral School, Auckland
Live Life With An Exclamation Point!
When you live life with an Exclamation point
Everything is better!
You can
Smile and shout!
No need to pout!
Cry in shock!
Beat the clock!
Yelp in pain if you get a knock!
You can
Yell out loud – oh glee, oh glory!
Tell a really exciting story!
Congratulate!
Celebrate!
Shout out loud “Stop! Go! Wait!”
When you live life with an Exclamation point
Everything is better!
Gemma, Year 4 Adventure School, Whitby
In a World of Punctuation
Two exclamation marks jump into their full stop
They drive along a hyphen
Stop at a question mark to let the exclamation marks go
Their little pet commas bark and follow obediently
The full stop drives over a bracket
Underneath swirling semi colons lay
They drive into their ampersand and park the full stop
They get out and walk into their at sign ready for a meal for two
They have meal of juicy words
Then they climb into their subtraction sign ready for the night
By Lucy H aged10, Gladstone School, Auckland
This is by Alex M, Aged 11, Year 7, Balmoral Intermediate School
The Comma Crew
There are so many commas,
To get to know,
All of them have a job,
And these are the ones you can get:
List making comma,
Joining comma,
Clause comma,
Comma twins,
Introducing comma,
Chat room comma,
Numbers comma,
All of the comma crew commas
Tell you to
Do what you’re supposed to do…
Pause – for a little while,
Until you get to a full stop.
By Daniel L, age 5, Year 1, Adventure School, Whitby
Punctuation Personalities
Words are rowdy
They have a job –
To describe an
Image
OR
Concept
OR
Story
But we would be quite lost when we read
Without them,
The police force of the grammatical world,
Keeping Words in line.
Here are a few:
Full stop.
Most basic of them all.
Brings a stop to a sentence.
The party-pooper of the bunch,
Full Stop will find a way to end the most rambling of sentences.
Ellipses…
Gap in text…
Often used in…
Cliffhangers and quotations.
Power-hungry Ellipses steps in to take Text’s place.
Semicolon is a Punctuation Mark;
Indicates that two Clauses have a relationship
A matchmaker
Connecting together eligible Statements.
Do you have a Question?
Should you use Question Mark,
A quizzical character wanting to know more?
Apostrophe’s job is to indicate someone’s ownership
Elicits wonder – its or it’s?
Parentheses (contain more details)
A mine of information,
Exclamation Mark!
Anger!
Surprise!
Excitement!
Liable to mood swings
Has a close relationship with CAPITALS.
Colon: Introduction
Older sibling to Semicolon;
Addresses and introduces
But this is the end (Full stop).
Eloïse Muir, I am 11 years old and am in Year 7 at Balmoral School.
ACROSTIC POEM: Full stop
Fabulous round dots.
Unleashing the end of an adventure in the all you can imagine.
Loving the adventurous words around him.
Living in between valleys with huge mountain words.
Squished in between blistering lines.
T ears pouring round his round cheeks as if he isn’t the lucky last just last all he ever is.
Open and read every letter except the weeping last one.
Powerful, sad, punctuation all he ever is
The end or shall I say full stop.
From Seth D, Year 7, 11 years, Balmoral School
Poetry Box 