It’s no secret that I love teaching poetry, so I always get excited for National Poetry Month! To help you get ready for National Poetry Month, I’ve put together all my best ideas, lesson plans, and inspiration for teaching poetry! Everything you need for a successful April of poetry instruction is all in one place.
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National Poetry Month Set Up
When I approach National Poetry Month, I start with my instructional goals. What skills or strategies are we emphasizing in April? And how can I use poetry to help student achieve those goals?
Because I don’t teach a traditional poetry unit, I incorporate poetry all year long. I love using poetry to target specific instructional goals. The brevity of poetry often makes it a great choice for targeting specific skills and/or for intervention! Whichever or whatever instructional skills you want to emphasize in National Poetry Month, one of these collections will work for you:
- 8 Poems to Teach Synthesizing Across Media
- 10 Meaningful Poems to Teach Main Idea
- 25 Poems to Teach Synthesis Thinking
- 10 Interesting Poems to Teach Inference
- 12 Poems to Teach Vocabulary Skills
- 6 Poems to Teach Characterization
- 5 Poems to Teach Story Elements
- 10 Poems to Teach Text Structure
- 10 Poems to Teach Point of View
- 5 Poems to Teach Allusion
Basics for National Poetry Month
Once you have selected an instructional purpose for National Poetry Month, check out these recommended instructional practices.
First, it’s essential that every student know how to approach a poem. With this simple 4-step pre-reading system, every student can approach a poem. With these skills, each student can work on making poetry knowable and accessible. Read more.
Second, scaffolding and a clear spiral of instruction is key to helping students gradually grow more confident with poetry. Guided reading is a great scaffold to use, and it’s probably a familiar strategy for most students!
Additionally, poetry is a great place to determine author’s purpose. Determining author’s purpose is one of those skills that transcends or supercedes all the others. Want to make an inference about the main idea? Determine the author’s purpose first. Want to evaluate an author’s word choice? Determine the author’s purpose first. Trying to summarize? Determine the author’s purpose. Check out my favorite acronym for determining author’s purpose.
Finally, level up poetry instruction by introducing or considering the role of meter. Even if students never need to know the fancy terminology related to meter, being conscious of the beats in a line can add a layer of sophistication and nuance to analysis!
Designing Engaging Lessons
Oftentimes, students arrive in my class and exclaim that they hate poetry! To my mind, that translates to “No one has ever taught me how to read poetry.”
Knowing that teaching poetry requires combating some bias, I work hard to design engaging lessons. Here are some of my favorite strategies for building student excitement during National Poetry Month.
- How to Use Inquiry-Based Learning with Shakespeare’s Sonnets
- Creative Lessons for Teachers that Hate Teaching Poetry
- 5 Lessons to Make the Most of Teaching Poetry
- How Not to Kill a Love of Poetry
Similarly, these are some of my favorite activities to help students engage with poetry!
What other poems or activities do you recommend for National Poetry Month? Let us know in the comments!
