April 2010
Poetry Lesson Plans and Activities
Searching for poetry lessons and activities? Celebrate the legacy and achievement of American poets, while enjoying the pleasures of reading poetry, with Thinkfinity's resources on National Poetry Month.
Poetry Podcasts and Videos
Emily Manning chats about poetry books for kids ages 4 through 11.
Interactive Tools for Poems
Find out how to turn a letter into a poem using line-breaks.
Use this interactive to learn about and write you own shape poem, a poem about
and written in the shape of an object.
Learn about and write diamante poems, diamond-shaped poems that use nouns,
adjectives and gerunds to describe either one central topic or two opposing
topics.
Use this interactive to learn about and write acrostic poems using the letters
in a topic word to begin each line of the poem.
Poetry Activities and Tip Sheets
Enlist "poets of the day" to help bring poetry into your every day.
Choose favorite rhyming songs or nursery rhymes, then replace the rhyming words
with seasonal themes.
Who knew that poems could be round or square or even fish-shaped? Shape poems
are a fun way to introduce poetry and to use words in new ways.
Learn how to use the Shape Poem Tool to make poems that look like the things
they describe.
Resources for Poets
Find everything you need to know about National Poetry Month, an initiative
started by the Academy of American Poets in 1996.
Celebrate poetry and its vital place in American culture through this collection
of lessons and resources on some of America's original poets.
Find resources and a "poet of the day" activity to celebrate National Poetry
Month.
Learn about the many types of poetry, from the poetry of Yeats to the lyric
poets of the Harlem Renaissance to modern day.
How can poetry complement science instruction and make it richer? Find out in
this resource, compiled by the AAAS review journal Science Books & Films
(SB&F).
Learn about the poetry behind our Nation Anthem, or consider entering an online singing contest.
Poetry Lesson Plans
Exploring poetry about everyday topics or themes is motivating and exciting, and
allows you to delve deeply into your own creativity.
Learn how poetry can be a "speaking picture" and artwork can be "a silent
poetry" in this new lesson.
Encourage students to analyze one-sentence poems and then apply their analyses
to their own descriptive sentences.
Write journal entries and discuss poems to learn about the qualities that make
Hughes's voice distinctive, forceful, and memorable.
Create an illustration of the poem "Shapes" from A Light in the Attic, by Shel Silverstein to explore geometric figures and positional words.
More Resources on Poetry