PBS
Discuss 22-year-old Amanda Gorman’s inaugural poem “The Hill We Climb”
Two poems by National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman are spotlighted in a PBS lesson. Young scholars conduct a close reading and watch videos of Gorman reading her inaugural poem "The Hill We Climb" and "The Miracle of Morning." They...
Curated OER
Poetry in Depth
Scholars use technology to explore poetry and its related elements, such as theme, figures of speech, and other literary devices. They complete four poetry projects including a poem analysis with a concept web, an interactive poem...
Shmoop
ELA.CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.9-10.10
How do you assess what your pupils have learned over the course of the year? Find out how competent they are at reading and analyzing age-level literature with the ideas presented here. Included in this resource are two suggested...
Utah Education Network (UEN)
8th Grade Poetry: Sonnet Poem
The third lesson of five in an eighth-grade poetry unit has young scholars comparing Shakespearean sonnets with Petrarchan sonnets. To begin, they examine the different structures of the two forms and their different rhyme schemes. After...
Utah Education Network (UEN)
7th Grade Poetry: Ode Poem
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...
Utah Education Network (UEN)
7th Grade Poetry: Sonnet Poem
Two sonnets provide seventh graders with examples of Shakespearean sonnets. After discussing the story of the poems and analyzing their rhyme scheme and rhythm, young poets craft a Shakespearian sonnet and share their work with two...
Prestwick House
Teaching Shakespeare: Sonnet 73
It's that time of year to consider how Shakespeare selects his images and structures his Sonnet 73 to develop the meaning of the poem. Class members examine the rhyme scheme, the indented lines, the conceit, and the images used in each...
Utah Education Network (UEN)
8th Grade Poetry: Assess
Eighth graders craft a Petrarchan sonnet and respond to a performance assessment to demonstrate what they have learned in this five-lesson poetry unit.
K20 LEARN
Spiders, Spiders, Everywhere: Poetry Analysis - Theme And Metaphor
Walt Whitman's poem "A Noiseless Patient Spider" provides high schoolers an opportunity to reflect on the importance of perseverance and fortitude. After drafting a Quick Write about a time they tried and tried again to accomplish...
EngageNY
Making a Claim: Emma Burke’s Point of View of the Immediate Aftermath of the Earthquake
Sharpen those pencils; it's time to write! Scholars begin writing the first body paragraph of their literary analysis essays. Additionally, pupils use graphic organizers to analyze a character's point of view from Laurence Yep's...
EngageNY
Making a Claim: Moon Shadow’s Point of View of the Immediate Aftermath
Body paragraphs are the building blocks of every essay. Pupils view and discuss a model essay using a rubric to evaluate one of its supporting paragraphs. Next, scholars use what they've learned to continue drafting their own literary...
Curated OER
The Effects of Slavery
The emotional and spiritual oppression of slavery in the African-American experience is the focus of this instructional activity. Middle schoolers analyze various texts by Frederick Douglass and Maya Angelou related to freedom...
EngageNY
Examining a Model Two-Voice Poem and Planning a Two-Voice Poem
Successful poetry writing requires three P's: planning, preparation, and practice. Pupils read a model two-voice poem and discuss how the author uses evidence to develop the theme. With a partner, scholars use a rubric to analyze the...
Curated OER
A Voice for Hard Issues
Ouch! The final lesson in the 12-resource poetry unit models for young writers how poems can be used to voice hard truths.
Curated OER
"Your Son, Your Only One" - The Sacrifice of Isaac as a Motif in Holocaust Poetry
Class groups examine a series of poems that use Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac as a motif in Holocaust poetry. Included are questions, notes to the teacher, and bibliographical information on each poem. The activities could be...
National Endowment for the Humanities
Introducing Metaphors Through Poetry
Metaphors are word pictures, creating images in our brains that draw readers to consider how two seemingly unrelated items are alike. Poems by Langston Hughes, Margaret Atwood, and Naomi Shihad Nye provide learners with an opportunity to...
National Endowment for the Humanities
“House by the Railroad”: A Painting and a Poem for the Common Core
Introduce your class to ekphrastic poetry with an exercise that asks them to examine Edward Hooper's painting House by the Railroad and Edward Hirsch's poem "Edward Hopper and the House By the Railroad." After a close reading...
Curated OER
Modernism in Poetry, Painting, and Music
Are you teaching Modernism to your class? Connect different areas of artistic expression in the Modernist Era. Learners read T.S. Eliot, view art by Pablo Picasso, and listen to a Modernist musical composition. This final assignment is...
ReadWriteThink
What is Poetry? Contrasting Poetry and Prose
Introduce middle schoolers to the different strategies used when reading prose versus poetry. Groups use a Venn diagram and a poetry analysis handout to compare the characteristics of an informational text and a poem on the same...
Brigham Young University
Introducing the Text and Learning the Process of Script Analysis
Where do directors and set designers get their ideas so that the set they build creates the mood and atmosphere the director wants for a production? From the script! Introduce theater high schoolers to the script analysis techniques used...
Prestwick House
The Poetry of Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan's selection as the 2016 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, the first songwriter ever to receive the honor, has focused the attention of a new generation on the work of the legendary artist. Class members...
Curated OER
1900 America: Primary Sources and Epic Poetry
Using Walt Whitman's Song of Myself and Hart Crane's The Bridge as models, class groups first craft their own epic poems for 1900 and, using primary sources, create a multi-media presentation that captures the sights and...
Prestwick House
Discovering Genre: Poetry
Work on literal and figurative meanings with a lesson focused on Robert Frost's "After Apple-Picking" and "The Road Not Taken." Readers identify the literary devices used by the poet to set the poems' themes, settings, and narrative...
Curated OER
Reading Poetry in the Middle Grades
Bring the beauty of "Nothing Gold Can Stay" by Robert Frost to middle school language arts. After learners read a copy of the poem, they follow an instructional sequence that focuses on sound, figurative language, and theme.