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OER Open Educational Reources - Poetry results

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OER Open Educational Reources - Poetry results

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Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials that you may freely use and reuse at no cost, and without needing to ask permission. Use the "No Strings Attached" "Terms of Use" filter. Search results "Poetry"

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This collection uses primary sources to explore the poetry of Maya Angelou. Digital Public Library of America Primary Source Sets are designed to help students develop their critical thinking skills and draw diverse material from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States.

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Infer and visualize to better understand and connect with the poem "The Road Not Taken"

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I distribute copies of the poem and tell students that, as they listen to me read it the first time through, they should try to create visual pictures from the words to help them understand what the author is saying. I also suggest that they write questions and inferences in the margins and underline words or phrases they don't understand.

I begin reading the poem, modeling inflection and pausing as needed to help with understanding. For the first reading, I read very slowly.

After finishing the poem, I ask students to think through what they have heard and consider what may be some big ideas the author is trying to convey? I ask questions about each stanza and take responses from students.

Examples Questions:
"What is the speaker doing in this poem?" "Which road did the traveler take?" "What did the speaker do in respect to the road he didn't take? How did you infer that?" "What is the author trying to say to the readers in the first stanza?" "What time of year is it? How do we know this?" "What is the author thinking/doing when he looks at the roads? How do we know this?" "Why do you think the speaker chose the road he took?" "Why might someone want to do something others had not done?" "How old is the speaker when he is talking to us in the poem?" "Do you think the speaker wanted to go back and take the other path? Why do you think this - proof in the poem?"
This may end up being a drawn out discussion, but since it's the last lesson in the unit, I want to make sure that students have time to process the information.

I like to reread each stanza and ask students to think about and respond to what the author means in each line. I encourage deeper thinking through higher level and open-ended questioning.

I end by asking students to take the words and connect them to their own lives to make the poem more meaningful. I ask them to share choices they have had to make. (There is always one student with a story about his or her dad getting lost while driving somewhere. I just say that he had to make a decision where to go and what to do next . . . and smile.) I share my own example of having to make a choice of what path to take -college or job - and how it affected my life and caused some hardships but turned out to be the best decision.

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I distribute copies of the poem and tell students that, as they listen to me read it the first time through, they should try to create visual pictures from the words to help them understand what the author is saying. I also suggest that they write questions and inferences in the margins and underline words or phrases they don't understand.

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Teacher's Guide to accompany 22 min video available in Safari Montage

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Get access to files anywhere through secure cloud storage and file backup for your photos, videos, files and more with Google Drive.

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ReadWorks
Copyright permissions for the 2019-2020 school year - please print, copy, post, and share!

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Chapter Three: Women in Poetry (p. 21 - 25) Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Emily Dickinson & Maya Angelou, eBook

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Chapter Three: Women in Poetry (p. 21 - 25) Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Emily Dickinson & Maya Angelou, eBook

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Free access through Abdo Publishing COVID-19 free trial until May 31. No login, just share the link.

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Children's Author & Poet, Nikki Grimes, eBook

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Children's Author & Poet, Nikki Grimes, eBook

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Free access through Abdo Publishing COVID-19 free trial until May 31. No login, just share the link.

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Children's Author & Poet, Julia Alvarez, eBook

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Children's Author & Poet, Julia Alvarez, eBook

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Free access through Abdo Publishing COVID-19 free trial until May 31. No login, just share the link.

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Literary Elements & Techniques: Figurative Language - simile & metaphor

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Literary Elements & Techniques: Figurative Language - simile & metaphor

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3 minute video.  (T & L approved PBS Learning for use).

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Literary Elements and Techniques | Figurative Language | PBS LearningMedia

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Discover how authors use figurative language to enhance their writing and explore the differences between similes and metaphors in this animated video from WNET. Discussion questions below help students to further apply their understanding before analyzing a text.

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Free access through Abdo Publishing COVID-19 free trial until May 31. No login, just share the link.

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Free access through Abdo COVID-19 free trial until May 31. No login required, just share the link.

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BTSB wants you to know that during these unprecedented school closures, to support educators, parents, students. Their resources specialist team compiled a list of academic resources for students learning from home. Use this site in any way you find helpful and share anywhere you see fit.

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Every resource is free to access and enjoy. Much of it, though not all, is also open content, in the sense that it's freely reusable and re-mixable under Creative Commons licensing. Open content is clearly labeled on its respective website.

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Students watch a video segment about the legend of "John Henry" and learn about the literary devices personification and hyperbole. (T & L permission to use.)

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Using Literary Devices | PBS LearningMedia

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Students watch a video segment about the legend of "John Henry" and learn about the literary devices personification and hyperbole.

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In this lesson, students will learn about Walt Whitman’s brave actions and highly regarded writings. After viewing a video about his life, students will examine the frontispiece and title page of an early edition of Leaves and Grass and will analyze one of its most famous poems. The lesson concludes with students writing an updated version of “I Hear America Singing” reflecting what they have learned about Whitman’s beliefs about our country. (T & L permission to use.)

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Walt Whitman | Journalist and Poet | PBS LearningMedia

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Walt Whitman was a progressive voice and innovative writer during a critical period of change in the United States. In the midst of the Civil War, his poetic and journalistic works, spanning topics from the personal to the political, marked the start of a new era for American literature.

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Children's poems - listen online free access

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Provides instructions for creating anthologies that can be shared with students on websites/online.

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This video offers a brief guide to the education resources available on Poets.org, the website of the Academy of American Poets, to help teachers bring poetry to the classroom—with a special introduction by Academy of American Poets Education Ambassador Richard Blanco.

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Use the tabs at the bottom of the spreadsheet for subject specific resources.

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Create a new spreadsheet and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Sheets to edit Excel files. Free from Google.

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Sign Up for the Teach this Poem newsletter

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Sign Up for the Teach this Poem newsletter

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Scroll down to the bottom of the page and sign up for the newsletter which provides free to use lesson plans and extension ideas for poems.

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National Poetry Month in April is a special occasion to celebrate the importance of poets and poetry in our culture. This year, on the 25th anniversary of the celebration and in this time of uncertainty and great concern, we can rely on poems to offer wisdom, uplifting ideas, and language that prompts reflection that can help us slow down and center mentally, emotionally, spiritually. As so many are teaching and working from home, we've adapted these lists to help you celebrate National Poetry Month 2021 at home and in the virtual classroom.

