Today I am writing about the ‘elevenie’, which I discovered in a poetry workshop today, (also called an ‘Elfchen’ – elf “eleven” and -chen a suffix to indicate small size and endearment). It contains eleven words which are arranged in a specified order over five rows, each row has a requirement that can vary. The educational objective of the elevenie is to develop creativity and communication through writing poetry, great when completed in an interactive way. It can also be used as an alternative to brainstorming to introduce a new topic or facilitate discussion. You can also try a double elevenie which would have two stanzas of five lines each, so 22 words in all.
The pattern we used today was 5 lines the first and last being one word, the second 2 words, third 3 fourth 4. See the table below:
and here is two of my efforts:
Let's Write...... 