Looking for a great lesson to teach your class everything they need to know about Shakespearean sonnets? Here's such a lesson. "Sonnet #18" launches a study of the Shakespearean sonnet. Scholars watch two Prezi presentations that provide...

A reading of Robert Frost’s "The Road Not Taken" launches an interdisciplinary study of the connection between the meters of a poem and a melody. After identifying the number of beats in each line of the poem, young musicians use...

Remember learning to spell “encyclopedia” by singing along with Jiminy Cricket? How about using a singing exercise to learn the names of the presidents? “The Presidents Song,” includes the names, in order, from Washington to Coolidge....

Academics take turns as actors in an engaging poetry cafe. Elementary learners work in small groups to create original poems or stories addressing community issues and read their work in front of a live audience. Scholars also reflect...

Does pajamas rhyme with llamas to you? If it does (and even if it doesn't), an online lesson on rewording poetry for regional pronunciation may be helpful for you and your students.

What's more fun than playing with your food? Writing a poem about it! A quick and straightforward lesson guides young writers through the steps of writing a funny, well-structured poem about combining sports and food.

Iambs and trochees may seem intimidating to some learners, but after reading a straightforward online lesson, they'll be masters of poetic feet! The lesson includes examples of trochaic poems from Edgar Allen Poe and William Blake.

Want to put some feet in your head? Check out an online lesson about spondees, dactyls, and anapests to bring new structure to your poetic forms.

What makes a great poem sound so good? Learn the rhythmic secrets of poetry with an explanatory online lesson.

Combine math, language arts, music, and dance with an activity focused on "America" from West Side Story. After listening to the song, learners compare the film to Romeo and Juliet, analyze the song's meter, design choreography, plan...

Free verse poetry is often regarded as poetry without structure, but in reality, it is a poetic form that adheres to its own poet's thought and breath patterns. Delve into the rules and famous examples of free-verse poetry with a short...

Exposing learners to the power of words in poetry is a stimulating way to learn languages. Songs, haikus, rhyming words, and narrative works are all employed in a resource for teaching English as a Second Language.

Gain greater insight into poems using a poetry analysis activity. 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...

Here is a great instructional activity that contains two short poems to compare and contrast. Children will read each poem out loud and then complete three comparative analysis questions which focus on rhyme, structure, and language....

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,...

Encourage your pupils to imagine their own dreams for the future. After studying three poems by Langston Hughes and listening to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech, young poets craft their own dream stanza. 

Explore the concept of rhyme scheme within a Shakespearean sonnet. After writing out their favorite (appropriate!) rap song and explaining why they like it, middle schoolers define a rhyme scheme. Afterward, they examine a Shakespearean...

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...

Models of and directions for how to write 20 different types of poems are featured in an NCTE resource. The introduction to each form highlights the embedded concepts. For example, tongue twisters encourage poets to use alliteration and...

Here is an entertaining way to introduce your language learners to several significant grammatical structures. The children’s rhyme, There Was an Old Woman Who Swallowed a Fly, contains examples of noun and relative clauses for the class...

The Spanish song, Vengan a Ver Mi Granja, provides young language learners an opportunity to expand their vocabulary. After listening to the sounds, class members name the animals and their habitats, construct puppets of the animals, and...

Does your state have an anthem? Consider using it to launch a study of poetic imagery. Class members research the poet, the history of the song, the images presented, the format, and the tone. Conclude with a class sing-along.  

Launch your poetry unit in a very dramatic way. Divide your class into groups, and give each group a different poem. After discussing the poem, each group member selects a stanza to study. The group then develops a skit that represents...

Reinforce the concept that many poems are organized into stanzas, each of which has the same number of lines.  The provided worksheet template asks young poets to craft three stanzas that all begin with the same line and have the same...