Explore ways to celebrate in the virtual classroom.

Explore ways to celebrate National Poetry Month while social distancing.

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30 ways to celebrate national poetry month

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30 Ways to Celebrate National Poetry Month

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National Poetry Month in April is a special occasion to celebrate the importance of poets and poetry in our culture. This year, on the 25th anniversary of the celebration and in this time of uncertainty and great concern, we can rely on poems to offer wisdom, uplifting ideas, and language that prompts reflection that can help us slow down and center mentally, emotionally, spiritually.

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"Inspired Inventions" poem 2019 PSSA ELA Grade 6 

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"Inspired Inventions" poem 2019 PSSA ELA Grade 6 

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Pages 16-21 of PDF Not sure how you usually use/share these released items

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Students can compose and publish their own poems using the Theme Poems interactive from ReadWriteThink.
Copyright 2012. IRA/NCTE all rights reserved. ReadWriteThink materials may be reproduced for educational purposes.

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Free access through Abdo COVID-19 free trial until May 31. No login, just share the link.
Contains definitions and examples of poetic devices, through poems, including hyperbole, repetition, punctuation, stanzas, speaker, and more.

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Abdo Digital - Nicknames to Nightmares: Reading, Writing and Reciting Poems about Me

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Celebrating National Poetry Month from Home

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Celebrating National Poetry Month from Home

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SLJ shares ways you and your students can celebrate poetry from home. There are low-tech suggestions that include drawing, noticing, wondering, and composing. There are also high-tech suggestions including the investigation of online poetry sites.

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"You can find poetry in your everyday life, your memory, in what people say on the bus, in the news, or just what's in your heart." -Carol Ann Duffy, Britain's Poet Laureate, 2009-2019

April is National Poetry Month and is often celebrated across the nation's schools through reading, writing, and sharing poetry all month long. While many students will be home this month due to the COVID-19 crisis, poetry can be a source of comfort as we face tremendous challenges and waves of uncertainty. Poetry can also serve as an expressive outlet for the small moments of joy students may be experiencing as well as the difficult feelings they are navigating. Poetry offers a pathway for students to look inwards but also to look outwards to take notice of the sights and sounds of their everyday lives at this moment.

In this post, we share ways you and your students can celebrate poetry from home. There are low-tech suggestions that include drawing, noticing, wondering, and composing. There are also high-tech suggestions including the investigation of online poetry sites and ways to incorporate technology into the composing and sharing processes.

Whether you are a K-12 teacher trying to support students online or a parent, grandparent, or family or community member trying to support learning for a range of students and ages during this period of disruption, we hope you can find these resources interesting and engaging. If you or the young people with whom you work don't have access to a computer or tablet at home, the websites and digital suggested activities can be accessed using a smart phone.
Teaching Ideas and Invitations
Heart Mapping This Moment. Heart mapping is a technique created by the poet and teacher of poetry, Georgia Heard. View her website to watch her TEDX Talk on "Mapping the Heart" as well as to see samples of heart maps from children all over the world. Invite students to create a map of their heart that includes sketches and brief notes about the people, places, feelings, and things that are in their heart at this moment. What are the things they are most grateful for? What are the small things in life that they find themselves appreciative of at this moment? Invite students to use whatever materials they might have at home to create their heart maps including pencils, pens, colored pencils, crayons, paint, scraps of paper, or even fabric. This handout from Georgia Heard may be especially helpful to get you started. Support students to use their heart maps as a way to express the challenges and strong emotions they may be feeling at this time. Invite students to share their heart maps through the Global Heart Map Project created by LitWorld, a global literacy advocacy nonprofit. Remind students throughout their poetry writing this month that when they are stuck on what to write about that they can always look back at their heart maps for inspiration.

Poem a Day. Share your favorite poems all month long with students through a poem a day. Use digital sites such as the Poetry Foundation and the American Academy of Poets site to explore poems and to search by topic, form, or poet. Invite students to use these sites to find poems that they want to share with others as a part of a digital Morning Meeting throughout the month. Create a Google calendar that allows students to sign up to share the poem they found (or one they wrote) on a particular day. Use the poems you and your students select to talk about poetry through live and recorded videos. What do students notice about the different poems selected? Which poems make them laugh out loud? How do different poets use words, stanzas, line breaks, and white space to communicate a feeling? How do poets create sounds through repetition and rhyme? Invite students to read poems aloud to family members in different voices such as loud voices, in whispers, with a funny voice, or by singing.

Listening to and Reciting Poetry. As an extension to sharing a poem a day, invite students to listen to a poem a day. Sites like the Children's Poetry Archive, Poetry Out Loud and the Poetry Foundation have poems to listen to from a digital device. We recommend previewing any poems you direct students to listen to. The Children's Poetry archive, in particular, has a variety of ways students can search for poems by theme and by suggested age group on their own. As a challenge, invite students to find a poem that they want to recite for the class either by audiorecording their voice reading the poem or from memory. Poetry Out Loud has tips on reciting poetry including how to use appropriate body language and how to speak with confidence. You may also want to do a live poetry event for students to recite their favorite poems through a video conference tool such as Google Hangout or Zoom.

Odes: Noticing and Praising People, Events, and Everyday Things. Introduce students to the term "ode". An ode is a lyric poem written to praise a person, event, or object. Share well-known odes with students that can serve as mentor texts including Pablo Neruda's " Ode to My Socks" and " Ode to Broken Things". For older students, share Keats' famous " Ode on a Grecian Urn". You can also share the history of odes with students and how odes were originally sang rather than written. Support students to choose a topic for their ode by looking around their home, out their windows, or in their neighborhoods. What is an everyday object that is especially treasured right now? Share examples from your own life like forks, the book on your nightstand, even toilet paper. Who are the people that could use some praise? Once students have selected a topic, support them to list characteristics or qualities of that person, event, or object using descriptive adjectives. Invite students to write and share their odes by taking a photo of their writing and accompanying art, audiorecording their poem, or videorecording themselves reading their poem. If students write odes to people in their lives, encourage them to give their poems as gifts to those praiseworthy people. Share student poems on a class digital platform for others to compliment.

