4th Grade How a Poem Is Built worksheets

About this worksheet

By Grade 4, Common Core's RL. 4. 5 expects students to name the structural parts of a poem the way they would name the parts of a story: line, stanza, refrain, and rhyme scheme. A refrain is a line or phrase that repeats, often at the end of every stanza, and noticing it is different from simply enjoying its sound. A rhyme scheme is the pattern rhyming words make, described with letters such as AABB or ABAB. A student who reads a poem happily can still struggle to point to the refrain, count the stanzas correctly, or explain what repeating a line accomplishes.

This worksheet prints one original poem built around a refrain and asks ten focused questions: what the poem is about, its stanza and line counts, its rhyme scheme, which line is the refrain and how many times it appears, a rhyming word pair, the first and last lines, and why a poet repeats a line at all. Read the poem aloud so the refrain's rhythm is easy to hear.

What your child will learn

• Count a poem's stanzas and lines
• Identify a poem's rhyme scheme using letters like AABB
• Find the refrain and count how often it repeats
• Match a rhyming pair of words within a poem
• Explain why a poet might repeat a line