Scritch, scratch, scritch. It's the sound of pupils writing poetry! Focus on sensory language and onomatopoeia with a writing lesson. After listening to some sounds, learners examine a couple of poems that include sound words and then...

A creative way bring autobiographical writing to your poetry unit or back-to-school curriculum, this lesson plan guides you through a bio poem activity. Kids use the graphic organizer to describe themselves using adjectives, things...

If you need a lesson for your poetry unit, use two poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ("Rain in Summer" and "The Slave in the Dismal Swamp") and a resource on Elements of Poetry. The lesson plan guides you through activities...

Follow this lesson plan, which is written more like a script, to practice reading a poem with your class. Pupils read "The Road Not Taken" and respond to five multiple choice questions on a provided worksheet. The plan leads you through...

Eight graphic organizers to choose from? That's right! Each of these organizers relates to writing or reading. From narrowing a writing topic, to responding to literature, to planning a writing project, you'll find many purposes for...

Similar to a textbook, this resource includes multiple texts, plenty of explanation, lots of practice, and several graphic organizers. Use all of the materials, or pick and choose from such texts as "The Circuit," "Shoes for Hector,"...

The cat might have got your tongue, but you can’t avoid the elephant in the room while you wait for the other shoe to drop. After all, the early bird gets the worm and the chickens are circling. After researching Poet Laureate Kay Ryan...

“Words can be like x-rays if you use them properly—they’ll go through anything.” Readers of Brave New World will be pierced by an activity that asks them to use details from the text to craft a biopoem for one of the characters in Aldous...

Here is a terrific lesson on poetry! Learners bring in the lyrics to their favorite song. A class discussion ensues regarding what makes a song "catchy." After analyzing the alliteration of the poems, learners read the poem "This...

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.

Students write a biographical poem about themselves. They observe a teacher-led demonstration, write an autobiographical poem and a biographical poem about a famous person using a template form, and display the poems side-by-side.

Over the course of the lesson, your pupils read and analyze a translated eight-line poem from the Tang Dynasty written by Du Fu, a poet caught behind enemy lines during the An Lu-Shan rebellion (755-763). Literary/historical context is...

Here is a nice way to introduce your young learners to poetry and writing their own poems. Children create their own poems about their favorite quiet-time places. After listening to some poems read aloud by the teacher, each child gets...

Looking for a list of reading questions to use with The Odyssey? Provided here are dozens of questions (although certain sections are left out). Use these questions to create your own reading guide for the famous epic poem. 

Fun awaits both you and your class as you embark on a musical activity. After discussing different rhythmic meters they choose a poem to set to music. The poem must rhyme and be set to a melody in the key of C Major. Because the activity...

Hook kids into a study on poetry elements by asking them to bring in the lyrics to their favorite song. Discuss the elements in one or two songs (preferably that demonstrate rhyme, figurative language, or a repeating phrase). Groups do...

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...

Students create poems and sound compositions using instruments, sounds, and pictograph notation. After listening Debussy's Children's corner suite, they brainstorm a list of snow vocabulary words. Students write poems and in groups...

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...

Provide pupils samples of different types of poems including haikus, narrative, nonsense, shape, and rhyming poems. In groups, class members read the poems, establish their general meaning, identify poetic devices, and rate the poems,...

Young scholars write a rap or hip-hop lyric about the life of a famous Black American. They explore famous Black Americans in history and explore how the rap form compares to other forms of poetic expression.

Engaging and fun, this lesson is a good way to reinforce context clues with this lesson, in which middle schoolers investigate literary puzzles. They apply critical thinking skills to codes in order to solve them. They use a variety of...

Choosing a poet or a theme, eighth graders conduct research in the world of poetry. They conduct Internet research and select five poems that fit their poet or theme, and create a seven slide PowerPoint presentation on their selected...

Youngsters listen to poetry and music to understand that words are made of sounds.  In this rhythm and rhyme instructional activity, students create songbooks of healthy eating songs. They will also act out pantomimes and dance...