Ode to Joy: Music as Inspiration for Poetry. View and listen to the Colorado Symphony's Digital "Ode to Joy". In their annotation to the video, the Symphony describes the song as an "ode to humanity, to peace over desperation, to universal kinship, and, of course, to joy." Use the performance as an inspiration for students to write their own Ode to Joy poems that express small moments of joy during this difficult time of social isolation or the joys they are looking forward to in the near future.

Sharing Our Notebooks Daily Lessons. Children's author and writing teacher, Amy Ludwig VanDerwater created a series of brief daily writing talks that began March 16, 2020 in response to the COVID-19 crisis and the onset of widespread remote learning. Invite students to view her daily talks or to look back at recorded talks as an inspiration for creating their own poetry notebooks this month. As she writes on her site, "allow this space to bring you into your mind and heart and funny bone and notebook".

Alliteration: Tongue Twister Family Challenge. Introduce students to the term "alliteration" or the use of the same beginning sound in a line or verse. Share classic tongue twisters as examples of alliteration such as "Suzy sells seashells by the seashore." Invite students to create their own tongue twisters through shared or independent writing. Gather a collection of tongue twisters written by students and invite families to engage in a Tongue Twister Family Challenge to see who in the family can say the alliterative line five times fast. Students may even want to video these challenges (with permission) and share them with one another in a celebration of sound.

Tapping Into Our Senses. Invite students to tap into their senses to write poetry about what they are experiencing right now. They can focus on what they see, hear, smell, taste, and feel at home or outside their window. Students can create "viewing stations" by using a paper towel roll to zoom in on details that they might not ordinarily pay attention to. They can sit in the kitchen with their eyes closed to tap into the smells around them. They can open a window and listen for the sounds of nature that they might not usually hear. Have students create a list poem or other forms of poetry based on their experience.

I Observe, Remember, Imagine, Wonder. Invite students to create poems using the four prompts: "I observe/ I remember/ I imagine/ and I wonder" from Pam Allyn's The Complete4 for Literacy. Students can choose one prompt or any combination of the four to write about what they notice right now, fond memories they have, things they imagine for the future, or what they find themselves daydreaming or wondering about.

Art and Poetry Workshop. Find images of works of art online or from the museum resources curated on The Classroom Bookshelf for students to write list poems describing what they see, what the art makes them think, and what it makes them wonder. Then, invite students to create art with whatever materials they have at home including sidewalk chalk, scraps of paper, or even fabric . Following the same process, invite students to use their own artwork to create list poems about what they see in their own art, what it makes them think, and what it makes them wonder. If using sidewalk chalk, students may want to write their poem in chalk to bring joy and wonder to passersby.

Tribute Poetry. After an initial immersion in reading a variety of poems, invite students to write poems in tribute to poems they love. In the Preface to Out of Wonder, a collection of tribute poems, Kwame Alexander writes that "by reading other poets we can discover our own wonder". Model for students how to use an existing poem as inspiration for your own by using the same select words, phrases, lines, and structure about a different topic. Students may also find inspiration in the topics poets write and want to create their own version using a different format. Use our suggestions in our entry Wonder, Words, and Wisdomdedicated to teaching invitations using Kwame Alexander's books including Out of Wonder. See Poet-to-Poet created by the Academy of American Poets for student examples of tribute poems. You may also want to invite students to write their own "When This Is Over" poems based on the highly circulated poem by Laura Kelly Fanucci. You may also want to invite students to create their own visual poems such as this multimedia piece titled " Hope " based on Fanucci's poem. Students may be inspired to create their own visual poems in response to Fanucci's poem or to create their own visual poems with the title "Hope" based on their own writing about this moment.

Poem in Your Pocket Day. This special day in honor of poetry takes place every year on a day during National Poetry Month. In 2020, Poem in Your Pocket Day will take place on Thursday, April 30th. Prior to this day, invite students to select a poem that they especially loved this month that they discovered or wrote. On this day, invite students to carry a copy of this poem in their pocket and to share it with others in their home. Invite family members to select their own favorite poems to participate in this special day. Invite students to follow along on social media or to post using #poempocket. Learn more ways to participate at poets.org.

Conversation Poems. Staying connected is especially important right now. One way to invite the power of connection is to support students to write conversation poems. A conversation poem details the conversation between two people. Students can write a conversation poem between themselves and someone in their home, someone they are connecting with through phone calls, texts (including emojis), and video calls, someone they want to see in person soon, or between two imaginary characters.

Remixing through Found Poetry. Help students to realize that poetry is everywhere.Introduce students to the power of found poetry which takes existing words, phrases, and sometimes whole passages or pages from other sources and refashions them to make a new poem in the form of a literary collage. Found poetry is often made from newspaper articles, pages or copies of pages from books, shopping lists, maps, other poems, and even takeout menus. Invite students to find an existing text in their home or online as the source of their found poem and to isolate the words and phrases they want to use to make their own poem. Students can cut out the words and phrases to make their poem on a new page or they can create "blackout" poetry by darkening all of the words that they do not want to use thereby spotlighting select words to create their poem. See Scholastic's resource on creating blackout poetry with students which includes student samples that incorporate artistic choices into the composing process.

Virtual Poetry Celebration. While celebrating in person may not be an option this month, consider creating a virtual poetry celebration with students. You can create an asynchronous celebration by having students select their favorite poems each week or from the month to share with one another by taking photos, scanning their poems, audiorecording their poems, or taking videos of themselves performing their poems. You can also create a synchronous celebration by having each student share their poem live with one another through a video conferencing tool such as Google Classroom or Zoom. Celebrate your students' creativity, willingness to try something new, and their voices as poets.
Further Explorations
The following is a list of online poetry resources as well as live poetry events during the COVID-19 crisis.

