Third Grade Language Arts Lesson: Antonym Diamante Poems

This was an active, fun lesson that I did with my students towards the beginning of the school year. We had been reviewing nouns, verbs, and adjectives and I wanted to review synonyms and antonyms. After making sure that the students understood the difference between synonyms and antonyms, I gave each student a card with a different adjective on it. Their job was to find someone who had either a synonym or an antonym to their card. After finding their partners, I introduced the Diamante poem by showing students a sample, we then created a class poem (I wish I had taken a picture of that - it was pretty creative), and then we brainstormed different topics we could use for our Diamante Antonym Poems. This lesson ended up taking two periods because students had to write their poem and then they illustrated it. There were some really interesting subjects. I always love seeing what my students minds can come up with!

It's not clear because we cut the paper out to put it on construction paper, but the format was:
Title
Noun 1
2 Adjectives describing Noun 1
3 Continuous Verbs describing Noun 1
2 Nouns related to Noun 1/ 2 Nouns related to Noun 2
3 Continuous Verbs describing Noun 2
2 Adjectives describing Noun 2
Noun 2 

Here is one student's poem about ice and fire. I love the descriptive words. It really creates an interesting tone.

This student chose a unique topic: The Giants and The Tigers. This was right after the Giants won the World Series, so she was showing some team pride :) I like how the picture looks like they're hugging.

Antonym Diamante Poem Lesson