Celebrating Poetry Month

YPPW poster Celebrating Poetry Month
New poetry for young people
Articles on sharing poetry

Activities

We encourage you to make copies of these materials for your classroom and personal use.

Create Your Own Poetry Starters
Poetry Starters for Younger Students
Poetry Starters for Older Students
Write Original Poetry
Puzzles

Create Your Own Poetry Starters

Activity 1

  1. Discuss common themes in poetry: love, nature, humor, people, sports, etc.
  2. Decide, as a class, to write on a particular theme.
  3. As a class, create the opening line to a poem based on this theme.
  4. Each student should write a poem beginning with this opening line.

    Activity 2

    1. Begin with students calling out random words.
    2. Write 8-10 words on the board. Try not to edit the choices too much, but please keep in mind the age and skill of your students. (In other words, you don't need to use words most of your class doesn't know.)
    3. Each student should write a poem incorporating each of the words on the board.
    4. These poems will most likely be free verse, but for older and more advanced students an extra challenge might be to require a rhyming scheme.

    Activity 3

    1. Each student should write five random words on a piece of paper.
    2. Collect all the papers and redistribute to the class (so each student has someone else's list).
    3. Each student should write a poem incorporating each of the words on the list given to them.

    Activity 4

    1. Involve other areas of the curriculum. Ask your students to write poems based on concepts and ideas learned in their other subjects: arithmetic, time, geometry, animals, chemistry, a recent science experiment, the life of someone famous or an important historical event.

    Activity 5 (for older and more advanced students)

    1. Try writing poems without certain word types: no verbs, no nouns, no adjectives, etc.
    2. Try writing poems without using certain words: the, and, it, as, etc.

    return to top

    Poetry Starters for Younger Students

    Poetry Starter I
    Poetry Starter II
    Poetry Starter III

    return to top

    Poetry Starters for Older Students

    Poetry Starter IV
    Poetry Starter V
    Poetry Starter VI

    return to top

    Write Original Poetry

    Invite kids to write original poems using the word lists available here. There are three lists for varying ages: older, young and youngest. The poems from which the lists were generated are also available here; consider sharing them with the kids once everyone has shared their own poetry. Remember: the goal is to show how the same words can be used to convey many different ideas.

    Alexander Pope's "Solitude: An Ode"
    Poetry Exercise for Older Wordsmiths

    Ann and Jane Taylor's "The Star"
    Poetry Exercise for Young Wordsmiths
    Poetry Exercise for the Youngest Wordsmiths

    return to top

    Puzzles

return to top