Curated OER
Using Creative Dramatics With the Teaching of Poetry
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...
Curated OER
Getting to Know You
Third graders explore different types of poetry and illustrate their own experiences through creating their own poem. In this getting to know you lesson, 3rd graders create and recite their poems with a self-portrait.
Curated OER
Hyena: an Edward Morgan Poem
Students read, listen to and analyze the poem The Hyena by Edward Morgan. For this poetry techniques lesson, students explore the visual images of animals and their unpleasant traits. Students answer questions about the animal in the...
Curated OER
Football: It's Not Just for Jocks!
Eighth graders complete a variety of football-themed activities. They develop creative writing projects with a football inspiration, research and interpret football statistics and practice football skills in P.E.
Curated OER
A Song By Any Other Name Would Be a Poem
Learners examine the poetic elements of a piece of music. They discuss favorite songs, select a song, and write a persuasive essay identifying the poetic qualities of the song lyrics.
Curated OER
Connecting Poetry with Philanthropy
Students use their knowledge of philanthropy and poetic conventions to write original poetry about philanthropic giving. In this philanthropy activity, students write poetry based on philanthropy using poetic conventions. Students...
Curated OER
Death in Poetry: A.E. Housman's "To an Athlete Dying Young" and Dylan Thomas' "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night"
Students analyze poems about death. In this poetry analysis instructional activity, students read poems from both Dylan Thomas and A.E. Housman and analyze them in groups for common poetic devices. Students present their analysis and...
Curated OER
The City in Black and White and Color: An interdisciplinary approach to teaching life in the city using literature, social studies, art, and photography.
Learners design an artistic and literary collage of contemporary urban life that seeks to interpret, analyze, and evaluate its mettle. They integrate their impressions of urban life with established views, thereby enriching their...
National Endowment for the Humanities
A Story of Epic Proportions: What Makes a Poem an Epic?
Learners analyze the epic poem form and its roots in oral tradition. In this epic poetry activity, students research the epic hero cycle and recognize the pattern of events and elements. Learners analyze the patterns embedded in the...
Curated OER
Bio-Poems and U.S. History
Learners explore U.S. History by writing poems. In this United States leader biography lesson, students identify elements needed to create a good poem, and write a Bio-Poem about themselves. Learners utilize the same form to write a...
Curated OER
Alliteration
Young scholars explore alliteration and tongue twisters. They read and discuss alliteration examples, select and illustrate ten tongue twisters, and write original tongue twisters.
Curated OER
Similes, Metaphors, and Personification
Eighth graders explore figurative language, specifically focusing on similes, metaphors and personification. They work on the web to identify poems that demonstrate simile, metaphor, and personification, then analyze how it enhances...
Curated OER
Connecting Poetry with Philanthropy
Young scholars examine the different types of poetic conventions. They write a poem about philanthropy using these conventions. They illustrate their poem with artwork of their choice.
Curated OER
The Poetry Archive
Students discover how to express their feeling poetically. In this poetry lesson, students discuss their feelings, descriptive language to describe these feelings, and create poems.
Curated OER
A Elegy
Students examine an elegy for form, tone and subject matter. In this elegy lesson, students share impressions from Dylan Thomas's poem and a critic's response to the poem. Students discuss emotions and the refusal to mourn death.
Curated OER
Unknown Frost Poem Discovered
What? A long-lost poem from Robert Frost? Introduce your class to a poem recently found and published from Robert Frost's personal collection. The lesson includes background information on the author, the poem itself, and a list of...
Curated OER
Developing Writing Skills Through Japanese Folk Music
Students listen to Japanese folk songs to get inspired to create a writing piece about Japan. In this writing lesson, students use primary and secondary sources to add information about Japan.
Scholastic
Selecting Favorite Poems From Historical Poets
Here is a poetry lesson that begins with a free-association activity focused on the word voice. Learners each sit alone for a moment and make sounds that express how they are currently feeling, and then turn to their partners to share...
Curated OER
Join the Peace Party
Encourage and recognize peace in classrooms, cities, states, and countries.
Curated OER
Classical Greece
Studying ancient Greek culture, literature, and architecture is a great way to begin a unit on world cultures - or to start reading Antigone or other Greek dramas. Detailing the social aspects of ancient Greek life, this presentation...
Curated OER
The Sound of…Poetry!
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...
Curated OER
Out of the Dust: Biopoem
As part of their study of Out of the Dust, readers create a biopoem for one of the characters in Karen Hesse's 1998 Newbery Medal winning verse novel.
Curated OER
Classify By Topic
Students explore and evaluate poetry. In small groups, they read and summarize poems, complete a handout, create and perform a dramatization of a poem, and write a journal entry in response to their performance.
Curated OER
Pinhole Photo Narratives
Young scholars create original pieces of poetry and use this as a basis for a photography series using "pin-hole camera" techniques. This high school lesson is cross-curricular in scope.