Online Arts Events During the COVID-19 Outbreak Curated by Creative Capital
https://creative-capital.org/2020/03/18/online-arts-events-during-the-covid-19-outbreak/
Ode to Joy Colorado Symphony Digital Performance

Academy of American Poets
https://poets.org/
Poetry Foundation
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/
Poem Hunter
https://www.poemhunter.com/
Children's Poetry Archive

Poetry Out Loud
https://www.poetryoutloud.org/competing/listen-to-poems/
Global Heart Map Project at LitWorld
https://www.litworld.org/heartmaps?utm_source=LitWorld+Monthly+Newsletter&utm_campaign=cf040d6120-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_11_06_09_23_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_ff380b0bd1-cf040d6120-38174113
Sharing Our Notebooks: Amy Ludwig VanDerwater
http://www.sharingournotebooks.amylv.com/
The Poem Farm: Amy Ludwig VanDerwater
http://www.poemfarm.amylv.com/p/find-poem.html
Georgia Heard's Heart Map Site

Scholastic Blackout Poetry Lesson
https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/blog-posts/john-depasquale/blackout-poetry/
Hope: A Visual Poem

Laura Kelly Fanucci's Poem "When This Is Over"
https://motheringspirit.com/2020/03/

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Celebrating National Poetry Month From Home

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"You can find poetry in your everyday life, your memory, in what people say on the bus, in the news, or just what's in your heart." -Carol Ann Duffy, Britain's Poet Laureate, 2009-2019 April is National Poetry Month and is often celebrated across the nation's schools through reading, writing, and sharing poetry all month long.

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Students begin the lesson by activating background knowledge about the American Revolution. They then conduct research on a historical figure. When research is complete, students write an acrostic poem about the historical figure's importance to the American Revolution.

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Learning About Research and Writing Using the American Revolution

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Students across the board will get a kick out of researching a historical figure from the American Revolution to create an acrostic poem.

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Reprint rights - link provides sample source citation needed if content is used. https://www.educationworld.com/reprint_rights.shtml
A perfect culminating activity for your biography, history, or literature unit. If you plan to have your students write biography acrostics, you might share a few samples of this form . . . Examples provided in the lesson plan.

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Arts & Humanities
--Language Arts
--Literature
--History

Brief Description

A perfect culminating activity for your biography, history, or literature unit.

Objectives

Students will

learn how acrostic poems differ from other forms of poetry.

explore samples of acrostics to see how the form can vary.

write an acrostic about a famous person (or event).

acrostic, poetry, biography

Materials Needed

Lesson Plan

This lesson might be used
* as a culminating activity for your Biography unit.
* as a book report" after students have read biographies; the acrostic should draw on information/facts that students learned from the biography they read.
* as an introduction to or culmination of the study of a period in history; you might assign each student to learn about -- and share what they learned about -- one famous person (or event, or concept) from the period.

What Is an Acrostic Poem?
Explain to students that an acrostic poem -- sometimes called a name poem -- begins with a subject or topic (a persons name, an event, a concept, a word). Each line of the poem begins with a letter from the subject and describes the subject in some way. Sometimes the lines of an acrostic are single words, and other times they are phrases. Unlike many other types of poetry, the lines or phrases in an acrostic poem usually do not rhyme.

You might share with students this acrostic poem, which also serves as a nice example of an acrostic. It is used here with permission from its author, Dr. Tonya Strickland.

If you plan to have your students write biography acrostics, you might share a few samples of this form:

Acrostic Lesson Resources
The Web page What Is an Acrostic Poem? offers some tips for writing acrostics that you might share with students.
Following are some additional lesson resources:

Assessment

You might use or adapt one of these acrostic rubrics to guide your assessment of student work:
* Biography Acrostic Poem Rubric
* Acrostic Biographical Poem Rubric

Lesson Plan Source

EducationWorld.com

Submitted By

Gary Hopkins

National Standards

LANGUAGE ARTS: English
GRADES K - 12
NL-ENG.K-12.3 Evaluation Strategies
NL-ENG.K-12.4 Communication Skills
NL-ENG.K-12.5 Communication Strategies
NL-ENG.K-12.6 Applying Knowledge
NL-ENG.K-12.8 Developing Research Skills
NL-ENG.K-12.12 Applying Language Skills

TECHNOLOGY
GRADES K - 12
NT.K-12.1 Basic Operations and Concepts
NT.K-12.3 Technology Productivity Tools
NT.K-12.4 Technology Communications Tools

More Lesson Ideas

Find links to more history lesson ideas in these Education World archives:

History Subject Center

Daily Lesson Plans -- History

Lesson Planning/History Archive

Curriculum/History Archive

History Subject Center

Teacher-Submitted Lessons -- History

History Printable Work Sheets

Technology Lessons

Special Days & Holidays Lessons

Language Arts Subject Center

Daily Lesson Plans -- Language Arts & Reading

Lesson Planning/Language Arts Archive

Curriculum/Language Arts Archive

Language & Literature Subject Center

Teacher-Submitted Lessons -- Language Arts and Literature

Every-Day Edits (Printable Work Sheets)

Writing Bug Story Starters (Printable Work Sheets)

More Language Arts Printable Work Sheets

Strategies That Work

Read Across America Day (March)

National Poetry Month (April)

Childrens Book Week (November)

Technology Lessons

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Arts & Humanities --Language Arts --Literature --History Brief Description A perfect culminating activity for your biography, history, or literature unit. Objectives Students will learn how acrostic poems differ from other forms of poetry. explore samples of acrostics to see how the form can vary. write an acrostic about a famous person (or event).

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The Poetry Foundation

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Related to acrostic, a poem in which the first letter of each line or stanza follows sequentially through the alphabet. See Jessica Greenbaum, " A Poem for S." Tom Disch's " Abecedary" adapts the principles of an abecedarian poem, while Matthea Harvey's " The Future of Terror/The Terror of Future" sequence also uses the alphabet as an organizing principle. Poets who have used the abecedarian across whole collections include Mary Jo Bang, in The Bride of E, and Harryette Mullen, in Sleeping with the Dictionary.

Verse whose meter is determined by the number of stressed (accented) syllables-regardless of the total number of syllables-in each line. Many Old English poems, including , are accentual; see Ezra Pound's modern translation of "The Seafarer." More recently, Richard Wilbur employed this same Anglo-Saxon meter in his poem "Junk." Traditional nursery rhymes, such as "Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake," are often accentual.

Verse whose meter is determined by the number and alternation of its stressed and unstressed syllables, organized into feet. From line to line, the number of stresses (accents) may vary, but the total number of syllables within each line is fixed. The majority of English poems from the Renaissance to the 19th century are written according to this metrical system.

