Writing a poem

Whether you are viewing a landscape painting of a farm, examining a still-life portrait of a bowl of fruit, or reading a descriptive poem about cultivating food, you can't deny that agriculture plays a major role in visual and language...

Combine informational text and creative writing with one fun activity! Middle and high schoolers write found poems based on newspaper headlines that they find. The resource includes a thorough lesson plan and many links to articles that...

Gain greater insight into poems using a poetry analysis activity. 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 thoughts and...

Examine poetic structure and literary devices in an activity focused on Maya Angelou's "Woman Work." The first two pages provide the full text of the poem, which middle schoolers can annotate and highlight. They go on to complete a...

Looks like? Sounds like? Smells like? Feels like? Tastes like? Sometimes a white, blank, soulless piece of paper can intimidate writers. Provide potential poets with this template that can serve as a parking lot for words and phrases to...

Extend your instruction on similes and metaphors with a lesson on Emily Dickinson's "Hope is the thing with feathers" and "There is no Frigate like a Book." After a discussion on the images of each poem and their meanings, kids write an...

It's hard to beat the beauty of John Steinbeck's prose, so borrow a little of it to form your own found poetry. After kids finish Chapter One of The Pearl, they select the most evocative and vivid words to create found poems.

This is a very much detailed five-day plan on writing portrait poems. Throughout, class members review figurative language and work systematically to develop their poems. The teacher provides rubrics for the poem as well as a portrait...

Poems For Two Voices are a great resource in any language arts classroom, whether you are studying poetry or not. Focusing on The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, this lesson prompts young authors to write a Poem For Two Voices...

Poetry isn't all sonnets and rhyming couplets! Introduce your class to three fun types of poetry: shape poems, acrostic poems, and diamante poems. Each type is explained, and an example is provided. Challenge your class to write one in...