Lesson Plans

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…

Stretching the Imagination with Imagery

Oftentimes, poetry is viewed as an intimidating, confusing, or difficult genre to read and write in—however, sometimes a poem can be best recognized and understood by what it leaves behind in our mind: images. 

From a classic red…

Character vs. Self

When developing a character, the actor will employ an approach that moves forward on two fronts: The first is to make an external study of the character, observing people in the world around to make choices that are within our capacity to mimic…

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…

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…

Writing Poetry with Rebus and Rhyme

If you’ve ever drawn a heart for the word “love,” you’ve written a rebus. Rebus, writing which substitutes images for words in the text, is used by authors to write books for young readers able to identify only a limited number of words, so why…

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…

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…

Intergenerational Love

This lesson plan will provide an opportunity to explore the idea of intergenerational love through poetry, allowing students to connect to their own positive attributes while recognizing that these are a combination of the generations of family…

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…

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 (…

How to DISRUPT your poem: A deep reading method to ignite the interpretive process

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Identity and Self-Discovery through Poetry

This lesson is inspired by Denise Clark’s work with her senior English students at Vancouver Technical Secondary School in Vancouver, British Columbia.

People often write about what they know best, and in many cases, writers give us…

Understanding Lyric Poetry

To demonstrate how various poetic techniques, such as rhyme, rhythm, diction, and repetition contribute to the effect and meaning of a lyric poem.

This lesson would take place following the study of a number of lyric poems and 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…

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…

Finding the Heart in Whitman’s “O Captain! My Captain!”

In Walt Whitman’s “O Captain! My Captain!” he uses rhyme, meter, repetition, assonance, and other rhetorical and poetic devices to capture the emotional historical moment in the United States of America after Lincoln’s assassination.…

Poetry Portfolios: Using Poetry to Teach Reading

Students learn to read and write when they have an active interest in what they are reading and writing about. This lesson supports students’ exploration of language skills as they read and dissect poetry. Through a weekly poem, students…

Poetry from Prose

Students compose found and parallel poems based on a descriptive passage they have chosen from a piece of literature they are reading. They first work in small groups to brainstorm words to describe concrete objects and then arrange their words…

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…

Big City Feelings

Using Poetry in Voice’s mixtape—Big City Feelings—this lesson expands on the themes expressed in Blain’s curation. Themes of identity, belonging, and urban civic life. 

Developing Oral Language and Vocabulary through Poetry

In this unit I have noted variations for students in grades three to grade seven. There are many ways you can begin but here is an example that has worked with my class. You will find a list of resources I have used for ideas about slam poetry…

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…

What Is Poetry?

Unrequited Love Poems

Tired of trite imagery and sickly sweet words on Valentine's Day? Let's stomp on that box of chocolates! By creating an iMovie storyboard of a poem with pencil sketches, this mini-unit helps students SLOW down their recitation, learn a poem by…

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…

Afterwords : The Beauty That Lies Beside

The whole purpose is to tear down whatever is cliché and words that don’t lead to a concept but to an overused social rule, by exposing the students to the concrete reality, to the truly scalable, sizeable and perceivable object, to cold, hard…

Poetry Snapshots: Using Images to Get the Big Idea

Using the definition that image poetry uses “concrete things to describe abstract ideas”, this lesson begins with the idea of haiku as “poetry snapshots”; images of one idea, in three lines. Students begin as “poetry detectives” and investigate…

Literary Parodies: Exploring a Writer’s Style through Imitation

The popular saying “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” coined by Charles Caleb Colton, is the basis for this lesson, which asks students to analyze the features of a poet’s work then create their own poems based on the original model…

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…

Horror Explorer

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary / Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore*... I decided to write a really scary poem!

Creepy, freaky and downright weird. In these lessons students create…

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…

The Poetry Video

There is a great tradition of combining poetry and film: the twentieth-century French poet, artist, and filmmaker Jean Cocteau was particularly interested in using the medium of the moving image to explore new ways to create and celebrate…

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.
• …

Poetry from Science!

Poetry and science are not usually things that we put together in the same sentence, let alone the same lesson at school. But there are many reasons why we should! Science, even when it adheres to rigorous methods, is a creative process, and…