National poetry month (April) is around the corner! The lessons in this blog post were created to engage and excite secondary students as well as teach foundational skills for reading and writing poetry. Both middle and and high school students can benefit from these super fun poetry activities!

The middle school poetry unit below helps students develop close reading, critical thinking, and creative writing skills. This unit includes links to over 30 poems (mentor texts) that are relevant to the lives of students and great for introducing elements of poetry without boring students, or confusing them.

Access Unit Here

Included in this Unit:

10 Easy to Follow, Engaging Mini Lessons
Digital Learning Plan (great for absent students or sub plans)
Teacher's Guide, Video Walk Throughs
Editable Google Slides
Editable PowerPoint Slides
Posters
Writing Charts
Writing Samples
Mentor Texts (Links to All Poems Used in Lessons)
Editable Assessment Tools (Google Doc and Microsoft Word)

You can get this entire unit today 😆!

1. Define Poetry with Metaphors

Objective

The first lesson in a poetry unit needs to do a lot. It has to be fun and engaging and ease students' worries. Many students (and teachers!) are intimidated by poetry. This first lesson will hopefully do all of this and uplift creativity too! In this lesson students will stretch their imaginations and typical definitions of poetry. Students will also dig into the use of metaphors in poetry. To get the full lesson and all the materials click the unit above.

Hook

Have students attempt to define poetry. Most often, the answers you'll receive will be dull and predictable.

“Poetry rhymes”,

“Poetry has stanzas”,

“Poetry is boring,”

Blah, blah, blah…

Announce this to students, say something like, “Wow they are making poetry sound so awful!”

Get THE Poetry Unit Here

Next, read about what one of the most famous poets of all time, Robert Frost, has to say about what a poem is…

“A poem begins with a lump in the throat, a home-sickness or a love-sickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where the emotion has found its thought and the thought has found the words.”
Robert Frost

Activity

Read some more famous and creative definitions of poetry. Here are a few examples:

“Poetry is like the entire soul distilled into very few words and their power packed. You can get a whole beginning, middle and end in 10 lines.”

Kwame Alexander

"Perhaps the mission of an artist is to interpret beauty to people—the beauty within themselves."

Langston Hughes

"If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry."

Emily Dickinson

You might also consider reading one of my favorite poems, Introduction to Poetry by Billy Collins to students. It's a fun poem about how people (especially teachers!) tend to overanalyze poetry.

Point out the metaphors and creative ways these famous poets define poetry. Next, tell students they are going to attempt to define poetry with metaphors, the way these famous poets did. Allow students to work in pairs, small groups, or even as a whole class to increase engagement, creativity, and excitement among students.

This lesson is from the Poetry Reading and Writing Workshop Unit for Middle Schoolers and includes some additional components as listed below.

Objective-the goal for the mini lesson
Materials- all the necessary charts/posters/videos/tools you need for the lesson
Hook- a fun way to start the mini lesson
Teaching Point- straightforward statement about what students will learn
Modeling- showing skill with writing samples/mentor texts
Practice-an opportunity for students to apply skills and practice with peers
Conferring-tips for how to discuss work with students with one-on-one conversations
Closure-a way for students to share what they accomplished, struggles they faced and goals they have

2. Poetry Stations

Objective

Students will learn about the genre of poetry and participate in a station activity where they read a wide range of poetry (form, free verse, found poetry etc.) and respond in creative ways to each poem they read in order to develop their own voices around poetry.

Hook

Show students the What Makes a Poem a Poem? video.

Activity

Explain to students that they will be circulating the classroom going to ten poetry stations. Each station has a poem to read and respond to. Their job is to react to the poems in creative ways as if the poem were alive! Urge students to read the poems at least three times:

Once to get a sense of what it’s about, once to pay close attention to the feelings they get when reading it and once to pay close attention to the images that come to mind when reading it.

Then, talk to the poem as if it were alive!

Get the Poetry Unit Here

An extra challenge would be to ask students to try to use metaphors in their responses too (they did this in the last lesson, so it's great to review here too).

Here are a few creative sentence stems you might give students to help them understand how they may respond to the poem:

If this poem were a_______________________it woud_______________________.

