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...

Now that your class has read all of Esperanza Rising, take the time to tackle big metaphors and themes. Pupils will participate in an activity called Chalk Talk, in which they circulate around the room in small groups and add...

Students participate in a variety of activities surrounding Rock & Roll music, lyrics, drama and visual art and how they all help demonstrate examples of literary terms. They use Rock & Roll as an effective aid to stimulate their...

Make learning the definitions of literary terms memorable with a fun and engaging activity. Teams of scholars are given several terms and create an acrostic poem with simplified definitions and examples.

Challenge your class with this comprehensive list of literary vocabulary words. Learners take a pre-test, look up definitions, come up with an example, and then take a post-test. You might use this prior to a unit about poetic devices in...

Clichés, paradoxes, and equivocations are detailed in a short, animated video that defines and illustrates these writing traps. The resource also includes a quiz and the transcript for the video. Users can register to access free course...

Poetry is everywhere you look! Create found poems using headlines from newspapers and magazines. Young poetry focus on creating alliterative phrases with words they find in headlines, tying their poems to a central theme.

Put the tips and tricks in this guide into practice in order to encourage your pupils to blossom into poets. A wonderful reference material for teachers, this packet includes definitions of poetic terms and forms as well as step-by-step...

Mermaids will sing to your class members as they engage in an activity related to T.S. Eliot's famous dramatic interior monologue. After engaging in a socratic seminar about literary devices in the poem, individuals choose one...

Ask your class to lend their ears, and eyes, to a short video that defines and offers examples of synecdoche and metonymy. Whether it be brand names like Kleenex® and Band-aids® that have come to stand for all the products in a category,...

Riddle me this! What do kennings, caesura, and alliteration have to do with the Nowell Codex? Introduce class members to Anglo-Saxon poetry and prepare readers for a study of Beowulf with a series of activities that...

Tone and Mood are not synonymous! Introduce young readers to these literary devices with a series of exercises that not only point out the significant differences between the terms but also shows them how to identify both the tone and...

High schoolers analyze modernist poetry and the role of speaker in example poems. Learners study modernist poems from the Romanticism and Victorian periods as well as Wallace Stevens' "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird." Using a...

Begin class with a short comprehension quiz and review and then move into a new genre: two-voice poems. The activity provides information about this type of poetry as well as a video example made by eighth graders that you can show your...

Double click that mouse because you just found an amazing lesson! This cross-curricular Ornithology lesson incorporates literature, writing, reading informational text, data collection, scientific inquiry, Internet research, art, and...

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...

Robert Hayden's poem "Those Winter Sundays" serves as the anchor text in a five-part instructional activity that takes the mystery out of poetry analysis by modeling explicit strategies for pupils to employ to conduct a close reading of...

Have your music lovers examine song lyrics and identify the poetry elements or tools used by a lyricist. They review the song individually before working in groups to discuss what they discovered about the song's narrator or character...

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...

Investigate poetry and song lyrics with your class. They will identify poetic elements in their favorite modern music. Then they will play their song choice aloud for their classmates.

Teach your English learners about theme through this found poem project. Class members read two versions of O. Henry's "The Gift of the Magi": the original version and a synopsis. After learning about themes and connecting theme to their...

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...

After a close reading of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" individuals copy the rhythm and rhyme scheme and rewrite the final stanzas of the poem.

Students examine the use of symbolism in literature. In this literary elements lesson, students discuss the attributes of symbolism. Students then read selected Cinderella stories and "The Fall of the House of Usher," and identify the...