National Endowment for the Humanities
The Impact of a Poem's Line Breaks: Enjambment and Gwendolyn Brooks' "We Real Cool"
High schoolers analyze the Gwendolyn Brooks use of enjambment in her poem "We Real Cool." In this poetry analysis activity, students define common poetic devices and the examples of enjambment in the poem. High schoolers discuss the poem...
Residential College in the Arts and Humanities
Poetry Lesson Plans
Need some ideas for poetry lessons? Check out this packet loaded with suggestions for elementary, middle, and high school writers.
ETFO
Free Verse Poetry Rubric
Follow poetry instruction with a four-category rubric designed to guide budding poets' writing of free verse poetry.
Curated OER
Dancing through Poetry
Get your class up and moving as they explore how to express movement and dance through words. Designed around two poems by Lillian Morrison about break dancing, the activity truly captures the creative and multi-sensory aspects of...
Curated OER
Poetry Shared Reading
Students explore poetry. In this poetry lesson plan, students discover the qualities of good writing and the characteristics of poetry. Students practice reading poems in different ways. Studnets also discuss the mood of the poem and the...
Curated OER
Poetry Immersion
Students explore the genre of poetry through centers. They listen to the sound of poems being read aloud, visualize individual poems and observe and apply line breaks in poetry.
Curated OER
Video Poetry
Students analyze a poem to find meaning by breaking it into scenes and supporting the text with appropriate images and sounds. They use Frames to create their video poem. Once students have an image, place them all into one folder. ...
Curated OER
Video Poetry
Young scholars analyze a poem of their choice to find the meaning. They break the poems into sections and add images and sounds to make it into a video. They show their video to the whole school if possible.
Curated OER
Dirty Dan Isn't Dull!
Young scholars read smoothly and expressively while noticing punctuation and using voice inflection to emphasize important words and phrases in the text. They listen to and reread a poem in small groups. Students discuss how the poem...
Curated OER
Introduction to Keith Haring
Students experience a dance club-like environment one would find in Haring's 1980's. They dress in 80's clothes and learn break dancing moves. They relate the experience to Haring's artwork and explain his influences.