How to Teach Poetry, Step by Step (It's Easier Than You Think!)

April is National Poetry Month!

When you saw those words, what was your first reaction? Come on now, be honest!

You might have been thinking, "Yay! I love poetry, and now I have an excuse to teach it!"

But more likely you were thinking, "Yikes! Is it that time already? Poetry is so boring and hard to teach, and my students don't like it either. How will I fit poetry lessons into my already packed schedule!"

No matter how you feel about poetry, if you're an upper elementary teacher, you probably have to teach it at some point during the year. Poetry is included in most reading curriculums, and almost every standardized reading test has at least a few poems. Even if your students aren't tested on poetry, there are many reasons to teach it. Just think about the amount figurative language used in poetry, and you'll understand how learning to read and write poetry can improve comprehension of other types of text, too.

The good news is that even if you don't enjoy poetry yourself, it's easy to teach it in a way that will have your students begging for more! 

If you don't believe me, I hope you'll join me on March 27th for my free live webinar, How to Teach Kids to Love Poetry (Even If You't Don't). Every time I present this training, teachers tell me that watching the webinar totally changed the way they feel about teaching poetry. Instead of dreading their next poetry unit, they are actually excited to get started!  

Before I tell you more about the webinar, I'd like you to reflect on your own feelings about poetry and consider why you feel the way you do. This might seem like an unusual request, but after reading this post, I think you'll see why it's important.

What I've discovered is that whether you love poetry or you'd rather walk across a bed of hot coals than teach it, the way you feel about poetry now is a direct result of your early experiences with it. I'll admit that the study of poetry can be dry and boring, but it can also be vibrant and exciting when it's taught as a form of self-expression. Read the two scenarios below and ask yourself which one is most like your own experiences learning poetry.

The Best of Poetry
If you enjoy poetry and you like teaching it, your first experiences were probably relaxed, playful and fun. Discussions about poetry focused on personal responses, and you talked about the beauty of the language, noticed the musical quality of the words, or discussed how poetry made you feel. You learned that poems don't have to rhyme and often break the rules of grammar, and if you were encouraged to write poetry, you probably wrote free verse.

Free verse poems are so easy to write that almost anyone can compose them, even kids who normally struggle to write sentences and paragraphs. To see what I mean, read Corn Husks below, a poem written by one of my former 5th grade students while on our "Private Eye Poetry" field trip. I wrote a grant for a class set of Private Eye magnifying lenses, and later arranged to take my students to the local park to observe nature up close and write poetry. The students spent the first hour collecting items and using their private eyes to observe them, and the second hour was spent writing poems about the treasures they found. Anthony was fascinated with dried corn husks, and he wrote this beautiful comparison poem about what he observed.

The Worst of Poetry
Not everyone has been lucky enough to learn about poetry this way; in fact, most students have only seen the worst of poetry. If your early memories consist of painful and humiliating attempts to memorize and recite poetry in front of the class, it's no wonder you want to avoid it at all costs! Were you forced to analyze each and every poem to uncover its "true" meaning? If so, I'll bet you were frustrated when your interpretation was different from your teacher's, and you were told that yours was wrong. If you were given poetry-writing assignments, your poems probably had to rhyme which meant never being able to write in your own voice. Writing rhyming poetry is an art, and it's not something that comes naturally to adults or children. Inexperienced writers often end up replacing powerful words with weak ones just because they rhyme, so their poems sound boring and contrived.

So, did you experience the best of poetry or the worst of poetry as a student? If you don't like poetry, are you starting to realize why you don't like it? This is why I wanted to you to explore how you came to feel the way you do about poetry. Which of the two scenarios would you like your students to experience? Poems don't have to rhyme, and they don't have to be dry and boring. If that's what you've experienced up until now, let me introduce a whole new way of thinking about poetry and teaching it to your students! After you implement some of these strategies, you might even be surprised to learn that you actually like teaching poetry!

Sign up here for the poetry webinar or the replay. 

Free Webinar: How to Teach Kids to Love Poetry (Even If You Don't)

I've been sharing poetry resources with teachers for a long time, but until last year, I had never explained how to each a poetry unit from beginning to end. Frankly, I worried that trying to write out the complete, the step-by-step directions for a poetry unit would result in a 3-inch thick document that no one would have time to read!

Then last April, I had a flash of insight when I realized poetry would be the perfect topic to teach during a webinar! The format would give me a way to explain the steps and strategies in great detail, and I could also answer questions at the end of the live session.

