I may not own a Porsche—let alone a fleet—but that doesn’t stop me from performing like I’m center stage in one. Today, I am attempting to sing and drive with the powerful puente as my poetic engine! And like yesterday’s opposite poems, today’s form continues to explore contrasting ideas (if you wish), or evolving ones, or even juxtaposed ones.

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🌉 Lesson Plan: Building Bridges with Puente Poems

Grade Level: 3rd–5th
Poetic Form: Puente
Theme: Change, connection, before-and-after, feelings

🎯 Objective:

Students will learn to write a Puente poem, where one special line (the bridge) connects two short stanzas. They’ll explore how words can build a bridge between emotions, ideas, or events. (source)

🔗 Connections

• Learning Connection:
  • Language Arts: Transitional phrases, metaphor, and structure.
  • SEL: Connecting personal experiences to broader themes (e.g., friendship).
  • Cross-Curricular: Science (ecosystems), social studies (cultural bridges).
• Poetry Connection: The bridge line encourages students to think critically about relationships between ideas, fostering analytical and creative thinking.

🧰 Materials

🧠 What is a Puente Poem?

A Puente poem has three stanzas. The first and third stanzas have the same number of lines, but the middle stanza is only one line long. This single line is the puente, which means “bridge” in Spanish.

The first and third stanzas are connected but show different ideas or feelings — like two places next to each other connected by their boundary line or fence. The poet can decide how many lines to include in each stanza and whether the poem should rhyme or not.

The one-line middle stanza is marked with a tilde symbol (~). It does something special: it acts as the end of the first stanza and also as the start of the third stanza. This line helps connect the two parts of the poem, just like a bridge.

Note: The ‘~’ for the bridge line is more to highlight it than anything else from what I can see, so for younger students, you can skip using it.

So a puente looks like this:

• 1st stanza is about one idea (a feeling, a moment, a season, a memory…)
• 2nd stanza is just one special line — the bridge (enclosed within ~)
• 3rd stanza is about a second idea that connects with or contradicts the 1st through the bridge

✍️ Lesson Outline (~60 minutes)

1️⃣ Bridge Talk (10 min)

Start by asking:

• What does a bridge do?
• Can feelings or situations change like that?
• What are some “before and after” moments you’ve experienced?

Make notes of before and after moments to use in a bridge-bank, so to speak.

📘 2. Introduce the Puente Poem (10 min)

Show some sample poems.

1)

My kitty climbed the kitchen wall
and chased a shadow down the hall.
She leapt and twirled, a furry blur—

~ a little tiger in disguise ~

she pounced and patted at my toes.
She curled up tight in peaceful doze—
a sleepy ball with golden eyes.

2)

The frog jumped high, and tried to hide,
so splashed right through the water’s skin.

~ there was a ripple round and wide. ~

A duck looked up, then slid right in,
and made some waves from side to side

Discussion Questions:

• What’s happening in each stanza?
• How does the bridge line connect the two ideas?
• Does it belong to both stanzas?
• What changed?

📝 Brainstorm & Prewriting (10 min)

Have students pick two ideas or emotions that contrast or evolve but are still connected (or give them a choice bank).

Make a list together as a class:

• Rainy day → Sunny day
• Nervous → Proud
• Lonely → Friendly
• Mad → Calm
• Night → Morning
• Before the test → After the test
• Scared → Confident
• Lost → Found

Have them come up with some “bridge” lines like:

• “Then everything changed.”
• “But I found my smile again.”
• “And the world looked different.”
• “But the sun peeked out again.”
• “Then I remembered who I was.”

💡 Prompt starter if they need help:
“Think of a time when something changed — how did it feel before and after?”

✍️ Drafting the Puente Poem (15–20 min)

Using word/idea pairs and bridge lines from the choice bank made earlier, or by using their own, have students write their poem. Encourage poetic devices like imagery, metaphor, and repetition, as well as sound words, color and feeling words, short, clear thoughts, and/or a twist!

Show them a visual reminder of the Puente form and remind that stanzas 1 and 3 can be of any length and can rhyme or not (but they have to have the same number of lines).

• Stanza 1: Describe Idea 1.
• Stanza 2: ~Bridge line~
• Stanza 3: Describe Idea 2.

📣 Share & Reflect (5–10 min)

• Invite a few students to read aloud. Ask:
  • “How did your bridge line connect both ideas?”
  • “Did your poem take a turn or shift?”
  • “What feelings did you want your poem to carry?”