An early 20th-century Russian school of poetry that rejected the vagueness and emotionality of Symbolism in favor of Imagist clarity and texture. Its proponents included Osip Mandelstam and Anna Akhmatova.

A poem in which the first letter of each line spells out a word, name, or phrase when read vertically. See Lewis Carroll's "A Boat beneath a Sunny Sky."

A four-line stanza invented by the Classical Greek poet Alcaeus that employs a specific syllabic count per line and a predominantly dactylic meter. Alfred, Lord Tennyson imitated its form in his poem "Milton."

An extended metaphor in which the characters, places, and objects in a narrative carry figurative meaning. Often an allegory's meaning is religious, moral, or historical in nature. John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress and Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene are two major allegorical works in English.

The repetition of initial stressed, consonant sounds in a series of words within a phrase or verse line. Alliteration need not reuse all initial consonants; "pizza" and "place" alliterate. Example: "With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim" from Gerard Manley Hopkins's " Pied Beauty." Browse poems with alliteration.

A brief, intentional reference to a historical, mythic, or literary person, place, event, or movement. "The Waste Land," T. S. Eliot's influential long poem is dense with allusions. The title of Seamus Heaney's autobiographical poem "Singing School" alludes to a line from W.B. Yeats's "Sailing to Byzantium" ("Nor is there singing school but studying /Monuments of its own magnificence"). Browse poems with allusions.

A word, statement, or situation with two or more possible meanings is said to be ambiguous. As poet and critic William Empson wrote in his influential book Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930), "The machinations of ambiguity are among the very roots of poetry." A poet may consciously join together incompatible words to disrupt the reader's expectation of meaning, as e.e. cummings does in [anyone lived in a pretty how town]. The ambiguity may be less deliberate, steered more by the poet's attempts to express something ineffable, as in Gerard Manley Hopkins's "The Windhover." At the sight of a bird diving through the air, the speaker marvels, "Brute beauty and valor and act, oh, air, pride, plume here / Buckle!" The ambiguity of this phrase lies in the exclamation of "buckle": The verb could be descriptive of the action, or it could be the speaker's imperative. In both cases, the meaning of the word is not obvious from its context. "Buckle" could mean "fall" or "crumple," or it could describe the act of clasping armor and bracing for battle.

Someone or something placed in an inappropriate period of time. Shakespeare's placing of a clock in Julius Caesar is an anachronism, because clocks had not yet been invented in the period when the play is set. In Charles Olson's epic The Maximus Poems, the central figure encompasses the poet's alter ego, the second-century Greek philosopher Maximus of Tyre, and the fourth-century Phoenician mystic Maximus. This persona arises from outside of time to reflect on the state of American culture by recounting the history of Gloucester, Massachusetts.

A word spelled out by rearranging the letters of another word; for example, "The teacher gapes at the mounds of exam pages lying before her."

A metrical foot consisting of two unaccented syllables followed by an accented syllable. The words "underfoot" and "overcome" are anapestic. Lord Byron's "The Destruction of Sennacherib" is written in anapestic meter.

Often used in political speeches and occasionally in prose and poetry, anaphora is the repetition of a word or words at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses, or lines to create a sonic effect.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous "I Have a Dream" speech, which uses anaphora not only in its oft-quoted "I have a dream" refrain but throughout, as in this passage when he repeats the phrase "go back to":

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina,
go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and
ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can
and will be changed.

In Joanna Klink's poem " Some Feel Rain," the phrase "some feel" is repeated, which creates a rhythm and a sense of an accumulating emotions and meanings:

Some feel rain. Some feel the beetle startle

in its ghost-part when the bark

slips. Some feel musk. Asleep against

each other in the whiskey dark, scarcely there.

See Paul Muldoon's "As," William Blake's "The Tyger," or much of Walt Whitman's poetry, including " I Sing the Body Electric." See also Rebecca Hazelton's explanatory essay, " Adventures in Anaphora."

Contrasting or combining two terms, phrases, or clauses with opposite meanings. William Blake pits love's competing impulses-selflessness and self-interest-against each other in his poem "The Clod and the Pebble." Love "builds a Heaven in Hell's despair," or, antithetically, it "builds a Hell in Heaven's despite."

An address to a dead or absent person, or personification as if he or she were present. In his Holy Sonnet "Death, be not proud," John Donne denies death's power by directly admonishing it. Emily Dickinson addresses her absent object of passion in "Wild nights!-Wild nights!"

A basic model from which copies are made; a prototype. According to psychologist Carl Jung, archetypes emerge in literature from the "collective unconscious" of the human race. Northrop Frye, in his Anatomy of Criticism, explores archetypes as the symbolic patterns that recur within the world of literature itself. In both approaches, archetypical themes include birth, death, sibling rivalry, and the individual versus society. Archetypes may also be images or characters, such as the hero, the lover, the wanderer, or the matriarch.

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Glossary of Poetic Terms | Poetry Foundation

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The Riddle Interactive encourages students to use language in such a way as to present a common thing as unfamiliar, asking their readers/listeners to guess what it is. Good riddles rely upon use of metaphor, simile, and metonymy; concrete imagery; and description of an object or concept.

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The Riddle Interactive outlines the characteristics of riddle poems.

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Celebrate Earth Day with this lesson plan which asks students to build a birdhouse out of reusable materials.

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teach this poem: “the tree sparrows” by joseph o. legaspi

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Teach This Poem: "The Tree Sparrows" by Joseph O. Legaspi

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Produced for K-12 educators, Teach This Poem features one poem a week from our online poetry collection, accompanied by interdisciplinary resources and activities designed to help teachers quickly and easily bring poetry into the classroom. The series is written by our Educator in Residence, Dr. Madeleine Fuchs Holzer, and is available for free via email.

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Poem generator

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Free access to eBooks through JLG free trial

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Free access to eBooks through JLG free trial

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Experience Interactive Nonfiction Categories for Elementary Readers

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Each category brings you one new print book every month that contains a multi-use code allowing an unlimited number of readers simultaneous online access to the media-enhanced/multi-language version of the book-driving comprehension, retention, and enjoyment!