I was waiting in line at the grocery store and this poem was checking out in front of

me, suddenly the poem turned to me and said____________________________.

This poem is hiding_________________________________.

Check out this blog post for more information about this lesson.

3. Analyzing Poetry + Getting Over Fear of Poetry

Objective

Students will learn how to read, analyze, and discuss poetry with others.

Hook

Ask students if they have ever felt intimidated, or fearful of making mistakes. Allow students to talk with each other about a time they felt intimidated. Share your own story if you have one. Explain that a lot of people feel intimidated by poetry. They feel it is confusing or boring or just not worth their time to figure out. Tell students that poetry can be intimidating, especially poetry that follows a lot of rules! But, poetry can also be beautiful and simple and profound all at the same time. Poetry can make people feel, see, and think things they’ve never considered before. Reading and writing poetry can change a person.

Activity

Tell students, there are many ways to analyze a poem, but today you want to focus on rereading the poem for different purposes. The first time is to get a sense of what it’s about, the second time is to pay close attention to the feelings you get when reading the poem, and the third time is to pay close attention to the images that come to mind when reading the poem.

Emphasize that there is no "right" answer to any of this, just pay attention to the feelings and images you get. Model this activity with a few easy to understand poems, increase the challenge by introducing harder and harder to understand poems. The goal here is to build students' confidence interpreting a poem, so make sure to accept all responses and not stray too far into teaching mode.

4. Writing Inspired Poetry/Emulation

Objective

Students will learn how to read a poem in order to inspire their own poems.

Hook

Ask students if they’ve ever tried writing a poem or a song or a rap. Allow students to share how it went. Accept any and all answers!

Activity

One of the best ways to get started is to borrow the first line of any poem and go from there. As the teacher, you should try this too! If you are willing, you could attempt to write your own poem by borrowing the first line of a poem in front of students under a document camera. You can model the process by thinking aloud about what you are feeling and what message and emotions you want to get across through your poem.

5. Introduction to Form Poetry

Objective

Students will learn about types of poetry that conform to rules of meter, rhyme, and stanza requirements.

Hook

Ask students about rules that they have to follow but they aren’t sure why this rule exists or how it came to be. Some examples of rules in school are sitting in desks, raising hands, calling teachers Ms. or Mr. etc. Today’s lesson is all about poetry that follows very strict rules!

Activity

Share a bit about the history of form poetry. Poetry actually predates writing and began as a musical form. The first poems were sung. The earliest known poems were epics. Epics are long stories told about the history of a person. The first epic poetry that we know of is The Epic of Gilgamesh written around 2000 B.C. about King Gilgamesh fighting a monster who terrorized a village. Ancient Greeks and Romans also wrote epic poetry, two of the most famous being The Odyssey and The Iliad. As time went on poetry evolved and new forms were created such as sonnets in England popularized by William Shakespeare and haikus in Japan popularized by Matsuo Bashō. Interestingly, Bashō and Shakespeare lived during the same time period! Direct students to learn more here: How Stuff Works The Evolution of Poetry.

6. Writing Form Poetry

Objective

Students will choose a type of form poetry to spark ideas for their own poems. Students will also have the opportunity to practice writing in iambic pentameter.

Hook

Ask students if they have ever played with play-doh. Talk about how we all did when we were young but for some reason as we get older we stop for whatever reason.

When we were young, we weren’t afraid to try to build something with play-doh (a horse, a cat, a house etc.) even if it turned out horribly, we still went for it, without a care in the world and we were proud of our creations!

But, what would happen if we tried to create something out of play-doh today? We might feel embarrassed at our lack of ability to make our play-doh horse look exactly like a horse. So we might smush it all together again and start over. Or give up.

Tell students today you are going to ask that they try to go back to their carefree days of childhood. The poems they write today do not have to be exact replicas, following all the rules that form poems require. Today should be fun, experimental, and carefree!