♿ Accommodations

For younger or emerging writers:

• Provide sentence starters or line frames
• Group brainstorming with teacher support
• Let them choose from pre-written bridge lines

For advanced writers:

• Challenge: Use metaphor as the bridge
• Create multiple bridge lines across three “chapters”
• Try a paired Puente poem — two students, two voices, one bridge

🌱 Extension Ideas

• Art integration:
  • Draw a symbolic or literal bridge across their poem
  • Paint split canvases showing the two stanzas’ themes, connected by a literal “bridge” drawing.
• History: Before and after an event
• Science: Describe a change — melting ice, a growing plant, metamorphosis (a caterpillar to butterfly)
• SEL tie-in: Write a poem about how someone helped you through something
• Bilingual Bridges: Write parallel English/Spanish stanzas with a mixed-language bridge line¹.
• Puente Puzzles: Cut stanzas apart; groups match disconnected stanzas and invent new bridge lines.

Performing a Puente in a Porsche (or two?!)

Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt challenges us to craft a poem that recounts an experience of driving/riding and singing, incorporating a song lyric. For inspiration: Ellen Bass’s poem, “You’re the Top.

I have another poem with a playlist in mind, but for now, here is a puenta I attempted to perform in my pretend Porsche!

Parton in Pretend Porsches
We get in the car, have a seat,
A beat kicks in—my kid says, “Wait!
This one’s viral, don’t skip it yet!”
So I nod, and let it spin its fate.
The lyrics? Nonsense. But I don’t mind—
Next song hits, and I chime in wild:
“And…. I will always love you….”
Eye roll in place, the kiddo says
The emo, mom! Tone it down, won’t you?
Or better yet, just change the thing.”
Oh well! I can do this another day, i think!

~ I fiddle with the stations once more ~

First comes static, loud and clear.
Then a jingle for carpet floors.
Next a silent hum, like the waves gave up.
As I shift to one more and hear
heavy metal blasting my ears
I sigh. Who reset my faux-Porsche’s preset?
News comes on, draining me of cheer. I steer,
then flick, then grin as I hear it again:
“And…. I will always love you….
I will always love you”
My voice, rebooted, takes the wheel.
~ Vidya Tiru @ LadyInReadWrites

The Bookish Five Celebrating (news)Paper

Celebrating Women Who Put Pen to Paper

April 18th is National Columnists Day, so here are two women columnists for you.

(1 & 2) Book Beginnings and First Line Friday

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAY is hosted by Rose City Reader. What book are you happy about reading this week? Please share the opening sentence (or so) on BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAY! Add the link to your blog or social media post and visit other blogs to see what others are reading.

Happy Friday and welcome to the FIRST LINE FRIDAY, hosted by Reading is My Superpower! It’s time to grab the book nearest to you and leave a comment with the first line.

From Listen World!

Intro:

Chapter 1:

From If Life is a Bowl of Cherries…

Intro:

Chapter 1:

3 Friday 56

THE FRIDAY 56 is hosted by Anne at HeadFullofBooks. To play, open a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% on your e-reader). Find a sentence or two and post them, along with the book title and author. Then link up and visit others in the linky. 

From Listen World!

From If Life is a Bowl of Cherries…

4 Book Blogger Hop

The purpose of THE BOOK BLOGGER HOP is to give bloggers a chance to follow other blogs, learn about new books, and befriend other bloggers. THE BOOK BLOGGER HOP is hosted by Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer.  

Do you know the Night Song in the Jungle?

I should have known it but I didn’t, and now I do!

5 Piñata Books for Kids

For it is National Piñata Day!

• One Is a Pinata: A Book of Numbers by Roseanne Thong and illustrated by John Parra 
• Hooray, a Pinata! by Elisa Kleven 
• How To Stuff a Piñata: Cómo Rellenar una Piñata by Ana Varela and Naibe Reynos
• A Piñata in a Pine Tree by Pat Mora and illustrated by Magaly Morales
• The Piñata That the Farm Maiden Hung by Samantha R. Vamos and illustrated by Sebastià Serra

And Now, the End of This Puente Post

Dear reader, will you write a puente poem, or get yourself a pinata (book)? If so, do let me know! And any other comments and thoughts on my post are welcome as always. How about singing songs while driving? Which ones do you always sing when it comes on the radio, no matter what? Any stories about singing songs while driving?!

I am linking up to A-Z, Blogchatter, UBC, NaPoWriMo.

And you can find all my A-Z posts (this year and previous years’ as well) here:

A to Z Challenge Posts