I immediately set to work developing my webinar, How to Teach Kids to Love Poetry (Even if You Don't), and it was a joy to be able to share exactly how I teach poetry, step by step. The webinar has been hit each time I've presented it, and it's equally popular with teachers who love poetry and those who don't... or those who didn't enjoy it in the past!

My free webinars don't include a professional development certificate, but you can obtain a PD certificate for this session by purchasing my How to Teach Poetry Webinar PD pack or my Poetry Webinar Bundle. Both products include a PD certificate, the poetry webinar slides in a printable PDF format, a downloadable video to watch offline, and an audio replay.

Register here for the next live poetry webinar on March 27, 2018 at 8 pm ET.

What You'll Learn in the Poetry Webinar
If you're wondering what cover in this webinar, download the free How to Teach Poetry webinar handouts from my TpT store now and take a look. While you're there, read the comments and testimonials from teachers who attended the webinar in the past, and I think you'll see why I'm so excited to share this information with you! Whether or not you actually take notes, the handouts provide a nice outline of what you can expect to learn in this session:

• Why it's important to teach poetry
• A 6-step plan for teaching an entire poetry unit
• What free verse poetry is and how it differs from other forms of poetry
• My favorite poetry books to read aloud and share with your students
• Questions to guide your poetry discussions
• How to teach kids the difference between poetry and prose
• 8 commonly-used poetic devices and how to teach them
• A quick and easy close reading strategy for teaching kids to dig deeper into poetry
• How to get kids talking about poetry
• Strategies for teaching kids to write powerful similes and metaphors
• A simple, step-by-step method for writing color poems
• How to transform reluctant writers into enthusiastic poets

Ready to Get Started Teaching Your BEST Poetry Unit Ever?
Have you signed up to watch How to Teach Kids to Love Poetry (Even If You Don't)? I feel confident that after implementing the step-by-step plan described in the webinar, you'll actually begin to enjoy teaching poetry. Best of all, your students will discover the best of poetry instead of the worst, and before you know it, they'll be reading and writing poetry with enthusiasm!

6 Reasons to Teach Poetry in the Fall

Free Poetry Webinar Replay!
Register here!

April is National Poetry Month, so it comes as no surprise that many teachers wait until then to teach poetry. But if you ask me, September or October is a much better time to introduce kids to poetry. I love teaching poetry, and starting poetry now makes so much more sense than waiting until the end of the year.

I'll share my reasons at the end of this post, but first I want to acknowledge that not everyone feels the way I do about poetry. If you don't share my enthusiasm, April might seem like the perfect time to teach poetry because you won't have to think about it all until spring! But hang in here with me because I have some ideas that might make poetry easier and way more fun for you to teach.

If you’re not comfortable teaching poetry, your feelings could stem from your early experiences with it in school. Having to memorize poetry terms and analyzing confusing poems can suck the joy out of any poetry unit!

But when poetry is introduced in a more authentic manner as way of expressing feelings and painting pictures with words, the experience is quite different. I taught poetry year after year to my 4th and 5th graders, and those kids never failed to get excited about poetry. Furthermore, I was frequently blown away by the simple yet powerful poems they composed with very little guidance from me. After just a little instruction, it was as if my students were discovering their inner poets and the words began to flow almost effortlessly!

Take a look at Keyera’s poem about friendship. Keyera struggled in almost every subject area, but she found her voice in poetry. This was an area where all kids could shine!

How to Teach Kids to Love Poetry (Even If You Don't)
If poetry makes you uncomfortable, you might feel lost about how to foster a love of poetry within your students. Fortunately, help is on the way! Last April I created a webinar called How to Teach Kids to Love Poetry (Even If You Don’t) to share how I teach a complete poetry unit, step by step. After the webinar was over, I loved hearing from teachers who had never felt comfortable with poetry but who said they couldn't wait to get started!

Fall is a great time to introduce kids to poetry, so I decided to schedule a free presentation of How to Teach Kids to Love Poetry (Even If You Don’t). The live presentation is over, but you can use that link to sign up for the replay.

6 Reasons to Teach Poetry in the Fall

Why do I think fall is the perfect time to start teaching poetry? I brainstormed the 6 reasons below in just a few minutes, and I’m sure there are many more.

1. Teaching poetry in the fall fosters an appreciation for precise and powerful language early in the school year.

Teaching kids about poetry begins with reading and sharing poems that are meaningful to them and noticing how poets use simple yet powerful language. When I introduce poetry in 4th and 5th grade, I start with free verse rather than rhyming poems because I want my students to notice how the poet paints a word picture using a variety of techniques. Sometimes it’s by using just the right word to create that image, and other times it’s through the use of poetic devices like similes, metaphors, and personification. These techniques are used by authors in short stories and novels, too, and after your students are able to find them in poetry, they'll start noticing them in prose as well. So why not teach your students about the beauty and power of the written and spoken word early in the year?  

