Curated OER
Japanese Poetry: Tanka? You're Welcome!
Students explore tanka, a form of Japanese poetry. They read and analyze tankas to determine the structure and intent, and compose a traditional and a non-traditional tanka.
Curated OER
Poetry Writing Unit: Writing a Film Poem
Film poems? To concluded a poetry unit, writers select one of their own poems and create a film that brings to life the sounds and images of their work. Included with the detailed unit plan are daily lessons, student examples, a list of...
Georgia Department of Education
Exploring Poetry and Poets
Combine the study of poetry and non-fiction texts with this complete and ready-to-use six-week unit. After reading numerous poems from local writers and compiling a personal anthology, high schoolers find and read a memoir or biography...
Curated OER
Poetry Notes
Break this presentation into two or three days so as not to overwhelm your kids. Fifty-four slides is a lot of slides, but the PowerShow is well-organized, and terms are defined clearly and illustrated in examples provided. A general...
National Endowment for the Humanities
Poems that Tell a Story: Narrative and Persona in the Poetry of Robert Frost
Dig in deeper with Robert Frost's, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening." Learners will read and discuss poems by Robert Frost and learn the meaning of terms such as narrative and personal. They journal, collaborate, and present poetry...
Curated OER
Reading Poetry
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...
National History Day
Poetry from the Trenches of World War I
Often, the real-life experiences of soldiers gets lost back home when the war seems so far away. Scholars investigate the personal side of World War I in the trenches of Europe to complete a collaborative social studies activity. When...
Curated OER
Seven Poems, Seven Paintings: A Teacher's Guide to Selected Holocaust Poetry
Seven poems paired with seven original works of art provide learners an opportunity to draw connections between literary and artistic interpretations. Designed to augment a study of the Holocaust, each pair is accompanied by discussion...
Southern Illinois University
I Can Write a Poem
It is so important for English language learners to be able to write for a variety of purposes. Specifically written for an ELD class, this activity provides explicit instruction for teaching learners how to write a poem. First, they...
Curated OER
Express Yourself Pre Assessment Lesson 1 & 2
Find out how much your class knows about literary elements with a quick pre-assessment. Pupils work first individually to identify the instances of personification, metaphor, simile, and more, and then with group members to determine the...
Trinity University
Who Am I? Using Personal Narrative to Reflect on Identity
Who am I? Pupils work to answer this question through a unit that explores personal narratives and identity. Exit tickets for activities that examine different poems, short stories, and autobiographical writing serve as prewriting for...
Crafting Freedom
George Moses Horton: Crafting Virtual Freedom Through Poetry
What is "virtual freedom"? How about "enslaved entrepreneurship"? Class members will learn about these terms and much more as they read the poems and examine the life of George Moses Horton.
Teacher's Corner
Tanka
The Tanka, another fix from of Japanese poetry, is featured in the final exercise in a 10-part series of poetry writing activities.
Curated OER
Poems that Tell a Story: Narrative and Persona in the Poetry of Robert Frost
Students investigate and explore the poems of Robert Frost. They read and discuss poems by Frost, define narrative and personal, write narratives in a journal, and present a dramatic reading of a poem to the class.
Curated OER
Lincoln is in the House! ("Name-Dropping" Poems and the Power of Connotation)
“What’s in a name?” Just about everything. Barack Obama, Vincent van Gogh, Justin Bieber. Famous names evoke a multitude of reactions and poets often use the names of famous people in their works precisely because names carry...
Curated OER
Collective Poetry: Teaching Tolerance
Help your class create collective poetry following a simple, engaging model from Teaching Tolerance (tolerance.org). Each young poet writes five things on an index card: sayings from others, favorite sound, favorite place, favorite...
Anti-Defamation League
Social Justice Poetry
Learners gain insight into how songs and poems express feelings of injustice. They also learn about literary devices and types of poems and make a personal connection when they write their own free verse poems about injustice.
National Endowment for the Humanities
In Emily Dickinson's Own Words: Letters and Poems
Analyze the depth and beauty of American Literature by reading Emily Dickinson's letters and poems. The class analyzes Dickinson's poetic style and discusses Thomas Wentworth Higginson's editorial relationship with Dickinson. They pay...
Tiny Mobile
Poetry Creator | Verses
Construct from a canvas of words, lyrical expressions that your budding poets can share and post. Based on refrigerator magnet poetry, creative writers can develop their poetry independently, or from a given prompt from their instructor.
National Council of Teachers of English
Acrostic Poems: All About Me and My Favorite Things
Budding poets create two acrostic poems, one for their name and another using a word of their choice. Over the course of five days, scholars compose, revise, publish, and share their work with their peers.
Curated OER
Picture Perfect Poetry
Do your language arts students love to draw? Use this instructional activity to reinforce poetic techniques with illustration. After drawing what they think poem would look like with no words, middle and high schoolers work on several...
National Endowment for the Humanities
Walt Whitman to Langston Hughes: Poems for a Democracy
Explore the idea of democratic poetry. Upper graders read Walt Whitman, examining daguerreotypes, and compare Whitman to Langston Hughes. They describe aspects of Whitman's I Hear America Singing to Langston Hughes' Let America Be...
Curated OER
Poetry and Hip Hop
High schoolers compare and contrast the genres of poetry and hip-hop. They view a poetry slam and write about it in their journals. Learners view a Lauryn Hill music video and respond to it in their journals. They compare and contrast...
Curated OER
Write a Tanka Poem
In this Tanka poem worksheet, 6th graders analyze a Tanka poem for number of syllables and content parameters, then write one about a journey, real or imagined using the 6 step writing process.