Getting the Knack: 20 Poetry Writing Exercises

Grades   3 – 5  |  Lesson Plan  |  Standard Lesson

Color Poems—Using the Five Senses to Guide Prewriting

Students use their five senses as a prewriting tool to guide their poetry writing as they compose free-form poems using imagery to describe a color.

 

Grades   3 – 5  |  Lesson Plan  |  Unit

Creating Classroom Community by Crafting Themed Poetry Collections

Students create poetry collections with the theme of "getting to know each other." They study and then write a variety of forms of poetry to include in their collections.

 

Grades   6 – 8  |  Lesson Plan  |  Unit

Introducing Each Other: Interviews, Memoirs, Photos, and Internet Research

Students use their communication and writing skills as they interview a partner, write an article about them, and create a multimodal presentation to introduce their partner to the class.

 

Grades   6 – 8  |  Lesson Plan  |  Standard Lesson

Investigating Names to Explore Personal History and Cultural Traditions

Students investigate the meanings and origins of their names in order to establish their own personal histories and to explore the cultural significance of naming traditions.

 

Grades   3 – 5  |  Lesson Plan  |  Standard Lesson

Poetry from Prose

Working in small groups, students compose found and parallel poems based on a descriptive passage they have chosen from a piece of literature they are reading.

 

Grades   6 – 8  |  Lesson Plan  |  Standard Lesson

Found Poems/Parallel Poems

Students compose found and parallel poems based on a descriptive passage they have chosen from a piece of literature they are reading.

 

Grades   6 – 8  |  Lesson Plan  |  Minilesson

Alliteration in Headline Poems

Students will be introduced to the term alliteration and create a headline poem consisting of 25 words that contain at least three examples of alliteration.

 

Grades   9 – 12  |  Lesson Plan  |  Standard Lesson

Finding Poetry in Prose: Reading and Writing Love Poems

After reading several poems that expand the definition of love poetry, students compose found poems based on a personal memoir—either their own or a love story of another writer.

 

Grades   3 – 5  |  Lesson Plan  |  Standard Lesson

Letter Poems Deliver: Experimenting with Line Breaks in Poetry Writing

Students explore letter poems and experiment with writing letters as poems, using the placement of line breaks to enhance rhythm, sound, meaning, and appearance.