Category: Lessons

Writers often say that your brain is a bit like a muscle—the more you exercise it, the stronger it gets. It’s good to give yourself some regular mental exercises to help build your creativity over time, so your poetry will keep developing and improving. (The good news is that brain exercises don’t make you ache as much as push-ups!)

A great exercise that doesn’t need any special equipment—and that you can do anywhere at any time—is to describe the color of the sky.

Sounds really simple, right?!

Well, it can be simple to begin with, but the reason this exercise works so well is because your descriptions can become more and more elaborate as your creative muscles get stronger. The idea is to make sure every description is different! Read more…

Have you heard of “book spine poetry?” It’s a kind of poetry that you don’t really write from scratch – instead, you “find” it by arranging book titles to make a poem. This type of poem can be serious or funny, just like in regular poetry.

Here’s the basic idea. Imagine that you’re sitting at a table with all of these books in front of you:

• Green Eggs and Ham
• Goodnight Moon
• The Very Hungry Caterpillar
• Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!
• Oh, The Places You’ll Go
• Where the Wild Things Are
• Good Night, Gorilla
• Stone Soup

To make a book spine poem, you would start by moving these books around into stacks with the spines together so that the titles are like the lines of a poem. You would keep moving the book titles around into different stacks until you find the “lines” that go best together to make a poem. For example, one set of titles might describe a story: Read more…

This lesson plan uses descriptive examples to explain what personification means and how it is used in poetry. Students will read poem excerpts in which examples of personification are identified. Then, they will create their own poetic sentences and short poems using personification.

Personification means using human qualities or actions to describe an object or an animal. The word “personification” actually contains the word “person,” and to personify an object means to describe it as if it were a person. Instead of saying that the sun is shining, we might say that the sun is smiling down at us. Instead of describing a flag as moving in the wind, we could say that the flag is dancing.

Using a human word to describe an object can make a poetic image seem more vivid. It can also give us an idea about how the narrator (the person describing the object) is feeling toward the object. For example, “The sun was smiling down at me” seems to indicate that the narrator has positive feelings about the sunshine. On the other hand, a narrator who says “The sun was glaring down” seems to have negative feelings about it. Read more…

Exploring riddles allows you to be a detective and a spy, following clues, and writing in code.  Follow this lesson plan to take your creative thinking skills to the next level using riddle poetry!

What Is A Riddle?

A riddle is a statement or a question with a hidden meaning that forms a puzzle to be solved.  A “riddle rhyme” is a riddle that is written in the form of a poem. Riddles are often set out in short verse, and have been found across the world throughout history; in Old English poetry, Norse mythology, Ancient Greek literature, and the Old Testament of the Bible!

One of the most famous examples is the riddle of the Sphinx (a creature with the body of a lion and the head of a human being).  According to the story, if you could answer the riddle you were free to pass, but if you failed, the monster would eat you!  Can you solve it? Read more…

An epitaph is a poem that mourns someone’s death, usually intended to appear on that person’s tombstone. Although epitaphs are usually serious, it’s also possible for a rhyming epitaph to tell a funny story in a very short way. Often a funny epitaph is only four lines long.

Here’s an example of a funny epitaph poem that I wrote:

Rest in Peas

Here lies the body of Izzy Dunn-Eaton.
It’s hard to believe what he tried.
He tasted the school cafeteria food
and Izzy Dunn-Eaton done died.

This poem is funny because we know that icky cafeteria food can’t actually kill you. The story in this poem exaggerates how awful the cafeteria food tastes. Did you notice that the character’s name adds to the humor of the poem? Try reading “Izzy Dunn-Eaton” out loud to hear what it sounds like. The title makes it funnier, too, using “peas” instead of “peace.”

Sometimes a funny epitaph poem can teach a lesson about unhealthy habits. Here’s an example in which a vegetable-hating kid learns that too many sweets can be very bad for you: Read more…

Making Comparisons with Simile and Metaphor — A Poetry Lesson Plan

This lesson plan uses descriptive examples to explain how to distinguish between simile and metaphor. Students will analyze poem excerpts to identify comparative phrases and pinpoint occurrences of similes and metaphors. Then, they will create their own similes and metaphors to explore how poets choose whether to use a simile or metaphor in a specific poem.

What’s a Simile? What’s a Metaphor?

Similes and metaphors are poetic techniques that let us compare two different things in a descriptive way. Here are some examples. Read more…

This lesson plan uses excerpts from famous poems to demonstrate how onomatopoeia can be used in a poem. Students will closely read the poem excerpts to identify the onomatopoeia words. They will then choose three onomatopoeia words from a suggested list to use in a poem of their own.

Onomatopoeia refers to words that sound exactly or almost exactly like the thing that they represent. Many words that we use for animal or machine noises are onomatopoeia words, such as “moo” for the sound a cow makes and “beep-beep” for the noise of a car horn. Words like “slurp,” “bang,” and “crash” are also onomatopoeia words. Even some ordinary words like “whisper” and “jingling” are considered onomatopoeia because when we speak them out loud, they make a sound that is similar to the noise that they describe.

Poetry often uses onomatopoeia words because they are so descriptive. This type of word helps us to imagine the story or scene that is happening in the poem.

Here are two examples that show how famous poets have used onomatopoeia in their poems. In these poem excerpts, the onomatopoeia words are underlined. Read more…