Poetry Month Glow-Up: 7 Powerful Ideas

As a teenager, I loved writing poetry, albeit admittedly badly. Each poem was like a verbal puzzle to dwell upon as I tussled with hefty emotions. Wrangling juicy words into rhymes and lines and stanzas. It was my way of dealing with whatever life threw at me. And life had an obnoxious way of throwing a lot at me. In fact, I still have nearly every poem I wrote, tucked safely away in a binder on my bookshelf, too. 

Even trying to write this blog post became a challenge as I suddenly found myself heading off on a side quest to write

But as powerful as poetry was in my youth, poems are even more potent in my upper elementary classroom. Here’s why.

Why You Should Celebrate Poetry Month

1. Time-Fillers: The short form of most poems makes them ideal time fillers.
2. Fosters Creativity: Writing poetry fosters creativity and self-expression. Which makes poetry a fun way to get to know your students and build community.
3. Vocabulary Development: Searching for synonyms introduces kids to all sorts of new vocabulary words. Which in turn improves language skills and both reading and writing skills.
4. Synthesis of Complex Topics: Writing poems helps kids synthesize complex topics, texts, and emotions. In turn, this hones their ability to summarize texts effectively and efficiently. 
5. Emotional Intelligence: Both reading and writing poetry assist in developing emotional intelligence.

Start Your Day the Poetry Way

Even if you do nothing else on this list, start here. Commit to reading one poem a day throughout Poetry Month.

That’s all. Just one.

It won’t take very long. And it can be a great way to start or finish your day. Or squeeze a poem in as a calming moment after recess or lunch. 

Search through your picture books and I bet you’ll find several books written in verse. Or maybe you own poetry collections like Bravo!: Poems About Amazing Hispanics by Margarita Engle. If not, grab your laptop and visit Kenn Nesbitt’s poetry website: https://poetry4kids.com/ where you’ll find tons of poems your students would enjoy.

Better yet, let your kids choose the poems for you! Give the class ten minutes at the end of the day to find a poem that resonates with them. They can send you the link through Google Classroom or copy down the poem and turn it in. 

The next day, pluck a random poem (that you have obviously already perused and approved first!) to share with the class. 

To model proper pacing and intonation, read the poems yourself. But if you want to encourage class participation, ask the student (or whole class) to do the reading. They can even share why they liked it so much. 

Or, if you’re really ambitious, why not select a novel told in verse. You can read a single poem or a short chapter each day throughout the month. 

No matter how you do it, reading one poem a day works wonders for reading, fluency, and writing skills.

Teach Poetic Devices

Since you’re already reading a poem a day during Poetry Month, point out the poetic devices as you read. It won’t take very long and the rewards far out weight the sacrifice of time.

Poetic devices can be surprisingly easy to teach, practice, and master during short, focused mini-lessons. 

Plus poetic devices aren’t confined just to poems. It’s easy to find similes and metaphors, repetition and rhyme, or alliteration and onomatopoeia in picture books and longer texts. 

One term a day is manageable. Go for the easy wins first. Then build on from there. Save harder concepts like irony, assonance, and imagery for last. 

Here’s a quick list of devices for you to consider teaching: 

Study the Life & Words of Poets Past & Present

If we’re reading poems, let’s also explore the poets behind them! Introduce your students to a variety of poets like Jack Prelutsky, Kwame Alexander, and Amanda Gorman.

Your students might already be acquainted with the words of Shel Silverstein (because who isn’t?). And they have surely read picture books poems, like “Won Ton” by Lee Wardlaw (if you haven’t, you should).

Why not broaden their horizons even more? There are so many fabulous and celebrated poets they’ve never heard of.

Select poets across multiple countries and cultures. It’s a great way to tuck in a little history and geography while you’re at it. Look for poetry collections appropriate for your grade level. 

In my own classroom, teaching about diverse poets is a great lead in to our upcoming Wax Museum project.

Want to dig deeper? Why not encourage your students to become poets themselves! 

Write a Poem a Day

Commit to writing a poem a day for the entirety of Poetry Month. That’s only 22 school days long. Less if you have days off for Spring Break. Decide ahead of time how much time you can devote to poem writing and stick to it.

Kids sometimes struggle with writing poetry. Not because they can’t express an idea in poetic form. But because they don’t understand how to break out of the paragraphs. 