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Plus, find out about the promotions available when you add one or more of these categories to a new or existing subscription! View all JLG categories for grades K-12 Need help choosing the best categories for your library?
Contact your account rep or call us at 800.491.0174 for personalized guidance.

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Interactive Nonfiction Library | Interactive Elementary Reader

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Experience Interactive Nonfiction Categories for Elementary Readers Help your readers immerse themselves in learning with categories featuring media-enhanced titles! The All About Animals, Sports Essentials and About Our World categories help nonfiction topics come to life with animated illustrations, live videos, slideshows, and quizzes.

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Examples of Shape (Concrete) Poems for Kids

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Examples of Shape (Concrete) Poems for Kids

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Shape poems are an unusual form of poetry, in that the arrangement of the poem's words on the page (or screen) forms a recognisable shape or picture. It is common for the poem's shape to reflect the its theme or subject, but it is not a requirement. Some shape poems deliberately challenge this convention for humorous effect. So far, so simple.

It's never simple

Unfortunately, Americans have decided that shape poems should be called concrete poems. I have to say that I prefer the term shape, which neatly ties the poem's form to its description, so we'll stick with it for the time being.

Twisted shape poetry

There are two really quite distinct types of shape poetry, twisted and true. Twisted shape poems are easier and more fun to write, which makes them ideal for children. In the case of twisted poems, the words of the poem are written and then simply contorted or twisted to form the desired shape. I've turned the opening of the traditional nursery rhyme, Hey Diddle Diddle, into a shape poem so that you can see how the twisting of the words works:

Some people think that twisted shape poetry is a cheat, because the same words can be twisted into almost any shape.

I must say I like the twisted form, because if you're unhappy with how the poem turns out first time, you can easily untwist the words and twist them into different shapes until you get the result you want.

Examples of Twisted Shape Poems

A twisted shape poem which is in the
shape of an ampersand, which is an
abbreviated form of the word and.
by Patrick Winstanley

An Olympic shape poem in which the
poem's 5 lines are curled inside the
rings of the Olympic Games emblem
by Patrick Winstanley

Two twisted shape poems, or at least
one twisted and disintegrated shape
poem in the form of a Christmas tree
by Patrick Winstanley

True shape poetry

True shape poems are a different kettle of fish entirely. In a true shape poem, the poet uses the differing line lengths to create the desired imagery. It can be a tricky and frustrating business. If you want to create a poem which rhymes and has a recognisable metre, you either need to select a fairly rectangular form for your poem or to cheat like mad. I think it's an acceptable cheat when creating a true shape poem in a complex shape to let the start of new lines fall wherever they fall. It can also be helpful to highlight the initial letter of each line in bold or a contrasting colour so that your audience know that it's reading a poem, rather than a very short, oddly-shaped novel.

Let's have a look at an example and everything should fall into place. In this case I've created a true shape poem in the form of a man in a hat.

I've also included a riddle in the poem, just to bamboozle you a bit further. Perhaps it's time to get out your I-spy Book of Hats.

Examples of True Shape Poems

A wholly egotistical true shape poem
in which the words form a love heart
by Patrick Winstanley

A mountain-shaped poem about
the painfull process of writing poetry
by Patrick Winstanley

A feast of fonts and a punishing pun
collide in this collaborative shape poem
about the authors' love of Italian food
by Patrick Winstanley & Hannah Flemington

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Shape poems are an unusual form of poetry, in that the arrangement of the poem's words on the page (or screen) forms a recognisable shape or picture. It is common for the poem's shape to reflect the its theme or subject, but it is not a requirement.

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Copyright: Lesson Plans. NEH holds the copyright for lesson plans and student resources, and licenses such content under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. This License allows subsequent users to copy, distribute, transmit, and adapt the content and requires such users to attribute the work to NEH.
Emily Dickinson study unit that can be shared via Google Classroom

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Emily as Myth | Emily as Poet-Gardener | A Lady Red Upon The Hill | The Daisy Follows Soft the Sun | A Sepal, a Petal, and a Thorn | The Gentian Weaves Her Fingers | When Roses Cease to Bloom, Dear | Reference

If we love Flowers, are we not 'born again' every Day?
- Emily Dickinson, Letter 1037

Emily Dickinson, now widely recognized (alongside Walt Whitman) as among the first American poetic voices, published only a handful of poems in her lifetime. In fact, much of Dickinson's reclusive life remains an enigma to scholars, who piece together what they know from her poems and letters. In the following, you will learn about Dickinson's life, her poetry, and the influence of gardening on both.

Emily as Myth

Read the overview of Dickinson's life, and then explore the context of when and where she lived in order to understand the mythic status she achieved in her home community.

Upon moving to Amherst in 1881, Mabel Loomis Todd, who would become a family friend and correspondent to Emily, wrote to her parents of the town's "Myth": "She dresses wholly in white, & her mind is said to be perfectly wonderful."

Richard Sewall, The Life of Emily Dickinson. (New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1974).
Questions

Why did Mabel refer to Emily as the town "Myth?" Through your background reading into Emily's life, do you agree with Mabel that "myth" is an accurate description of her? How so?

If you were to identify Emily as a mythic figure, such as one of the Greek goddesses, which one would she be? Explain your answer. You may use examples of Emily's poetry, such as the ones listed later in this resource, to illustrate your answer.

What contributes to the making of a myth or a legend in the 19th century? In the 21st century? How does Emily's life in a 19th-century small New England town provide a context for her mythic status? If Emily were living in the 21st century would she have become a legend? How might living in the 21st century with our current technology affect Emily?

Emily as Poet-Gardener

Did you know that Emily Dickinson was better known in her hometown of Amherst, Massachusetts, as a gardener rather than a poet?! She was often observed by neighbors on summer evenings tending her flower beds by moonlight in her signature white dress. Dickinson, like many women of her day, even communicated through the 19th-century "language of flowers." Women in the Victorian age used flowers to send messages and convey hidden meanings. There are many online and print resources that identify these sentiments.

Visit Dickinson Properties: The Landscape to take a virtual tour of Emily Dickinson's actual garden and the flowers she cultivated in full bloom! As you travel through this narrated clip, "Grounds of Memory," consider her use of flowers as metaphor. Think about how she translates her love and delight in the natural world into poetry that expresses her deep understanding of human nature and the meaning of life.

