Theme Writing Activities With an Apple

Five Senses Poem

• In a five-senses poem, students connect the topic they are writing about to their senses of touch, taste, sight, sound and smell. Provide every student with an apple and explain that each will write about it using all five senses. Encourage students to feel, smell, taste and smell the apple inside and out before writing. Students should title the poem "My apple." The first line should describe the way the apple looks. The second line should describe how the apple feels. The third and fourth lines describe the taste and smell of the apple. The last line describes how the apple sounds. Encourage students to listen to how the apple sounds as they eat it to get ideas for this line.

Concrete Poem

• Concrete poems are poems that take the shape of an object. Provide students with an outline of an apple and challenge them to write a poem about apples in the shape of an apple. Model for students how to write in different directions rather than from left to right, and how to write to fill up the shape of the apple.

Research Apples

• Students can complete a research project on specific types of apples. Assign each student a different type of apple to research and have them find pictures of the apples, descriptions of the taste and colors of the apples and where the apples grow best. Have students create a poster showcasing their research. Some grocery stores stock a large variety of apples, so students can visit the store and try to find their variety of apple to share with the class.

Apple Vocabulary

• Provide students with a list of apple-related vocabulary such as seed, pie, tree, orchard, McIntosh and Granny Smith. Have students write a sentence for each of the words or incorporate each of the words into a story about apples. Students can write their sentences in a large picture of an apple to add to the theme.

Visit an Orchard

• Visit an apple orchard in the fall. After the visit, students can write thank-you letters to the owners of the orchard telling them what they learned from the visit. Students could also write a journal entry or story about the experience and share their writing with the class.

Apple Acrostic

• Using the word apple, write an acrostic poem. Write the word apple vertically on a sheet of paper. Next to each letter, write an adjective that describes an apple or a sentence describing an apple that starts with that letter of the alphabet.