Curated OER
Technopoet - Poetry Lesson Plans
Practice word processing while writing different types of poems. First, elementary and middle schoolers use Word templates to write poetry. They use rhyming and descriptive words as they work with clipart, text wrapping, and picture...
Curated OER
Unknown Frost Poem Discovered
What? A long-lost poem from Robert Frost? Introduce your class to a poem recently found and published from Robert Frost's personal collection. The lesson includes background information on the author, the poem itself, and a list of...
University of North Carolina
Poetry Explications
Explication may sound like a fancy word, but it's just a fancy way to say analysis. Using a handout on poetry explications, part of a larger series on specific writing assignments, writers learn how to break down and analyze a poem. The...
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 of the two...
Academy of American Poets
Teach This Poem: "The Snowfall Is So Silent" by Miguel de Unamuno
Cold, beautiful, unique! Class members closely examine John Singer Sargent's watercolor "Snow," taking note of the artist's techniques, and pair up to discuss how the image makes them feel about snow. They then repeat the process with...
Winterhill School
Poetry Analysis
Gain greater insight into poems using a poetry analysis worksheet. Here, scholars follow steps and answer questions to dissect any poem. Topics include the poem's meaning, theme, technique, and structure, as well as personal thoughts and...
ReadWriteThink
Alliteration in Headline Poems
Poetry is everywhere you look! Create found poems using headlines from newspapers and magazines. Young poetry focus on creating alliterative phrases with words they find in headlines, tying their poems to a central theme.
KIPP 3D Academy
Epic Poetry Unit
The Odyssey is the core text in this unit study of the hero's journey motif. Along the way, kids research Greek and Roman history, mythology, art, and epic poetry. The 104-page packet is perfect for homeschool or classroom situations and...
Macmillan Education
Understanding Poetry (Elementary)
Introduce young readers to poetry analysis with a learning exercise that uses Emily Bronte's "Spellbound" to model how poets use word choice, the sounds of words, the repetition of words, and rhyming patterns to create the mood, tone,...
ReadWriteThink
Sonic Patterns: Exploring Poetic Techniques Through Close Reading
Robert Hayden's poem "Those Winter Sundays" serves as the anchor text in a five-part lesson plan that takes the mystery out of poetry analysis by modeling explicit strategies for pupils to employ to conduct a close reading of a poem....
Curated OER
De-Mystifying Poetry: Understanding Narrative Poetry
Tenth graders explore narrative poetry. They analyze sections of a poem and present to groups. They compose their own narrative poems using pictures as prompts. They exchange their poems and analyze their classmate's poem.
Curated OER
Preparing for Poetry: A Reader's First Steps
Students examine denotation and connotation in language, and paraphrase a poem. They read and analyze a sonnet by iam Shakespeare, analyze the attitude and tone, paraphrase a poem, and create a thesis about a poem based on textual evidence.
National Council of Teachers of English
Writing Poetry with Rebus and Rhyme
Young scholars write rhyming poems using rebus. With pictures instead of words, authors create original work about things they love.
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.
Poetry4kids
Evoking the Senses in a Poem
Budding poets choose a topic for a sensory-filled poem. Authors describe that topic using detailed language based on the five senses. Then, switch the senses to create a fanciful poem intended to add a touch of fun to the objective.
Academy of American Poets
Teach This Poem: "A Place in the Country" by Toi Derricotte
Build young scholars' confidence in analyzing art and poetry with a lesson plan that first asks pupils to list details they notice in Edouard Vuillard's painting "Garden at Vaucresson" and then to describe how the painting makes them...
Curated OER
Analyze Author’s Techniques, Including Figurative Language
Paul Laurence Dunbar's poem "He Had His Dream" is the focus of a quick exercise. Pupils read the poem and answer four multiple choice questions and one short answer question about specific lines in the poem and the author's purpose....
Southern Nevada Regional Professional Development Program
Reading Literature - The Ruin
Cross-comparison, the technique of focusing on two different texts with the same themes, motifs, events, etc., is employed in an exercise that asks groups to examine two different translations of “The Ruin,” a poem, written in Old...
Core Knowledge Foundation
Unit 5: Realms of Gold - Vol. 2 Poetry and Short Stories Teacher Guide
Seventh graders have a golden opportunity to learn how to read poems and short stories with a unit that introduces them to the techniques writers use to craft their works. They examine poems by William Carlos Williams and Edgar Allen Poe...
Poetry4kids
How to Write Funny Poetry — Chapter 1: Writing Poetry
Do you wish you could write poetry that makes people laugh? Now you can! Check out the first chapter in a poetry writing series that emphasizes the importance of connecting subject matter to a light, bouncy meter.
National Endowment for the Humanities
Emulating Emily Dickinson: Poetry Writing
High schoolers analyze mood and voice in Emily Dickinson's poem, "There's a Certain Slant of Light." After the analysis, students write a poem of their own emulating the Dickinson poem, and then write a one-page essay describing what...
Curated OER
Discussing Poetry In Class
Students investigate syllabic metre and rhyming techniques by analyzing poetry. In this language arts lesson plan, students read the poem Considering the Snail and discuss the nature and mood of the poem with their classmates. Students...
Smarter Balanced
Poetry
How does poetry differ from other forms of writing? Class members view two writing samples, decide which one is a poem, and then identify the criteria they used to distinguish between the two samples.
Curated OER
Annotating Poetry
Use text marking and highlighting to explore the structure of a poem. After listening to Allan Ahlberg read "Please Mrs. Butler," learners locate stanzas and patterns on their copy of the poem using the text marking technique. Class...