2. Teaching kids to write poetry engages them in authentic writing experiences and begins to build their confidence as writers.

In order for kids to learn how to read and understand poetry written by others, they first need to write their own poetry. The sooner you teach kids how to write poetry, the more impact those experiences will have on their reading and writing skills later in the year. Kids love learning about “poetic license” and knowing that it’s okay to break the rules of grammar in order to craft a poem. I also love the fact that students like Keyera and Keenon (below) who typically struggle with writing assignments like creative stories and reports often shine when it comes to writing poetry. Free from worries about making grammatical errors, they can focus on capturing their feelings and painting word pictures on paper. Later, when they share their poems in class, their confidence soars as their classmates express genuine appreciation for what they’ve written.

3. Poetry is a great way to connect with your students and get to know them better.

When kids learn to write meaningful poetry “from the heart,” you’ll learn so much about them as young people and not just as your students. You’ll learn about their fears, anxieties, and passions, and you’ll learn to appreciate their uniqueness. You might have heard the saying that “Students don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” Reading and writing poetry together is a great way to show that you do care. Why wait until April to develop stronger relationships with your students?

4. Avoid test prep pressure by introducing poetry early in the school year.

You know what I mean. Test prep mania starts somewhere between January and April, depending on your state testing calendar. But no matter when it starts, sooner or later you’ll feel the pressure to cram as much instruction into every day as possible. And that kind of pressure doesn’t leave much time to savor the enjoyment of poetry. If you wait until the week before testing to teach poetry, you’ll be tempted to skip the poetry writing (no time for that!), and you’ll find yourself doing the very things that turn kids off about poetry. Don’t get me wrong. I do think kids should learn about poetic devices like similes, metaphors, and personification, and I do think they should learn to analyze poetry and look for deeper meanings. However, I think those skills should be developed through meaningful experiences with reading, writing, and discussing poetry and not in response to a standardized test that's looming on the horizon.

5. Introduce poetry now, and you'll be able to integrate it into other subjects later.

Teaching poetry early in the year gives your students a new voice with which to express themselves all year long. They might want to write a poem about the courage of early pioneers who traveled west in covered wagons, or as a journal response to a literature circle book. When your students discover something amazing in science, they might be inspired to write a poem about what they learned. If you've already introduced poetry early in the year, your students will be able to write easily on topics that interest them. 

6. Fall is a beautiful season, and the beauty of nature will inspire your students!

If you live in a place where temperatures drop and trees blaze with color in the fall, you'll know what I mean about the sights, smells, and sounds of autumn providing inspiration for young writers. Take advantage of these seasonal changes by incorporating them into your poetry unit. Sometimes kids have trouble thinking of topics to write about, and taking your students outside to write may be just what they need. Poetry often includes sensory language, and sensory experiences abound during autumn!  

Have I convinced you that fall is the perfect time to introduce your students to poetry? Why wait until April when you can start sharing the joys of reading and writing poetry now?

If poetry is a part of your curriculum, I invite you to watch the replay of How to Teach Kids to Love Poetry (Even If You Don't). Who knows? You might just discover your own inner poet!

Buddy Bio Poems: Partner Poetry Writing

Imagine yourself in a new classroom during the first week of school. Unless your teacher starts off with at least a few getting-to-know you activities, it might be weeks before you feel comfortable enough to talk with your classmates and actively participate in lessons. 

On the other hand, if you're lucky enough to have a teacher who does start off with icebreaker activities, you'll settle in and be ready to learn in no time! 

The only problem from the teacher's standpoint is that it can be challenge to find meaningful icebreakers that don't feel like a complete waste of time. That's why you'll appreciate this partner poetry lesson! Having students write Buddy Bio Poems is a perfect way to integrate a content-based writing lesson with a fun icebreaker! In this lesson, each student interviews a partner to gather facts and information about his or her classmate. Then each person composes a short bio poem to share what he or she learned during the interview.

My Buddy Bio Poem idea began as a simple back-to-school activity based on my Bio Poems Made Easy freebie. However, as I began to write out the directions and create the printables to go with the lesson, I realized that the activity is something you can do any time during the year! If you like the Buddy Bio Poems concept, feel free to adapt the printables in that freebie to use with the activity. 