Activity

A middle school student can very easily become intimidated by form poetry (all the rules, yikes). Graphic organizers can be helpful when students first start out following poetic forms. You might also start out with really simple to write form poetry such as the haiku. Once students get the hang of the simple rules of a haiku, you might move on to more complex form poetry like limericks or ballads. It's important the English teacher model writing their own unique haikus, limericks, and ballads (using mentor texts as inspiration) before expecting students to dive in and do it. You might also consider writing these types of poems together as a class or have students form small groups to do this work. Collaborative writing can be a lot of fun when trying something challenging like writing your own form poetry!

7. Introduction to Free Verse Poetry

Objective

Students will learn about a newer form of poetry called free verse that breaks away from following strict rules of rhythm, meter, and rhyme. Free verse does include some rhythm, meter, and rhyme but it follows natural speech patterns as well.

Hook

Ask students to talk to a partner or their groups about trends. What kind of trends do they remember when they were little? What kinds of trends are around right now? For example: pogs, marbles, beanie babies, water bottle flipping, fidget spinners, Fortnite, the Rubik's cube etc.

Explain that poetry has gone through trends too! For thousands of years people wrote form poetry...sonnets, haikus, ballads, limericks and epics (really long books written in poetry form about adventures). Then in the 1900s people began to break the rules and write poetry in their own way, making up their own rules...this is called free verse poetry. And trends in poetry are still being created today!

Activity

Tell students about the slam poetry movement that began in the 1980s in Illinois, Chicago. A man named Marc Kelly Smith, a construction worker and poet, felt that poetry readings were too dull. So he started a movement where poets perform their poems in front of an audience and judges. So, poetry readings became more of a competition and motivated poets to not just read their poems but perform them!

Tell students they are about to see a very talented 17 year old poet who won one of these competitions. Show students the Poet Breathe Now video. After the video, ask for students’ initial reactions to the poem and Adam’s performance.

8. Writing Free Verse Poetry

Objective

Students will choose a type of free verse poetry to spark ideas for their own poems.

Hook

Show students this video: Student’s Poem Goes Viral. It brings up some pretty serious topics around self-image, fitting in, perfectionism, and our society's obsession with physical appearances. So, if you plan to show it, make sure to take some time for students to write about their response to the video and then discuss. You might also have students write their own free verse poem with the same prompt…"Why I’m not good enough”. Or turn this prompt around and have students write a poem using the opposite prompt…"Why I’m good enough”.

Activity

Teach students the definition of a "free verse poem". It's a poem that follows no rules and does what it wants! It doesn't have to rhyme or have certain beat, it doesn't even have to follow grammatical rules! There are many types of free verse poems, there are odes, spoken word poetry, "I Am" poems and more. Talk aloud about the type of free verse poetry you’d like to try. Do you want to write an ode to something? Do you want to write about where you are from, do you want to write an “I Am” poem or maybe a spoken word poem? Pick one type and try writing that type of poem in front of your students. This may feel awkward and you don’t have to complete the poem, just model getting started for students. Then, send them off to try it themselves.

9. Introduction to Found Poetry

Objective

Students will learn about and read four different types of found poetry.

Hook

Ask students if they’ve ever done a DIY project. These usually involve finding materials from around the house and building something new with those materials. Explain that today they are going to learn about a type of poetry that is similar to doing a DIY project. The starting materials for these type of poems are things around your environment!

Activity

Tell students a bit about the history of found poetry. It began with the Dadaism art movement or Dada movement that occurred in the early 20th century after WWI in Europe. The artists of this movement rejected materialistic society. The movement impacted music, sculpture, paintings, and poetry. This art movement inspired the beginnings of punk music, surrealism and it's when “cut up poetry” got its start. Later in the 1960s artists like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein continued this movement with pop art. These artists were all about rule breaking and redefining what art is.

Now, define found poems-these poems take existing text and repurpose those words into a poem. Poets can choose to cut the words out and glue them together or just copy them down on a piece of notebook paper to form a poem. The words can come from a book, signs around you, a dictionary, magazines, newspapers, pretty much anywhere you see words around you, these can be used in this type of poetry. Explain that there are four main types of found poems: black out poetry, mosaic, and ekphrastic. Each is defined below.

Blackout poetry-involves cutting out a page from a book, reading that page and lightly circling words that you want in your poem then blacking out or coloring over all the other words you don’t want to include in your poem.

