If you are an English teacher like myself, you are well aware that one of the most important celebrations in the literary world is coming soon- National Poetry Month! Having our students learn poetry is essential because it helps them to understand and appreciate the world around them. Poetry reveals many aspects of life that they may not get to experience or witness first hand. Poetry may speak some ‘truth’ about how others live and that helps build empathy with our students.
Although poetry comes in many different formats, teaching it and getting our students excited and engaged in it sometimes is not that easy. Some of them do not understand it and some of them do not wish to try to understand it.
Let The Fun Begin!
What if there was a fun and engaging way to teach the different forms of poetry to our students so that they actually look forward to participating in the lessons? Problem solved! I have a wonderful solution for you!
I have a collection of Poetry Writing Activities that are sure to be a hit in your classroom! Here is a breakdown of each activity:
- Sketch notes: Sketch notes, in general, are an amazing tool for all students. Some students struggle with putting their thoughts into words. Sometimes drawing and sketching their thoughts are more meaningful and impactful for them. Students can create sketch notes for absolutely any topic. It can be about themselves, a book your working on in class, a season, a holiday, a subject, anything. It’s their combination of words and art together that makes it personal and relevant.
- My Selfie Poem: This poetry template represents a fingerprint. Fingerprints are all different and unique, just like us. The Selfie poem is used to express the students’ identities. They create an original poem along the ‘fingerprint’ lines that represents them as individuals. There is a template that helps students with ideas on how to get started.
- I Am Poem: Similar to the Selfie poem, this template has students writing about themselves. It includes a template guide that prompts students to think of themselves in a certain way. For example: “I am , I think , I pretend , I worry__, I cry_____, I dream_____, I hope_______”, just to name a few. The final colored product looks stunning. It is one of my favorites. You can learn so much about your students with this product, and they can learn so much about their classmates as well.
- Haiku: Haikus are Japanese poems that follow a specific format. The template guides your students on how to properly format and set up a Haiku. This type of poem works well paired with a book or a short story.
- Acrostic ‘PEACE’: We want to promote peace in all aspects of our lives: in the classroom, at home, and in our life in general. Acrostics are poems that have a short sentence beginning with each of the first letters of a specific word. In this template, the word is PEACE. Students describe what the word means to them starting with each letter of the word.
- A Poem in your Pocket: This product comes in 3 different versions of ‘jeans’ so your students have a choice of which they’d prefer. This product allows your students to either create an original short poem or copy a poem of their choice on a piece of paper designed to be placed in the back pocket of your jeans. The finished, colored products look beautiful hung up or strung together in a pennant format.
Your students are sure to find something in this set that they can relate to. All of these products look beautiful displayed in your classroom. Students will feel proud of their work and will want to read their classmates’ work as well.
