Scholars take part in two exercises to boost their knowledge of personification. After reading a detailed description and excerpts from famous poems, writers list action verbs and objects then combine words to create a humorous...

Jane Hirshfield's poem "My Skeleton" asks readers to pause and think about the amazing, often taken-for-granted structure that protects and gives form to human bodies. After observing the human skeleton's image, class members read the...

Change, growth, and a sense of belonging are the focus of a unit that uses poetry to explore these themes and the distinguishing features of poetry as well. 

Spongebob Squarepants helps teach middle schoolers about personification! After discussing the human characteristics demonstrated by the cartoon character, scholars identify the personification in poems by Emily Dickinson and Langston...

After a close reading of Sylvia Plath's "Mirror" and Flora de Falbe's "Five Things About the Lake," young poets craft their own personification list poem about a very special place.

A free write, an image of magnolia leaves, and the Ed Roberson's poem "Once the Magnolia has Blossomed" ask scholars to use their noticing skills to reflect on the lesson beauty teaches about loss and grief.

The second lesson in a five-part poetry unit asks seventh graders to construct a metaphor poem. First, pupils examine Emily Dickinson's "The Railway Train" and identify the metaphor. They then select an object and an animal and craft a...

Budding poets compose an original free verse poem. Encouraged to use personification and alliteration, scholars read over three tips and examples then try their hand at drafting a poem of their own style.  

Discover lyric poetry through a reading of Sympathy by Paul Laurence Dunbar and analyze its meaning with three short-answer questions covering symbolism, personification, alliteration, metaphors, and similes. 

Walt Whitman's "Captain, My Captain" and Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" provide seventh graders with examples of odes. After reading and discussing these and other examples, young poets craft an ode and respond to the ode of a...

Song lyrics, like poems, are meant to be heard. After examining the literary devices in several poems, scholars examine the lyrics of popular songs and identify the sound devices and the figurative language writers use to create the...

To assess what scholars have learned throughout a five-lesson plan poetry unit, seventh graders first craft a Shakespearean sonnet based on a poem they have studied. In part two of the assessment, scholars complete a four-texts...

We carry memories of where we're from; tweens and teens can capture these memories by first listening to several memory poems and then crafting their own. They analyze literary devices other poets use, brainstorm a list of images they...

Poetry or prose? That is the question facing middle schoolers as they begin a month-long poetry unit by examining the characteristics that differentiate poetry and prose writing. Pupils learn about poetic devices and different types of...

A study of Rudyard Kipling's poem, "If," launches a lesson about theme. Class members read Kipling's poem and poems by other seventh graders to identify the themes.

Present your class with an overview of poetry-related information. The slides are clearly organized by topic, starting with reading poetry, ending with myths, and touching on everything from the five senses to open and closed forms of...

Explore poetry, personification, and multiple languages with a poetry reading and writing lesson. After the teacher reads the poem to the class, a discussion about personification follows. The class then writes a collaborative poem...

Eighth graders craft a Petrarchan sonnet and respond to a performance assessment to demonstrate what they have learned in this five-lesson poetry unit.

If anyone suffers from metrophobia—the fear of poetry—the PowerPoint on the elements of poetry may help alleviate their worries. The presentation introduces learners to poetic elements, including simile, metaphor, and personification....

Ouch! The final lesson in the 12-resource poetry unit models for young writers how poems can be used to voice hard truths.

Three of Emily Dickinson's poems, "I like to see it," "Because I could not stop for Death," and "We grow accustomed to the Dark," provide instructors with an opportunity to model for class members how to use close reading strategies to...

Engage your class in the elements of poetry with a series of lessons and activities. The plans cover simile, metaphor, personification, onomatopoeia, alliteration, and imagery. Learners come up their their own metaphors, identify poetic...

Introduce middle schoolers to poetic devices with a lesson plan that asks them to find examples of alliteration, anaphora, onomatopoeia, metaphors, similes, and personification in various poems. Young scholars craft examples of these...

Young poets learn the value of using a thesaurus when crafting and revising poems. They examine poems rich in figurative language and then a revised version with the figurative language removed. To demonstrate what they have learned,...