Lesson Plans

The Response Poem

There is a long tradition in poetry of poets writing in response to work that has inspired them, borrowing a line from one poem to begin or end a new poem. In this way, poets may re-contextualize a particularly vivid verse while essentially…

Multipurpose Poetry: Introducing Science Concepts and Increasing Fluency

Poetry can be a fun and unintimidating way for ESL students to develop their oral fluency. In this lesson, students discuss what they know about poetry and then work in small groups to develop a choral reading of two poems about an assigned…

Ekphrasis: Using Art to Inspire Poetry

In this lesson, students explore ekphrasis—writing inspired by art. Students begin by reading and discussing several poems inspired by works of art. Through the discussion, students learn ways in which poets can approach a piece of artwork (for…

Spell Casting Through Ritual

Using Poetry in Voice’s mixtape—Spell Casting Through Rituals—this lesson allows students to explore various expressions of sacredness found in this country, within their families, culture and themselves. These activities aim to provide…

Found Poetry in Two Languages

The Cento, or Collage Poem

This writing exercise will encourage students to pay attention to how poems work at a line-by-line level. Students will mine many source poems for individual lines and create their own poem by collaging these lines into a unique sequence.

Poetry is the Power to Transcend

Poet W.H. Auden said, “Poetry makes nothing happen” – implying that poetry is useless to real life. This opinion is common, and many people – including students – think, “Why should I bother with poetry? I can’t get a job out of it. It can’t help…

Canada in 2016

In this lesson, students will be invited to annotate Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “England in 1819” with questions, comments, and connections (preferably on a whiteboard/smart board where the poem is projected, for a collaborative process.) Through…

Pick a Perfect Poem to Perform

Students will read widely and deeply a variety of poetry from a poetry anthology. Students will develop an appreciation for variations and complexities in content, structure, theme, and overall effectiveness of individual poems. Students will…

Strategies for Teaching Poetry to High School Students

Writing Poetry: Teamwork and Play 2

These workshops focus on reading simple but unique poems that embody the idea of play in various ways, and on group/individual writing in a spirit of exploration and spontaneity.

​​IMPORTANT: All these exercises (with the…

Poetic Resilience

What is poetry’s superpower?  Its ability to save, heal and empower those who are drawn to its possibilities. In this lesson students will listen to Nehiyaw, Dené and Métis spoken word artist Zoey Roy’s personal account of how poetry…

Being One Inch Tall

Opening our students’ minds and having them see the world from different perspectives can have a positive impact on their lives. Through Shel Silverstein’s “One Inch Tall”, this unit allows students to imagine what the world would be like if…

Rap a Tap Tap – Expression through Music, Movement and Drama

This lesson can be used for students ranging from Grades 1-6 (with modifications that apply to Kindergarten and Grades 7-8). It incorporates music, dance and movement, and drama with poetry to help students learn how to portray different…

The Tone Map

In poems, the speaker moves through a series of moods and tones of voice, arranged in a particular order, to tell an emotional story. Even when poems seem like a simple series of images and we can’t say exactly what events are taking place,…

Belonging

Belonging is a feeling we all seek. The questions: How do we belong? Where do we belong? Who makes us feel like we belong? What do we need to remember and what made us forget? Where and what is home? are important questions…

Bilingual Glosas

A glosa is a poem that organizes itself around four lines borrowed from another poem. A form invented in Spain in the fifteenth century, the glosa begins with the borrowed four lines set off as an epigraph. The poet then writes four stanzas of…

Nature as a Portal Into Mystery

A generative workshop about the place of unknowing we begin from when we write poetry - letting the words lead us, letting ourselves flow into the magic of the first draft. This lesson includes various short warm-up exercises, a discussion of one…

The Raven

This is an introduction to “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe through recitation and drama. It begins with a recitation by the teacher with the students finishing each verse either individually or as a class. The class is divided into groups of 3…

5, 6, 7, 8… Let’s Go Alliterate!

Alliteration is a fun way to get younger students exposed to poetry. Having students play with words that start with the same letter is a great addition to Early Literacy. It’s a fun and less formal way to teach students about naming words (…

Exploring How Poets Walk the Line

This lesson plan aims to inspire students to understand how a place, new or familiar, can spark a poem – contemporary and classic. Each student will have the opportunity to write a poem and read it to the group, as well as research and select a…

Swish! Pow! Whack! Teaching Onomatopoeia through Sports Poetry

Students explore different poems written about sports by reading and listening, looking closely at the use of onomatopoeia in each piece. After a discussion of the poems, students view a segment of a sporting event and generate a list of sounds…

Building Classroom Community through the Exploration of Acrostic Poetry

Building classroom community is one of the most challenging yet most important tasks for any teacher, and it needs to be reinforced frequently throughout the year. This lesson gives students the opportunity to be innovative, creative, and…

Somewhere Today

Students are always learning about environmental issues, as well as, equality and inequality throughout the curriculum. Whether it is through units in Science (Wildlife& Ecosystems, Ocean Health, Air Pollution, Climate Change, Weather…

A Race with Grace: Sports Poetry in Motion

Can athletes’ moves be described as beautiful? How are grace, beauty, and aesthetics expressed through movement? These and many other questions will provide the framework for students’ exploration of poetry in motion of athletes who participate…

Slipping, Sliding, Tumbling: Reinforcing Cause and Effect through Diamante Poems

Combine higher order thinking with creativity in this lesson that uses diamante poems to illustrate the phenomenon of cause and effect. Students define and identify instances of cause and effect to help them generate their own examples. After…

Poems for Two Voices

I’ve used this lesson with grades 8–10, but mostly with grade 9.

A two-voice poem is written in two columns. Two students read the poem, and each chooses a column to read. When there are words that appear on the same line, the students…

Tied to the Land

The strong connection Indigenous communities have with the land is a prevalent theme in Katherena Vermette’s collection of poems titled river woman. In this lesson, students will analyze the language Vermette uses to create a sensory…

Drawing Shakespeare’s Sonnets

These two sonnets are a great lesson in the use of metaphor, personification, and paradox—Shakespeare loves to play with figures of speech. In this exercise, students will learn about the structure of a sonnet; how to isolate imagery; how to…

Talking Poetry with Blabberize

In this lesson students are given the opportunity to be imaginative and expressive through the writing of three types of poems:  acrostic, diamante, and theme.  Building on their creativity, students then use …

Writing poems using literal translations of common expressions

A second language, or translation, can be the spark that shows us our own language anew. This, in a wider sense, is what poetry does. 

This lesson will look at playful use of language + translation (including…

Speaker & Mover 1: Listening, Mirroring

One way of allowing students to become less self-conscious about public speaking is to give them a task that focuses them on something other than the sound of their own voices in front of people. This exercise concretizes the idea of ‘intention…

Living Poetry

 There are many advantages to be found in studying and reciting poetry:

• Poetry offers examples of mastery of language and stocks the mind with images and ideas expressed in unforgettable words and phrases.
• …

Indigenous Poets

Reconciliation cannot take place before awareness, and the feelings of commonality and connection. Reading poetry by Indigenous poets, such as Liz Howard and Alootook Ipellie, we can grow in our awareness of the lives and issues faced by various…

See, Sing, And Speak through Poetry: Odes and Anti-Odes

In this lesson, students will explore one of the oldest poetic modes, the ode, whose roots extend from Ancient Greece, where poetry’s social function was often connected to…

Letter Poems Deliver: Experimenting with Line Breaks in Poetry Writing

Letter poems are a particularly apt medium for exploring a defining characteristic of poetry—line breaks. As students work to transform narrative-style letters into poetic format, they are forced to think carefully about where to end each line…