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.