Trinity University
Framing Poetry
The big idea in this poetry unit plan is that structure and content work together to create meaning. Class members learn how to identify and mark the metrical patterns and line lengths used in poems. They study the structure of various...
Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media
War and Poetry
A band of brothers or the Devil's agents? Nobel warriors freeing the oppressed or mercenaries working for the military/industrial complex? Groups examine poems from the Civil War, World War I, and World War II to determine the poets'...
Curated OER
Poetry: The Most Compact Form of Literature
Introducing or need to review literary devices and terms for a study of poetry? Though text heavy, the explanations and examples of key poetic devices will provide learners with the vocabulary they need to discuss and craft poems.
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...
Poetry4kids
How to Write a Limerick
Add a little fun and fancy to English language arts with an activity that challenges scholars to write a limerick. Authors follow five rules in order to compose an original poem that contains a specific rhyme scheme.
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,...
Prestwick House
Poe’s “The Raven” – Unity of Effect
How do Poe's choices of imagery, rhythm and rhyme scheme, and structure help build the desired single effect of "The Raven"? After listening to a dramatic reading of the poem, class members consider whether Poe's choices do create a...
Prestwick House
Discovering Genre: Poetry
Work on literal and figurative meanings with a lesson plan 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...
Education Oasis
Creative Writing Unit: Analyzing, Interpreting, Discussing and Writing Various Genres of African-American Literature
A six-week unit takes high schoolers through various works of African-American literature, including poems, plays, and short stories. The lesson plan format includes a week-by-week description of activities, goals, materials, and...
Curated OER
Poetry Writing Practice
In this poetry writing instructional activity, students identify the topic, similes, metaphors, onomatopoeia, rhyme scheme, and alliteration in a poem. Students fill out this information in a given diagram.
Curated OER
Character in a Box
Partners choose, research, and analyze fictional or historical characters and design character life boxes to represent them. They also compose a rhyme royal, which they understand inductively by deconstructing examples. Based largely on...
MENSA Education & Research Foundation
Death Be Not Proud
Not dreadful, but mighty, this instructional activity for “Divine Sonnet X” (aka “Death Be Not Proud”) models for individuals how to recognize John Donne’s argument for why Death should not be proud and how to recognize the sonnet...
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 Book-- Small Creatures
In this reading activity, students create a book of poems about small creatures of the garden by stapling 20 pages. Students read each short poem and color the pictures.
Curated OER
Patterns in Poetry: Part 2 -- Sound
Learners understand a variety of poems listening for sound letter correspondence, rhyme scheme, assonance, and alliteration. In this language arts lesson, students practice listening and reading skills to complete patterns in poetry. ...
Curated OER
Deciphering the Mechanics of Poetry
Eighth graders study poetic devices and use them in their own writing and apply them when reading poetry. In groups, they describe an item using poetic devices.
Curated OER
Shakespeare Analysis
Eighth graders focus on the Shakespearian sonnet as a form and analyze the sonnet in terms of structure, the particular rhyme scheme of the quatrains and the rhyming couplet, the rhythm of iambic pentameter, as well as any figurative...
Curated OER
The Sonnet Challenge
Students are given information about two popular sonnet forms-English and Italian. They are given the rules for writing a sonnet. Students are asked what type of sonnet they would use. They are each given a sheet of paper and asked...
Curated OER
Backpack-tivity An @Home Learning Activity: A Home Poem
In this poetry worksheet, students listen to the poem "An Ordinary Day," read aloud, talk about and respond to 1 short answer questions about rhyme scheme in their favorite poem.
Curated OER
Personal Poetry Books
Students work in the classroom and in the computer lab to produce a Personal Poetry Book.
Curated OER
Ballad
Young balladeers analyze examples of ballads and generate a list of common traits (story, quatrains, rhyme schemes, refrains, etc.), then identify these traits in Robert W. Service's "The Cremation of Sam McGee" and a ballad written by...
Curated OER
Deciphering the Mechanics of Poetry
Eighth graders analyze a variety of poems to develop the ability to recognize and explain a variety pf poetic devises.
Curated OER
The Raven
After a close reading of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" individuals copy the rhythm and rhyme scheme and rewrite the final stanzas of the poem.
Curated OER
Poetry--Rhythm and Meter in Sonnets
Students identify rhyme scheme and meter in a poem and respond to the message of the poem. In this sonnet rhythm and meter activity, students take notes on a lecture about rhythm and meter in sonnets and work in small groups to read...