Ready-to-Use Buddy Bio Poems Lesson
On the other hand, if you're short on planning time or don't want to bother creating your own printables, you can purchase the ready-to-use Buddy Bio Poems pack shown below from my TpT store. If you'd like a closer look at what's in this packet, click here to see a complete preview.  Buddy Bio Poems includes complete teacher directions, a sample bio poem, buddy interview questions, a list of character traits, a bio poem planning page, and a variety of decorative writing papers for the final poems. In other words, I've done all the work for you, and all you have to do is print what you need and have fun teaching the lesson!

Sharing Buddy Bio Poems

Did I mention that bio poems make a terrific bulletin board display, perfect for open house? :-) One option is to add a student photo to the final version of each poem as shown in the example below. If you choose this option and post the finished products on a bulletin board or wall, your students will learn each other's names in no time! The poems can also be laminated and bound together to create a class book to keep in a literacy center for students to read at their leisure. Or you could scan the poems, convert them to PDF files, and create a digital ebook to publish on a class website or blog. 

Included in Laura Candler's Poetry Combo!

If you've already purchased my Poetry Combo, I have good news for you! Because I just added Buddy Bio Poems to that combo, those who already own it can download this new addition absolutely free! Go to your My Purchases page on TpT and search for this product, then download the file again.

In addition to being a fun back-to-school icebreaker, the Buddy Bio Poems activity would be a fun lesson during the hectic days before a holiday or as an introductory lesson for a poetry unit. No matter when you do this activity, your students will be proud of their poems and will enjoy learning fun facts about their classmates!

Poetry: A Common Core Dilemma

Reflections on Teaching Poetry, a Freebie, and a Book Giveaway!

Believe it or not, teaching kids to love poetry is easy. It's a matter of finding the right poetry books to share and providing time to write about things that matter. It always amazes me how students who seem to struggle in other areas are able to write the most beautiful and expressive poetry. There’s something about the way poets can break all the rules and write from the heart that appeals to kids. I experienced this myself, and I often observed it in my students.

My own love for poetry began in childhood as I shared special moments reading and writing poetry with my best friend, Aleka. Later, as a teen, I found poetry to be a lifesaver when my family moved from New Hampshire to North Carolina. I love living in the South now, but it was definitely culture shock at the time! Writing poetry enabled me to capture my feelings on paper and to cope with the changes in my life.

As a result, I’ve always found time to share poetry with my students; teaching kids to express themselves through poetry is a gift I enjoy giving them. My favorite book for introducing poetry is Poetry Matters by Ralph Fletcher. It's written in simple language and includes poems about real life experiences. The poems are short, and they touch kids deeply with their simplicity.

Inspired by Kristine O'Connell George
One of the chapters in Poetry Matters is an interview with children's author and poet, Kristine O'Connell George. I loved this chapter, so I went straight to our school library and was delighted to learn that we had several of her books on our shelves. I wasn't disappointed in her work; books like The Great Frog Race: And Other Poems and Toasting Marshmallows: Camping Poems were perfect for teaching students how simple poems can express everyday experiences through imagery and precise language.

About a month ago, Kristine and I connected online and I invited her to write a guest blog post here on Corkboard Connections. Kristine sent me a copy of one her newest poetry books, Emma Dilemma: Big Sister Poems, and I fell in love with it! It’s a delightful collection of poems about the dilemma of being a big sister. In fact, the book is perfect for inspiring students to love reading and writing poetry, so I set out to create a short teaching guide to go with it.

Poetry: A Common Core Dilemma
When I began to think of ways to use the book in the classroom, I turned to the Common Core State Standards. Lately I’ve been trying to align my resources to the CCSS, so I went online to do a little research about how poetry fits in with the standards.

Guess what I discovered? If you've studied the standards, you'll know what! While there are a few mentions of poetry in the reading standards, there's absolutely no mention of poetry in the writing standards! Even the reading standards were disappointing because they focused on poetry as a genre and there was nothing about appreciating poetry or making connections to one's own life. The writing standards were even worse. Everything was either about narrative writing or expository writing, but there was nothing about poetry.

At first I was baffled, but then I remembered that the Common Core State Standards were designed for college and career readiness; nowhere do they include life skills like personal goal setting, coping with emotions, or learning to appreciate the beauty of the written word.

With this realization came the awareness that poetry truly is a Common Core dilemma! Students need so much more than college and career skills to be successful in life, yet with the focus on the CCSS now, it’s easy to feel there’s no time for anything else. I'm not suggesting that we put aside the Common Core State Standards, but if we don’t find time to teach life skills, who will?

