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...

Poetic language is abundant in Natalie Babbitt's beautiful novel, Tuck Everlasting. Learners note the examples of similes, metaphors, and personification they find as they read, and illustrate how the language creates a sensory...

Budding poets compose an original free verse poem. Encouraged to use personification and alliteration, scholars read over three tips and examples then try their hand at drafting a poem of their own style.  

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...

Scholars take part in two exercises to boost their knowledge of personification. After reading a detailed description and excerpts from famous poems, writers list action verbs and objects then combine words to create a humorous...

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...

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...

Learners complete poetry analysis activities. In this poetry analysis instructional activity, students consider the use of imagery and sound devices in poetry. Learners translate poetry into another art, read a diverse selection of...

Discover lyric poetry through a reading of Sympathy by Paul Laurence Dunbar and analyze its meaning with three short-answer questions covering symbolism, personification, alliteration, metaphors, and similes. 

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...

What's the difference between a simile and a metaphor? Show language arts learners a presentation that identifies different types of figurative language used in poetry.

Tasking class members to analyze a poem can strike fear into the hearts of many learners. Here's a worksheet that takes the mystery out of the process by providing questions about what to look for in the text and to the devices poets use...

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.

Identify the rhyme scheme in a worksheet that features "Mary Had a Little Lamb." Readers use the nursery rhyme to reinforce poetic elements in four comprehension questions.

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

Three of Emily Dickinson's poems, "I like to see it," "Because I could not stop for Death," and "We grow accustomed to the Dark," provide instructors with an opportunity to model for class members how to use close reading strategies to...

Ouch! The final lesson in the 12-resource poetry unit models for young writers how poems can be used to voice hard truths.

Language arts learners don't need a lecture about poetry; they listen to poetry every day on the radio! Apply skills from literary analysis to famous songs and beautiful lyrics with a lesson about literary devices. As...

Introduce your class to "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe with this series of activities, exercises, and worksheets. Class members examine an image, analyze a movie trailer, read a prose version of the poem, look up vocabulary, and pick out...

The Labrador retriever is America's most popular dog breed. With the novel study for The Summer of Riley by Eve Bunting, scholars learn more about the sweet, lovable animal. Additionally, they write quatrain poems, explore foreshadowing...

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,...

Don't count your eggs before they hatch—unless they are dragon eggs. Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher follows the main character as he finds himself hatching dragon eggs. Scholars work through the resource and read how Jeremy tries to...

Have you ever felt trapped in your own body? That is likely how Melody in Sharon M. Draper's Out of My Mind feels. As scholars read to find out how Melody finally expresses herself, they complete sentences with new words, describe...

Rita Williams-Garcia's One Crazy Summer describes three girls who go looking for their mother who ran out on them. Scholars complete a novel study guide with vocabulary exercises, character descriptions, and comprehension poems.