Select one of Dickinson's poems about gardens and flowers at the end of this resource or consider one of her nature poems drawn from your own research. Note that her poetry is identified by number and by first line, instead of having a formal title. Highlight or copy lines that provide floral or gardening imagery to answer the following:
Questions

How does Dickinson use the flower images in your selected poem? In addition to figurative language, think about different literary elements such as symbolism, assonance, rhyme-scheme, and imagery. Talk or write about your personal reaction to the poem.

If you were to identify Emily as a flower, which one would you choose? Explain why.

Read one of the following articles, and then re-read the flower poem(s) you read before in order to respond to the following questions and writing activities.

Emily Dickinson and Gardening, from The Emily Dickinson Museum, discusses how the poet's life revolved around her garden.

The New York Times article, "The Poet as Gardener and Tiger Lily," recalls the gift Dickinson had for cultivating flowers; she identified strongly with flowers like the tiger lily, daisy, and rose. Emily was partial to wildflowers. One of her favorite, Indian pipes, gained special significance: it was the flower her friend, Mabel Todd, used to adorn the cover of the first edition of Dickinson's poems, published in 1890.

"Dickinson as Gardener," in NEH Humanities magazine, highlights a recent NEH-funded exhibition linking to her love for poetry and flowers, "Emily Dickinson's Garden: The Poetry of Flowers," hosted by the New York Botanical Garden. You may also be interested in listening to the NPR radio program broadcast A Flowering Tribute To Emily Dickinson.

You may take a virtual tour of the New York Botanical Garden exhibit re-creation of Dickinson's 19th-century New England garden in full bloom by clicking here.

Would you like to see actual flowers that Emily pressed from her garden? See the digitized book at Harvard's library. The Poets.org resource discusses this Victorian Treasure: Emily Dickinson's Herbarium.
Questions

Emily's garden served as a laboratory for her poetry. What did she seek there?

It has been said that nature was Dickinson's "church." How do her poems support or refute that idea?

How did Dickinson use flowers to serve as personal emblems and emissaries in the 19th-century language of flowers?

Writing Activities

Emily was known for putting together and dropping little bouquets of flowers on the doorstep of family, friends, and associates as a gift to them. Identify key people in the authors circle, then reference the Victorian language of flowers to select several flowers she might have included in one of her nosegays to them. Discuss the significance of your selections.

According to the NEH Humanities magazine article, "Emily Dickinson, Gardener," "The reinvention of Dickinson by each generation of readers is the mark of a great poet, whose work holds up a mirror in which people through the ages can see some version of themselves." How does Dickinson hold up a mirror to your generation? What do you and your peers "see" when you look into and through her poetry?

A Lady Red Upon the Hill (86)

The Daisy Follows Soft the Sun (34)

THE daisy follows soft the sun,
And when his golden walk is done,
Sits shyly at his feet.
He, waking, finds the flower near.
"Wherefore, marauder, art thou here?"
"Because, sir, love is sweet!"

We are the flower, Thou the sun!
Forgive us, if as days decline,
We nearer steal to Thee,-
Enamoured of the parting west,
The peace, the flight, the amethyst,
Night's possibility!

A sepal, petal, and a thorn (19)

A sepal, petal, and a thorn
Upon a common summer's morn,
A flask of dew, a bee or two,
A breeze
A caper in the trees, -
And I'm a rose!

The Gentian Weaves Her Fringes (18)

In the name of the bee
And of the butterfly
And of the breeze, amen!

When Roses Cease to Bloom, Dear (39)

NOTE: The above poems along with many others with floral imagery can be accessed electronically from New York: Bartleby.com, 2000, The Complete Poems, an online text repository of the Boston: Little, Brown, 1924 edition of Dickinson's poems, selected and introduced by Martha Dickinson Bianchi.

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Emily Dickinson, now widely recognized (alongside Walt Whitman) as among the first American poetic voices, published only a handful of poems in her lifetime. In fact, much of Dickinson's reclusive life remains an enigma to scholars, who piece together what they know from her poems and letters.

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Link the diamante poems to events or experiences such as a nature walk just off campus, closure for a certain class activity/unit,an end-of-term remembrance, etc.

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Warm-Up Activities

Link the diamante poems to events or experiences such as a nature walk just off campus, closure for a certain class activity/unit,an end-of-term remembrance, etc.

Briefly examine structured forms of poetry from students' native languages as an introduction, e.g. Haiku poetry from Japanese.

Make up your own examples, using simpler or more complex vocabulary/topics, to tailor this activity to your particular students' level.

Instructions

1. Students work in small groups of 3-5. Each group has one example poem, and the tasks:
a) Identify the structure / form of the poem (what are the parts of speech in each line); and,
b) Report orally and informally to the rest of the class on the feeling / tone of the poem.
c) Answer the questions: What is the relationship between the first and last lines? What is the "middle" of the poem (the transition point), and how can you tell?
Students can use dictionaries, as necessary, to figure out unfamiliar words. Example diamante poem:

2. Students report on their assigned poems. Optional: students can practice with the instructor orally beforehand and then read and/or act out their assigned poem to the class.

3. Individual groups then "brainstorm" as many possible pairs of antonyms as they can create. The teacher puts the pairs up on the board / overhead screen as suggestions (e.g. school days-holidays, woman-man, student-teacher, love-hatred, peace-war, divorce-marriage...). Students can use a dictionary and/or thesaurus.

4. Students and the instructor choose one of the brainstormed topics and write a diamante poem together on the board / overhead screen. Optional: copy it down and add it to the class collection if a class anthology is in the works.

5. Working individually with a template (see example below), students write one or more diamantes on the subject(s) of their choice.

More Example Poems

Adult intermediate-level ESOL students at University of Oregon authored the example cinquain poems below. Instructors can make their own examples as well, using simpler or more complex vocabulary and topics, to tailor this activity to students' language proficiency level and interests.

Teenager
Powerful, noisy
Dancing, dating, consuming
Explosion, energy, maturity, senility
Working, earning, saving
Quiet, peaceful
Ty-ager*

(* As in seventy, eighty)

Make up your own examples, using simpler or more complex vocabulary/topics, to tailor this activity to your particular students' level.