Free Emma Dilemma Teaching Guide

With this in mind, I took another look at Emma Dilemma: Big Sister Poems. I thought, "Why ruin a perfectly good poetry book by dissecting it and creating a CCSS-aligned lesson?" Instead, I decided to create a lesson based on reading it aloud for enjoyment and using it as a springboard for personal writing and reflection.

You can download the free What a Dilemma! teaching guide to engage your students in some simple activities to explore the idea that we all face dilemmas in our relationships with others. Grab it now from my TeachersPayTeachers store so you can refer to it as I explain the lesson.

Share the poem "Snooping," which is included in the freebie, and discuss Jessica's dilemma in using Emma to retrieve a mysterious box high on a shelf. Then have your students write their own “dilemma” poems in the same format as “Snooping.” In the packet, I've also included a set of discussion questions you can use for small group or whole class discussions about the book. The "talking sticks" strategy works well to promote active engagement by all students in the discussion group.

The lesson might not be Common Core aligned, but it will probably leave a lasting impression on your students and By using Emma Dilemma as the focus of discussion and personal writing activities, you'll enable your students to connect with the story and come to a deeper understanding of themselves.

If you are interested in more poetry lessons and activities, visit the Poetry Page on Teaching Resources. I have loads of free poetry lessons, links to great poetry websites, and two poetry ebooks that will make it easy to foster a love of poetry in your classroom.

As April wraps up, let's remember that poetry is too wonderful to limit to one month of the year. If you find just the right poems to inspire your students, they will enjoy reading and writing poetry all year long. Emma Dilemma is just one of the many poetry books written by Kristine O'Connell George that will inspire your students; visit her website to find this book and many more!

Win a Copy of Emma Dilemma! After I posted this article, Kristine read it and kindly offered to give away an autographed copy of Emma Dilemma: Big Sister Poems AND an Emma Dilemma feather boa!  To enter the contest, you have to do two things.

1. First, leave a comment below to share your thoughts about poetry or just to say what you think is in the mysterious box! 
2. Then fill out this Google Doc form so I can contact you if you win. I will do a random drawing of all entries in this form on Teacher Appreciation Day, Tuesday, May 7th. 

Bio Poems for President's Day

Integrating Social Studies and Literacy  

Presidents Day is celebrated in February, so it's the perfect time to have your students write President Bio Poems! This lesson is also a great way to sneak a little research and creative writing into your social studies curriculum!

Bio Poems Made Easy is a free teaching resource that I created several years ago to teach students how to write bio poems about themselves, and it can easily be adapted and used in many different content areas. This freebie includes complete directions for the basic poetry writing assignment, as well as two graphic organizers for brainstorming and planning. For this activity, I created a special President Bio Poem graphic organizer with the specific categories needed for this assignment.

Tip: It's best to have your students write bio poems about themselves prior to the President Bio Poems lesson so they will be familiar with the bio poem format.

President Bio Poems
Before this lesson, download and print one copy of the free President Bio Poem graphic organizer for each student, and write the names of well-known presidents on slips of paper.

To start the lesson, ask each student to draw out the name of a president and write that name on the line at the top of the graphic organizer. Follow the suggested lesson plan described in Bio Poems Made Easy, but tell your students they will be writing bio poems about their presidents instead of about themselves. They will start by filling out the boxes on the graphic organizer using information they learn through research. This task involves quite a bit of higher level thinking, because students not only have to gather information, they have to analyze what they've learned to decide where to write their facts. Specifically, they will be searching for information in these categories:

• Adjectives that Describe the President
• Who lived... (where? when? details about childhood)
• Who said.... (famous quote)
• Who cared about....
• Who was determined to....
• Who refused to....
• Who made a difference by . . . 
• Who is remembered for....

President Bio Poems - Lesson Variations
Completing the graphic organizer might be a bit of a challenge for some kids, so you may want to let your students work in partners. They can each conduct their own research and then collaborate to complete the form and write the poem. After students complete their poems, they can also create "word clouds" to display with their poetry. Be sure to allow time for students to share with the class!

Presidents Day Spelling Trivia
By the way, did you know that Presidents Day is not the official name of the holiday? It's actually George Washington's Birthday! Over time, the public began to refer to the holiday as one that honored all the presidents which has caused confusion about its correct spelling. Many refer to it as Presidents Day (without an apostrophe), but others insist that the plural possessive form, Presidents' Day, is the correct way to spell it because it refers to more than one president. But does it? If the holiday officially honors George Washington, maybe it should be the singular possessive form, President's Day! How do YOU spell this holiday? The good news is that whatever spelling you use, no one can say that you're wrong!