Poetry Unit Starter 5: Web Activities

Sign up the class for the computer lab. Visit a poetry website where students can either find a poem they want to share with the class or where students can complete poetry activities (such as www.gigglepoetry.com or www.poetry4kids.com).

Poetry Unit Starter 4: Poetry Free-Write

This activity is done in three parts:

1. Ask students to take 5-10 minutes to write half a page about poetry.


2. Instruct them to circle any 10 words. (Don't tell them what the words are for.)


3. After they have circled the words, ask them to create a poem using the ten circled words. They may add 3 additional words if needed.

Variation: Display one or a few pieces of artwork. Have students do stream of consciousness writing for 5 minutes about one of the pieces of artwork. Have them circle 8 words or phrases in their writing. Then students can create a poem from the circled words and phrases.

Poetry Unit Starter 3: Poem Sharing

Here are a few ideas about starting a poetry unit by reading poems aloud:

1. Read a good poem to students.


2. Read lyrics to a popular song that most of the kids will know. Choose a song that sounds poetic when read.


3. Ask students to bring in a poem they like to share with the class.


4. Ask students to bring in lyrics to their favorite songs to share with the class. Make sure you tell them not to bring in anything with explicit lyrics.


5. Distribute books of poetry to students. Give them 5-10 minutes to look through the books. Have each student find one poem to read aloud to the class. (This activity can be done in the classroom or in the school media center.)


6. Have the class read a poem for more than one reader such as the poems in Paul Fleischman's Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices.

Note: I had a student with low-level reading skills who appreciated the opportunity to pick a short poem from a book that he could practice with a classmate, then read aloud to the entire class. It was one of the rare moments that this student participated in a reading activity involving the whole class.

Poetry Unit Starter 2: "Magnetic Poetry"

Cut words and phrases out of newspapers and magazines. (You can laminate these for later use.) You should probably have about 15-20 words/phrases per group/student.

Each group should arrange a poem out of the words and phrases like they would with "Magnetic Poetry." (It isn't necessary to use all the words, but they should use as many as possible.)

Then each group can share their poem with the rest of the class.

Variation: Have students cut out at least 20 headlines from newspapers. They should arrange the words on a sheet of paper to create a poem. They do not have to use all the words. They should glue down their poems on a sheet of paper and sign it.

Poetry Unit Starter 1: I Wish Class Poem

Ask each student to complete the sentence "I wish ________________" on a strip of paper. Collect the strips. Shuffle them. Then write out each line on the overhead to create a collaborative class poem.

Other sentence ideas:

1. I wish...


2. I am...


3. I like...


4. I like to...


5. I wonder...


6. I think about...


7. If I had a million dollars, I would...


8. If I could change anything, I would...


9. (pick a color) is like...


10. I am happy when...


11. I am (any emotion) when...


12. If I could go anywhere, I would...


13. I have learned that...


14. I like (season), because...


15. It's (season), so...


16. If I were an animal, I'd be a ______________, because...


17. If I were a car, I'd be a ________________, because...


18. If I were a place, I'd be __________________, because...

Sharing a Poetry Notebook

Here are a few ideas for ways that students can share their poetry notebooks:

1. Pass notebooks to the person to the left of them to read silently for 5 minutes. Then the books can be passed again for as many times as the teacher would like.


2. Visit a school or class of younger students and read poetry notebooks to the kids there.


3. Read their favorite poems out loud to the class. This could be done as a coffee house or poetry slam.


4. Place poetry notebooks in the classroom and/or school library.

Creating a Poetry Notebook

A poetry notebook can be made up of poems that the students wrote themselves - or created from poems the students found by other authors - or a mixture of the two.

In any of these cases, it is important to create a rubric that identifies what kinds of poems should be included and how many poems. Do you want students to write or find poems in different forms, such as haiku, sonnet, cinquain? Or should it be a collection of the students' very best writing? Or should it be a collection of poems that mean something to the student? How many poems should be included?

I think it is important to set a minimum for the number of poems in the book. Ask students to include a table of contents at the front of the book, so you can see at a glance what is included.

Here is a sample rubric that I wrote for an assignment for a poetry notebook of my students' original writing:

Dialogue Poem (5 points)
Emotion Poem (5 points)
Environmental Poem (5 points)
Dada or Found Poem (5 points)
Color Metaphor Poem (5 points)
Concrete Poem (5 points)
Being the Thing Poem (5 points)
Narrative Poem (5 points)
Now & Then or Mirror Poem (5 points)
Haiku, Cinquain, or Limerick (5 points)
Your Choice (5 points)
Your Choice (5 points)
Your Choice (5 points)

Effort (5 points)
Cover (10 points)
Table of Contents (10 points)
Neatness (10 points)
Total