Curated OER
Maniac Magee: Found Poem
Instruct your readers to scrounge through the pages of Maniac Magee in search for descriptive passages or words they may use to write poetry. As they look for meaningful, sensory descriptors in Jerry Spinelli's novel, readers connect to...
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Down on the Farm: Challenge Activities (Theme 8)
Down on the Farm is the theme of this series of challenge activities. Extend your scholars' learning experience with engaging activities such as designing a farm, creating collages, writing poems and to-do lists, and playing dominoes.
ProQuest
Writing Cinquain Poetry
Young poets research an animal and use the information they gather to craft and illustrate a cinquain.
Scholastic
Who Am I? What Has Made Me Who I Am?
"Everything we have seen and touched and heard and experienced has, in some way, made us who we are." Your young learners will use this resource to create lists of influences (people, animal, nature, places, etc.) in their lives and to...
Scholastic
Sky
Lead your class through a writing exercise that explores personification. After listening to the teacher read a poem that personifies the sky, they go step by step through the writing their own personification poems.
Scholastic
Writing An Acrostic
Invite learners to introduce themselves through poetry. After brainstorming and choosing details, pupils draft two acrostic poems using their names as the base. They then evaluate and revise their poems.
Student Handouts
"I am as..." Similar Similes Worksheet
As brave as a scarecrow, as silly as a book? What will your youngsters compare themselves to? Here is a creative and fun way to explore the world of similes that your class members will definitely enjoy!
Curated OER
Bringing Household Items to Life
Use folk tales as inspiration for learning about and using personification in creative writing. Learners brainstorm together in order to practice personification before writing their own poems or paragraphs about a household object.
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 plan. After listening to some sounds, learners examine a couple of poems that include sound words and...
Curated OER
Whale Song Acrostic
What do whales sing about? Invite your class to imagine the thoughts of whales before writing acrostic poems on the topic. The plan blends together a bit of life science with plenty of opportunities for creativity and writing.
Curated OER
Making Objects Human
Explore poetry, personification, and multiple languages with a poetry reading and writing activity. After the teacher reads the poem to the class, a discussion about personification follows. The class then writes a collaborative poem...
Haiku Society of American
Haiku: Lesson Plan for Teachers
After examining winning entries to the Nicholas A. Virgilio Memorial Haiku Competition, young poets try their hand at this fixed form.
Curated OER
Short Poems Are Scary!
What do all those chairs and pencils do in the classroom once everyone leaves? Allow imaginations to run wild with frighteningly short poems!
Poetry Society
Tiny by Mandy Coe
Introduce magic and imagination into your classroom with a poetry activity. Learners read the poem "Tiny" by Mandy Coe and use their magic tickets to visit any place they can think of! The final result is a poem describing where they...
Poetry Society
The Jumblies
Who would ever think to go to sea in a sieve? Only Edward Lear's Jumblies! The poem "The Jumblies" is the inspiration for these poetry reading and writing activities that ask learners to think about how strangers are different, consider...
Poetry Class
Tackling Climate Change
Get your kids thinking about climate change with a series of activities that include creating a ditty box poem for the planet, a poem that identifies concepts or objects they would want to preserve.
Poetry Class
Writing a Monologue
The works of Carol Ann Duffy, Scottish poet and Britain's 2009 poet laureate, serve as a model for a writing activity that asks class members to select a character card, brainstorm lists of words, phrases, actions, and items associated...
Poetry Class
Free Writing
It will cost you little to ask class members to engage in a free writing exercise that helps even reluctant writers craft a poem.
Poetry Class
How to Make a Poem
Even reluctant writers will be able to craft poems using the poem making kit provided by this resource.
Crafting Freedom
George Moses Horton: Slavery from a Poet's Perspective
Pupils have the unique opportunity to learn about the institution of slavery by reading first-hand experiences as described by George Moses Horton, the first slave to publish anti-slavery poetry.
Curated OER
Poetry Passport
Passport photos are notoriously unflattering but here's an activity that encourages youngsters to create a poetic picture of themselves using each category on the passport as a prompt for a poem.
Teacher's Corner
Shape Poetry
Calligrams, or shape poems, are the focus of ninth exercise in a ten-part poetry writing series.
Teacher's Corner
Haiku
The haiku, one of the most popular fixed forms, is the subject of this writing activity, the seventh in a series of ten poetry exercises.
Teacher's Corner
Limerick
Young poets try their hand at one of the most popular fixed poetry forms, the limerick. The eighth in a series of ten poetry writing exercises.