Walt Whitman!

Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman is one of America's most famous poets, and he has written such poems as "O Captain! My Captain!," "I Hear America Singing," and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd." And, of course, the incredibly famous but incredibly long "Song of Myself."

Here is a powerful presentation of lines from Whitman's poems set to music and infused with pictures. It is a great way to show your students how relevant poetry is to things in their communities and to issues going on around the world.

This is a clip from the movie "Dead Poets Society," and it includes a line from Whitman's "Song of Myself." It also introduces the themes of self-expression and creativity that are present in Whitman's poetry. Hopefully it will encourage your students to write their own poems and express themselves!

Write your own poetry!

Fill-in-the blank poetry gives reluctant poets confidence because they are able to supply words to make "real" poems. Although it encourages students to conform to set patterns and rhyme schemes (which is definitely not a characteristic of lots of great poems), it helps them to dive into writing poetry and gives them the courage to be more creative the next time they attempt a poem.

A visual thesaurus shows a word map of the word you are trying to find synonyms for. The linked one is cool because of the graphics when you choose to look up a related word.

This Web site will help you rhyme (almost) any word!

Shakespeare ... yuck!

I admit, I shy away from Shakespeare's poems because I am afraid of not doing them justice, but the best way to teach is to be a learner along with your students. Here are some tips for introducing Shakespeare's poetry and teaching meter, along with four class activities. Once students understand Shakespeare's poetic devices, they will have a better understanding of his drama.

Shakespeare wrote many sonnets, and this is a collection of lesson plans dealing with sound in poetry using various poems from him and other poets. Hopefully these links will help you tackle Shakespeare and give your students confidence in their ability to scan poems.

Robert Frost!

Robert Frost

"Nothing Gold Can Stay" is a symbolic poem, and using the following video interpretation could introduce a discussion about the symbol of the tree in the poem (plus it has great classical music).



Finally, this is a link to a Web site with a lesson plan connecting the poem "Mending Wall" to the messages in popular songs. You can connect pretty much any poem to a song, but this will give you an example of how one teacher did it.

Nikki Grimes!

Nikki Grimes

This site lists five of Nikki's poems and extensions that teachers can use in their classrooms to help students connect the poetry to their own lives.

In a video interview, Nikki shares her tough childhood and addresses the lack of representation of minority children in books and poetry, and her motivation for writing. There are several video clips, but I would just show the first two unless you are using a work that specifically connects to one of the other videos.

Pablo Neruda!

Pablo Neruda

Many of Pablo's poems are infused with deep melancholy and passion, showing students how writing poetry can enable the poet to analyze their feelings and try to make sense of life.

Here are a few poems you might want to try:

"If You Forget Me"

"Ode to a Large Tuna in the Market"

"Nothing but Death"

April = National Poetry Month!

Here are some quick tips for integrating poetry into your classroom.



A lot of students dread poetry units, and I think that part of that fear of poetry comes from the misconception that there is a "hidden meaning" in poems that is nearly impossible to figure out. Students don't even know what to look for in a poem, and don't have confidence in their ability to read the poem closely.



When guiding students through poems, it is helpful to give them some concrete things to look for in a poem that will help them grasp what the poem means. A popular method is called TPCASTT.

Allen Ginsberg!

Allen Ginsberg

Allen Ginsberg is one of the most famous Beat poets, poets who questioned the social and ethical norms of the 1950s. They were rebels, and the poetry they wrote reflects the attitudes of the Beat movement. Although his poems are filled with disturbing images and borderline-racist comments, Ginsberg's tone and the messages that he conveyed through his poetry are essential to any discussion of poetry.

When I taught Ginsberg, I used the first 8 stanzas of his poem "Howl" because there wasn't much questionable material in them - if you're uncomfortable with reading some of the content in his poems, just use the cleaner parts (his poems are too long to read as wholes anyway :) ).

Copyright issues for teachers

Fair use rules apply to teachers who want to make copies of poems and other educational material to show to the class and to use in handouts. Also, in general, anything that is over 50 years old is public domain, so many of the poems you want to use are old enough that you can copy the whole thing and not need copyright permission.

Sherman Alexie!

Sherman Alexie

Sherman Alexie addresses issues of race and Native American identity without sounding preachy. Students love his work because it is easy to read and speaks in a voice that they can relate to, no matter what their ethnicity.

"How to Write the Great American Indian Novel" is a sarcastic poem that challenges racial stereotypes through sarcasm.


"Evolution" is about the power that white people used to take advantage of Native Americans and how there is still an unbalance of power in our country.


"On the Amtrak from Boston to New York City" talks about how the history of Native Americans is often ignored.

Choral poems

This Web site is great for getting started with reading poetry chorally. The link on the left called "Poetry Theater" turns the poems from the "School Poems" icon on the home page into poems for more than one reader.

Almost any poem can be read chorally, and it might be interesting to have students form groups and then give each group the same poem to break up into parts and read aloud in front of the class. A discussion about interpreting poems could follow.

There are many Web sites with choral reading resources and definitions of different types of choral reading.

Random Words!

I just found a very interesting Web site called the Random Word Generator. There are many ways you could use this, including generating a random word and then basing a poem off of it, or using it more like a Mad Lib and filling in key words of well-know or original poems to make the poem say something different.

You could connect this exercise with the poem "Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll. If one of your goals is to teach your class grammar, you could make it more fun by giving the class some basic definitions of the parts of speech and then (either as a class, in groups, or individually) figuring out what part of speech each of the nonsense words in the poem is.

Poetry slams!

Rap and spoken word are some of the greatest forms of poetry being written today. Students who proclaim that they hate poetry might change their minds when they realize that any words with a rhythm can be called poetry! Here is an example of one of these types of poems.

