Seeing as some of you are working with poetry during your 2-week practicum, I thought I’d help you out with some resources.  The PDF files are too big to email to individual people so I figured the next best thing to do was to post them on the blog.  Here they are:

Cow Poetry

A great introductory activity for a poetry reading unit.  The activity is described in The Poet’s Craft Unit Ideas PDF but here’s the handout to support the activity:

Cow Poetry Handout

Cut Up Poetry

Another fun poetry intro.  This one’s active, too (but a bit messy):

Cut Up Poem Directions

Poetry Unit Ideas

A collection of excellent ideas related to the study of poetry.  They’re designed to be used with the textbook, The Poet’s Craft, but are adaptable to any text and any middle grade:

The Poet’s Craft Unit Ideas

The Poet’s Craft Sample Unit

A sample unit developed using ideas from the file posted above.  This gives you a sense of how you could put a poetry unit together:

The Poet’s Craft Sample Unit

The Poetry Playoffs

Looking for a great way to get your students working with and listening to great poetry?  Try is activity.  It takes a long time – it’s modeled after a single elimination tournament like the  NCAA March Madness basketball tournament, after all – but it is a lot of fun.  Here’s some files I’ve used as I ran the playoffs in my classroom:

Poetry Playoffs Task

Poetry Playoff Bracket

Poetry Playoff Poems

In addition, here’s a rubric I’ve used in the past.  It could use some tweaking – I haven’t used it in about 5 years – but it gives you a sense of what one could look like:

Poetry Response & Recitation Rubrics

You should also find these resources very helpful.  Here’s a link to the NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) website’s page on how to organize the March Madness Poetry Tournament.  Also, here’s a file of information on how a variety of teachers have used the Poetry Playoffs in their own classroom (this file is also a link at the bottom of  the March Madness Poetry Tournament page):

March Madness Poetry Tourney Examples

That should be enough to get you started.

Cheers,

Lawrence