Spongebob Squarepants helps teach middle schoolers about personification! After discussing the human characteristics demonstrated by the cartoon character, scholars identify the personification in poems by Emily Dickinson and Langston...

Jane Hirshfield's poem "My Skeleton" asks readers to pause and think about the amazing, often taken-for-granted structure that protects and gives form to human bodies. After observing the human skeleton's image, class members read the...

Poetry or prose? That is the question facing middle schoolers as they begin a month-long poetry unit by examining the characteristics that differentiate poetry and prose writing. Pupils learn about poetic devices and different types of...

The language of and the perspective of photographs, poems, and official reports differ. After a close reading of two photographs, two poems, and a military report about the Vietnam War, individuals adopt someone's voice or something from...

Song lyrics, like poems, are meant to be heard. After examining the literary devices in several poems, scholars examine the lyrics of popular songs and identify the sound devices and the figurative language writers use to create the...

A free write, an image of magnolia leaves, and the Ed Roberson's poem "Once the Magnolia has Blossomed" ask scholars to use their noticing skills to reflect on the lesson plan beauty teaches about loss and grief.

The second lesson in a five-part poetry unit asks seventh graders to construct a metaphor poem. First, pupils examine Emily Dickinson's "The Railway Train" and identify the metaphor. They then select an object and an animal and craft a...

We carry memories of where we're from; tweens and teens can capture these memories by first listening to several memory poems and then crafting their own. They analyze literary devices other poets use, brainstorm a list of images they...

Engage your class in the elements of poetry with a series of lessons and activities. The plans cover simile, metaphor, personification, onomatopoeia, alliteration, and imagery. Learners come up their their own metaphors, identify poetic...

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...

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...

Eighth graders craft a Petrarchan sonnet and respond to a performance assessment to demonstrate what they have learned in this five-lesson poetry unit.

Walt Whitman's "Captain, My Captain" and Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" provide seventh graders with examples of odes. After reading and discussing these and other examples, young poets craft an ode and respond to the ode of a...

After a review of poetic terms, groups are given an object and they create a poem using a simile, a metaphor, internal rhyme, end rhyme, alliteration, and personification. Groups then exchange objects and repeat the process. Consider...

Use folk tales as inspiration for learning about and using personification in creative writing. Learners brainstorm together in order to practice personification before writing their own poems or paragraphs about a household object.

Explore poetry, personification, and multiple languages with a poetry reading and writing lesson. After the teacher reads the poem to the class, a discussion about personification follows. The class then writes a collaborative poem...

A study of Rudyard Kipling's poem, "If," launches a lesson about theme. Class members read Kipling's poem and poems by other seventh graders to identify the themes.

The second lesson of a pair about Paul Laurence Dunbar, this plan focuses in particular on his poem, "We Wear the Masks." After a short historical introduction, class members conduct a series or readings, marking up the text and...

Introduce middle schoolers to poetic devices with a lesson that asks them to find examples of alliteration, anaphora, onomatopoeia, metaphors, similes, and personification in various poems. Young scholars craft examples of these poetic...

Maya Angelou's poem, "Still I Rise", offers young scholars an opportunity to consider how poets use literary devices to create powerful messages. After a close reading and discussion of the poem, class members reflect on how they can...

Young poets learn the value of using a thesaurus when crafting and revising poems. They examine poems rich in figurative language and then a revised version with the figurative language removed. To demonstrate what they have learned,...

Do you have a place that makes you feel safe and secure? Ranger, a hound in The Underneath, finds his new friend, a calico cat, and her safe place—underneath a porch. Scholars complete sentences using vocabulary from the novel as they...