Note: There is significant swearing in this video; play with discretion. I think that sometimes swearing in literature and poetry makes a big impact that other words can't, but you have to make sure that your students understand why the poet chose the words they did and how the tone of the language contributes to the message in the poem.

It is so important that students understand the wide range of poetry - it's not just Robert Frost and Shakespeare! I think that students can really relate to poems like the ones in these videos because they are written with such raw emotion about themes that show up in everyone's lives.

Please have a poetry slam of some sort in your classroom; students can write their own poems, or they can bring in poems and learn about the art of performing them for an audience. You may be surprised by what some of your students come up with!

Poetry terms

There are two lists of poetry terms that I found that complement each other.

Although it is important for students to learn the definitions of these terms so that they will know what their teacher is referring to in future classes, it is not much fun to just memorize the definitions without applying them.

One way that I had my students apply the terms was by having them choose a poem from a list and present it to the class with two or three classmates, highlighting not just the meaning and rhythm of the poem, but the literary devices by which the poet achieved these effects. For the final test, I had the students analyze a poem for several things we had discussed in class, including labeling the literary devices they saw in the peom. In another section of the test, I gave them three more poems to read, a list of poetry terms, and a chart with three columns. They had to choose five terms from the box to write in the first column, write a short definition of each of the terms in the middle, column, and list an example of that term from one of the three poems in the third column.

Carl Sandburg!

Carl Sandburg

"Grass" is a nice short poem with a lot of opportunities for discussion. You could ask students what the message of the poem is and then have a mini-debate about what Sandburg was trying to say through the poem. (Two possible themes are the grass telling people to forget about the past and let the pain fade away, or the grass could be subtly accusing people of letting time erase memories and lessons that deserve to be remembered.)

Other ways to use Sandburg poems:

"Fog" can be used to introduce the imagist poets.

"Cool Tombs" can be used to discuss assonance and word choice.

"Chicago" can be used as a prompt for students to write autobiographical poems and to show that a poem doesn't have to be about an abstract object to be insightful.

Video footage of Chicago as the poem is being read:

Fixed Form Poems

The most common fixed poetry forms are the epic, the ode, the ballad, the sonnet, villanelle, and haiku. Definitions and examples of these forms can be found here.

Billy Collins wrote a hilarious poem in "paradelle" form (a form he made up to make fun of other fixed forms). The poem, "Paradelle for Susan" and its explanation and impact are a fun introduction to the more complicated forms and the idea of a fixed form in general.

Fixed form poems can give younger students or students just getting started with poetry the guidelines they need to start writing, and the more challenging forms can help even the most experienced poets experiment with the rules and constraints that fixed poems provide.

Maya Angelou!

Maya Angelou

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." - Maya Angelou

This is a shortened video version of "Still I Rise":

"I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" is my favorite poem by Maya Angelou. It is a wonderful poem about rising up under oppression and keeping your spirit alive - a great message for everyone to keep in mind. It also has amazing rhythm.

Poetry writing activities:

1. Compare Angelou's poem "Phenomenal Woman" to Lauryn Hill's "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill" or another song with the theme of pride in your identity.

2. Any of the ideas listed under "Evaluation" on this Web site would be fun.

Using poetry to teach figurative language

Figurative language refers to similes, metaphors, personification, onomatopoeias, hyperboles, and idioms. There is so much figurative language in poetry, and it is important to teach students how much word choice matters in literature. Poets spend a lot of time deciding what they are going to say and the words and comparisons that they are going to use, and often using figurative language enables them to create very interesting ideas.

This lesson plan uses poems from Frost, cummings, Wordsworth, and Derricotte to teach similes.


When I taught similes and metaphors to my 6th graders, I used "Flint" by Christina Rossetti and "Dreams" by Langston Hughes. (These two poems are very short, and therefore very useful in a lesson.) I had the students close their eyes while I read the poems aloud, and then we talked about how using figurative language helps you to see things and make connections that you wouldn't think of without the comparison.

Billy Collins!

Billy Collins

Billy Collins is amazing because he is a contemporary poet and writes poems that nearly everyone can understand and identify with. I like the idea of using Billy Collins' poems at the beginning of a poetry unit because then students won't see poetry as so complicated or indecipherable.

My Fav Five Billy Collins poems:
"The Lanyard" because it hints at how little we really appreciate our parents
"Litany" because it makes fun of cheesy love metaphors
"I Chop Some Parsley While Listening To Art Blakey's Version Of 'Three Blind Mice'" because it's a funny poem
"Embrace" because it's kind of funny and kind of terrifying
"Flames" because it has a surprise ending


There are millions of videos of poems that can add a little variation to your lessons, like this one of Collins' poem "Forgetfulness." Just make sure that YouTube isn't blocked on the computer at your school. :)

Introduction to Poetry

Perhaps the best place to start is with a poem by Billy Collins called "Introduction to Poetry." I feel like so many students expect teachers to tell them the "real meaning" of a poem or that it is their job to find symbols in the poem and figure out what they stand for, instead of just enjoying the poem and noticing how it makes them feel.

When I taught poetry during student teaching, I found that it helped the students to talk first about all the different things that we can analyze about poems - it's not just about rhyme or alliteration! There are lots of checklists on the Web (like this one) that you can print out or modify and then give to your students. Part of the final test for one of my poetry units was giving my students a poem and having them comment on each of the elements on the checklist as they applied to the given poem.



It is extremely important for someone to read the poems aloud before you discuss them in class, and one of the most amazing ways I found to do this is to play recordings of the poets we were studying reading their own poems. The book Poetry Speaks has recordings from many different poets from as far back as Tennyson.