Mosaic poetry-creating a mosaic involves arranging small pieces of colored glass together to form a larger work of art. Writing mosaic poetry first involves collecting multiple photographs or images, then, zooming in or even circling a small portion of each photograph. These small portions you zoomed in on in the images become the subject of your mosaic poem.

Ekphrastic-this poetry involves vividly describing a work of art so that the poem becomes another form of that art. You can use a sculpture, a painting, a photograph or portrait and then write a poem that actually becomes another form of that art. It isn’t just using the art to inspire the poem, the poem actually becomes a replica of the art!

This unit includes examples of all these types of poems and much more to make teaching poetry fun and engaging for students.

10. Writing Found Poetry

Objective

Students will choose between the different types of found poetry and create their own found poem.

Hook

Ask students about the most memorable art project they ever did. Allow students to share stories of messes, fun, and excitement when producing art! Remind students that poetry and writing is a form of art! The definition of art is expressing the human imagination in a visual way and poetry seeks to use words to do this.

Activity

Think aloud about the kind of found poetry you’d like to try out. Which type are you most interested in trying? Black out (example of this type to the right), mosaic, or ekphrastic? Once you’ve chosen the type of found poem you want to write, gather the materials you need and begin the process in front of students. It’s important for students to see how you might get started and to see you struggle too! If you already tried out one of the types of found poetry, talk about the process, challenges, and entire experience with your students.

Next, tell students that to write a found poem, they need to pick a place to find words and phrases that jump out at them (such as a book or magazine) or an environment, such as the classroom. When they find words and phrases they can then write them down. After finding lots of interesting words and phrases from their source, they can add their own words and phrases to create something totally new, a found poem! Model doing this in front of students with a class novel, or using your classroom space. You might even write a found poem together as a class.

11. Poetry in Music

Objective

Students will learn how to analyze literary devices used in song lyrics.

Hook

Ask students to share their favorite songs and why they are their favorite.

Activity

Explain to students that music lyrics are a form of poetry! Read the lyrics of a few really meaningful songs or your favorite song:) Here are some ideas:

“Beautiful” by Christina Aguilera
“Man in the Mirror” by Michael Jackson
“The Gambler” by Kenny Rogers
“Born This Way” by Lady Gaga
“Hey Jude” by The Beatles, Another Song With Meaning
“Firework” by Katy Perry
“Let It Be” by The Beatles

Model identifying various literary devices in the song lyrics. Define and point out line breaks, word choice, repetition, a rhyme scheme if present. Then model using a song or two to write an imitation/emulative poem (see lesson #4 for how to do this). Lastly, have students borrow lines from their favorite song to write a new creative poem of their own using the song for inspiration. Allow students to work in partnerships to make this activity even more engaging!

12. A Poetry Slam

Objective

Students will read their poetry out loud to an audience. Before the event practice prosody, projection, and tone while reading poems aloud.

Hook

Invite other classes, school staff, and or community members to your classroom for this event! If you really want to create a special experience, have students bring in lamps, pillows, and snacks for the event too!

Activity

Break the ice by reading a poem you wrote! Then, have student volunteers come to the "stage" to read their poem(s) out loud. You might want to have students practice before the event to work on prosody, projection, and tone.

Wrap Up

I hope these poetry lessons help students see poetry in their everyday lives and develop a deeper understanding of their own experiences through writing. Teaching students to not only to read and analyze poetry but to also write their own poetry is a great way to make learning stick!

Related Resources

Poetry Reading and Writing Unit

Choice Writing Project

Middle School Memoir Writing Unit

12 Super Fun Poetry Lesson Plans for Middle and High School

1. Define Poetry with Metaphors

2. Poetry Stations

3. Analyzing Poetry + Getting Over Fear of Poetry

4. Writing Inspired Poetry/Emulation

5. Introduction to Form Poetry

6. Writing Form Poetry

7. Introduction to Free Verse Poetry

8. Writing Free Verse Poetry

9. Introduction to Found Poetry

10. Writing Found Poetry

11. Poetry in Music

12. A Poetry Slam

Wrap Up

Related Resources

Related Blog Posts

About the Author