While this can be challenging to overcome, here’s a fun and easy way to teach this skill. Here’s how:

1. Break out your supply of sentence strips
2. Solicit poem ideas from your students
3. Write down one sentence on the sentence strip
4. Now rip out the unimportant words and set them aside. Did you really need all those articles in the first place? 
5. Use the useful key words that remain and arrange them into a poem, with lines and stanzas
6. Use the blank back of those discarded words to add in new, better words. 

Here’s a couple of examples for you. These are two different poems my students and I co-wrote. 

Once your students get the hang of how to write in lines instead of sentences, place your students into trios. Give each team their own sentence strips to write on and a potential topic or two to write about. Task each team with physically building a poem about their topic. 

The beauty of physically building poems is that it’s really easy to rearrange words and try out new ideas. Poetry making should be playful. 

As time goes on and students get the concept, set aside time each day for poetry writing. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

• Create Sentence Strip Poems
• Write a poem to summarize the math lesson (or other core curriculum topic) 
• Write a verse or two of a song to help memorize the poetry terms and devices
• Kids arguing? Have them write a poem for 2 voices that express each side of the argument
• Is the weather doing wild things? Write a poem to capture the wind or rain, or scalding sun
• Make some kind of art then write a poem to go with it. I love using guided drawing videos for this
• Break out your foam shapes to make a picture, then write a poem to capture the image before it gets put away (also take a photo of the poets with their poem and picture)
• Create magnetic poems
• Chalk Up Playground Poems
• Create tear art with Poems
• Take a Haiku Hike – Use a smoosh book to jot down new haikus
• Write Bio Poems
• Create your own poetry book of poetic devices: one poem per skill that showcases the skill in action

Mimic Mentor Poems

All writers learn from and mimic mentor poems. And yes, technically this still falls under writing poems, but in a more structured way. Think of it like a chef using a recipe to recreate a fan favorite dish.

Here’s how it works: 

1. Select a poem to read
2. Analyze the form and structure the author used
3. Name and label the key ingredients of the poem, line by line
4. Recreate the same structure, changing up the words to be your own

Three of the more famous poems for this are:

1. “Where I’m From” by George Ella Lyon
2. “If I Were In Charge of the World” by Judith Viorst, and
3. “Dear Basketball” by Kobe Bryant. 

Honestly though, any poem can serve as a mentor text for future poets. It really comes down to finding a poem that kids connect to and layer their own life experiences on to. It makes each poem feel deeply personal and fresh, but the familiar form helps hold everything together. 

Want to learn more about how to use mentor texts in your own classroom? Check out this blog post about mentor texts.

Teach Different Poetry Forms

Here’s where the kids really start to have fun. By teaching about each of the different poetry forms, kids learn that each style has rules and expectations to meet. 

Once your students learn the rules to follow, and spend time tinkering with each style, they begin to develop preferences. To find their writer’s voice. 

• I Am poems
• Haiku & Cinquain
• Narrative
• Rhyming
• Free Verse
• Acrostic
• List/Category 
• Couplets
• Concrete/Shape poems
• Blackout poems 
• Sonnet 
• Villanelle 
• Alliteration poems (tongue twisters) 
• Poem for 2 voices (use for compare & contrast)
• Poem that reads one way top to bottom, reads a different way bottom to top

Recap

So in honor of National Poetry Month, I whipped up a short poem of my own.

Everywhere you look, a poem is bound to be found. 

Simply reach out and pluck one, most perfect and round, 

Slurp a little poem, something short, something sweet, 

a simple snack to fuel those busy feet.

Gobble up and gulp down, it’s wiggly, giggly going down, 

a lighthearted laugh to lift a fearsome frown.

Nibble and nosh on a handful of haikus,

Tasty tiny tidbits, you devour them in twos

But everywhere you look, a poem is bound to be found. 

Simply reach out and pluck one, most perfect and round, 

Bite in and chew up, delicious words dribble down

Soon enough, you’ll be the best poet around

The best part of Poetry Month is that while my students are writing, I get to write too! As I’m teaching my students about different poets, poetry form and devices, I can hone my own skills.

Remember, you don’t have to do everything. Just try something and build on from there. Anything you do will enhance your lessons and the lives of your students.

Happy Writing!