Curated OER
Hey Teachers! Get to Know Me!
Foster community in your classroom and encourage learners to get up and get to know each other. Individuals each receive the classmate inventory handout included and use it to fill in information about their fellow scholars. Once they...
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Writing with Writers
Students participate in Writing with Writer's, a step-by-step set of directions aimed at improving different genres of student writing. They identify the characteristics of different genres and follow a specified writing process to...
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Spoken Word Poetry
Students examine the spoken work poetry of Abiodun Oyewole. They discuss the West African Griot tradition, listen to spoken word poetry, write and perform a poem, and watch a video excerpt of a poetry workshop.
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Symphonic Poetry
Students interpret the themes in Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture, create a 6-line poem based on the themes in the Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture, and define musical terms related to the study of programmatic music in...
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Is Perception Reality? Writing Paradoxes in Poetry
Explore the paradox of the universe - or, at least, of popular music - with this lesson. Using the songs "Inaudible Melodies" by Jack Johnson and "She" by Green Day, your class will complete a graphic organizer to help them understand...
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Research a Poet and Explicate a Poem by that Poet
Using your school's media center, internet research, and a SMART board, 7th graders research a chosen poet and write a research report. Additionally, 7th graders explicate one poem by the poet within their report. Several resource links...
Curated OER
Lesson: Unfolding Water Lilies
Comparing two different artistic mediums can be a welcome challenge. Learners compare Monet's The Water Lily Pond to three nature-inspired poems. They consider how each art form is interrelated, descriptive, and expressive. They then...
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Lesson: That Long Jakes
Cross-media analysis takes time and attention to detail. The class analyzes the painting Long Jakes and the poem "Backward Bill." They pay attention to the similarities and differences in each piece, looking for details that describe the...
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Life Reflections in Songwriting and Poetry
Young scholars analyze, discuss and compare sources of inspiration, use of words and imagery, and other differences in writing styles between two featured songwriters. This is an introductory lesson to a creative project unit.
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Magical Creatures Land
The opening of J.R.R. Tolkein’s The Hobbit provides a model of how to use rich details to create a setting. After reading the description of Bilbo Baggins’ abode, young writers create their own magical home for a fantasy creature. The...
Anchorage School District
“Dressing Up” an Introduction
Are your pupils ready to move beyond a thesis statement by adding additional detail to their introductory paragraphs? Provide this handout to give your class some ideas for spiffing up their work. The page includes a sample paragraph...
National Endowment for the Humanities
Seeing Sense in Photographs & Poems
Learners analyze photographs and poetry as forms of each other. In this poetry and photography analysis lesson, high schoolers use the photographs of Alfred Stieglitz and poetry from William Carlos William to explore how poetry and...
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Balloon Writing
In this writing activity worksheet, students create a poem within a balloon utilizing a word box of words to choose from. Students also design their own balloon and write a short description of it on paper.
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May Writing Ideas
In this writing worksheet, students explore and discover a variety of ways to help make writing more interesting and creative.
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Descriptive and Imaginative Poetry
Students use descriptive and imaginative words and images in poetry. In this poetry instructional activity, students choose a picture to describe to the class. As the student gives the description, the classmates choose the...
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The Tempest: Picture Poems
High schoolers, in pairs, write descriptive poems of selected images of The Tempest using vocabulary from a word bank. They pass the poems only to other groups and then they attempt to draw an image solely based on the poem.
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Acrostic Poetry
In this Acrostic Poetry worksheet, students utilize descriptive language to write an Acrostic poem incorporating the word apples.
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Color Poems
Learners describe colors. In this descriptive writing lesson, students brainstorm color descriptions using all of the senses except sight. Learners write poems including similes, sensory images, and interesting word choice. Examples are...
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Geometry Poetry
Students write an original diamante poem about a shape of their choice. They examine how to write a diamante poem, and select a shape and write a poem using Microsoft Word software.
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Poems for Every Season
Young scholars read and explore autumn poetry. In this poetry instructional activity, students read Autumnblings and are introduced to different poetic forms. Lesson includes ideas for exploring the poetic forms presented in the book and...
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Splish, Splash Poetry
Students write weather shape poems and sing weather related songs. In this creative writing lesson, students read the book, It's Raining, It's Pouring and list weather words they heard in the story. Students use the writing process to...
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Descriptive Writing
Students discuss the importance of using adjectives in writing. They separate into five groups, each group is given a bag with an object inside to describe using just one sense. They write a description of a Hershey's Kiss using adjectives.
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Adjectives in Poetry
Pupils read selected poems from the book Beast Feast, by Douglas Florian. They identify at least two to three keyword facts about each beast highlighted in the poems.
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Our Poetic Planet : Writing Poems about the Earth
Students share their thoughts regarding nature. In this poetry lesson, students compose poems in different formats that feature weather and clouds.