Template

FOLLOW-UP ACTIVITIES

1. Students' work can be compiled into a class anthology for reading, autographing, souvenirs, and so on.

2. Illustrate poems with handrawn or computer-generated images.

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opp-beckman
pizzaz
tesol
esol
esl
efl
creative writing
storytelling
university of oregon
american english institute

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PIZZAZ, Creative Writing & Storytelling, Opp-Beckman

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Link the diamante poems to events or experiences such as a nature walk just off campus, closure for a certain class activity/unit,an end-of-term remembrance, etc. Briefly examine structured forms of poetry from students' native languages as an introduction, e.g. Haiku poetry from Japanese.

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Students will discover the works of important
African-American poets, classroom activities designed to
encourage them to develop their own poetic voices,
discussion guides, bibliographies and links to engaging
online poetry resources.

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Reprint rights info. Link provides sample source citation needed if content used. https://www.educationworld.com/reprint_rights.shtml
To identify the theme of a poem based on details in the text.

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Send your students on a scavenger hunt for favorite poems in the Poems for Kids section of Poets.org.

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A selection of poems kids love by poets like Lewis Carroll, Jack Prelutsky, Shel Silverstein, Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, and more.

Many of these poems are especially suitable for younger children and students in elementary school.
read more poems for kids
" Antigonish [I met a man who wasn't there]" by Hughes Mearns
Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn't there...

" At the Zoo" by William Makepeace Thackeray
First I saw the white bear, then I saw the black;
Then I saw the camel with a hump upon his back;...

" Be Glad Your Nose Is on Your Face" by Jack Prelutsky
Be glad your nose is on your face,
not pasted on some other place,...

" Bleezer's Ice Cream" by Jack Prelutsky
I am Ebenezer Bleezer,
I run BLEEZER'S ICE CREAM STORE,...

" Clouds" by Anonymous
White sheep, white sheep,
On a blue hill,...

" Dream Variations" by Langston Hughes
To fling my arms wide
In some place of the sun,...

" Eletelephony" by Laura Elizabeth Richards
Once there was an elephant,
Who tried to use the telephant-...

" Fishmonger" by Marsden Hartley
I have taken scales from off
The cheeks of the moon....

" Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;...

" maggie and milly and molly and may" by E. E. Cummings
maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach(to play one day)...

" Mary's Lamb" by Sarah Josepha Hale
Mary had a little lamb,
Its fleece was white as snow,...

" Mother Doesn't Want a Dog" by Judith Viorst
Mother doesn't want a dog.
Mother says they smell,...

" My Shadow" by Robert Louis Stevenson
I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see....

" Nonsense Alphabet" by Edward Lear
A was an ant
Who seldom stood still,...

" Sick" by Shel Silverstein
"I cannot go to school today,"
Said little Peggy Ann McKay....

" Since Hannah Moved Away" by Judith Viorst
The tires on my bike are flat.
The sky is grouchy gray....

" The Crocodile" by Lewis Carroll
How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,...

" The Duel" by Eugene Field
The gingham dog and the calico cat
Side by side on the table sat;...

" The Eagle" by Lord Alfred Tennyson
He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,...

" The Good Moolly Cow [excerpt]" by Eliza Lee Follen
Come! supper is ready;
Come! boys and girls, now,...

" The Land of Counterpane" by Robert Louis Stevenson
When I was sick and lay a-bed,
I had two pillows at my head,...

" The Purple Cow" by Gelett Burgess
I never saw a Purple Cow,
I never hope to see one,...

" The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore-...

" The Tyger" by William Blake
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,...

" Trees" by Joyce Kilmer
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree...

" We never know how high we are (1176)" by Emily Dickinson
We never know how high we are
Till we are called to rise;...

" Wynken, Blynken, and Nod" by Eugene Field
Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night
Sailed off in a wooden shoe,-...
read more poems for children sign up for teach this poem browse materials for teachers browse poems and poets how to create an anthology

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Poems Kids Like - Read a selection of poems kids love by poets like Lewis Carroll, Jack Prelutsky, Shel Silverstein, Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, and more.

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Wonderopolis

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Did you know that April is National Month? At first, we thought it was National Month. We were going to do a Wonder about chickens dancing - a real " ball" - but then a friend told us we needed to do a Wonder about , not .

So here it is! Do you like to read ? When many kids hear the word "," they think of stuffy old poems that are hard to read and understand.

But has so much more to offer! From and poems to limericks and sonnets, can speak to the heart and the mind in powerful ways.

If you think you don't like , think about these questions. Do you like music? What about the catchy rhymes of hip-hop and rap, in particular? Do you sometimes hear the lyrics of a song and they speak to you in a way that makes you want to remember them forever? Many songs are simply poems set to music.

And if you think is an "old" art form that has no relevance today, think again! People who think isn't a "cutting edge" art form have never been to a .

A is a competition in which individuals or teams perform their own personal before an , which judges the poems and the artists' performances. slams are often held on college campuses or at coffee houses.

The was the invention of construction worker and poet Marc Smith. In 1984, he began holding readings at a Chicago jazz club in an effort to the art of performing live.

Eventually, his readings turned into a regular competition on Sunday nights called the Uptown . In addition to picking members to judge the competition , Smith also offered cash prizes for the winners. The Uptown still takes place every Sunday night.

Although the rules of slams can vary from location to location, the basic rules are similar across competitions: poets have three minutes to perform an original poem they have written.

They may not use props, costumes or musical instruments. Five judges give scores from 0-10. The high and the low scores are thrown out, and the middle three scores are added together to give poets a possible score range of 0-30.

At a , the is encouraged to participate by reacting to all aspects of the show. This might include cheering for their favorite poets, booing judges who give low scores and laughing along with the host's jokes.

Depending upon what type of you attend, you never know what type of you'll hear. A typical might include all sorts of different types of , including love poems, , hilarious comic poems and moving personal confessions.

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Did you know that April is National Month? At first, we thought it was National Month. We were going to do a Wonder about chickens dancing - a real " ball" - but then a friend told us we needed to do a Wonder about , not . So here it is!

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Copyright 2011. IRA/NCTE all rights reserved. ReadWriteThink materials may be reproduced for educational purposes.