Trees as Symbols: Composing Poetry and Creating Images

The cat might have got your tongue, but you can’t avoid the elephant in the room while you wait for the other shoe to drop. After all, the early bird gets the worm and the chickens are circling. After researching Poet Laureate Kay Ryan...

One of the many challenges in creating a poetry unit is selecting illustrative poems and designing activities to accompany each lesson. Here's a carefully crafted resource that can be used as a poetry unit or the individual lessons can...

The hawk is a recurring symbol in Robinson Jeffers' poetry. Ask your learners to consider this symbol in the poems "Hurt Hawks" and "Rock and Hawk." Pupils discuss these two poems and compare them to poems read earlier in this series....

Allusion can be a difficult concept for pupils to grasp. Home in on two brief poems by Edgar Allan Poe, "To Helen" and "Sonnet–To Science," with allusion in mind. Class members discuss the relationship of classical Greece and Rome to the...

Zora Neale Hurston's beautiful language in Their Eyes Were Watching God is not only a pleasure to read, it helps to further the plot and character development. Once your class has finished Chapter 6 of the novel, have them discuss...

Emphasize the difference between literal and figurative language, as well as how each adds to the plot, with a lesson on Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. Readers study the images of the pear tree, the street lamp, and...

Explore William Blake's poem "A Poison Tree." Learners read the poem and then respond to four text-based questions and four higher-level discussion questions.

If your class doesn't know what a haiku is, show them two examples from the Japanese poet Issa (both included here), and have them make some observations. How long are they? What is the structure? A video and a list of questions help...

“It’s not about what it is, it’s about what it can become.” You’re never too old for Dr. Seuss and using The Sneetches and The Lorax is a great way to introduce readers to allegories, parables, and literary symbolism. The lessons...

A good gift is hard to find. A “worn truth,” perhaps, as Billy Collins says in his poem, “The Lanyard,” but true nonetheless. After a study of Collins’ tribute to a mother’s love, young poets select an object that sends them “into the...