April Is National Poetry Month! | Read Write Think

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Holiday & School Celebration April is National Poetry Month! Date April 01 Calendar Activity Type Holiday & School Celebration

Event Description

Each year the month of April is set aside as National Poetry Month, a time to celebrate poets and their craft. Various events are held throughout the month by the Academy of American Poets and other poetry organizations.

Classroom Activity

In honor of National Poetry Month, introduce your students to a variety of poetic forms. Assign one or two students each day as "poet of the day" for the month of April. Then provide students with several models for creating different forms of poetry. You might use Theme Poems, Acrostic Poems, Diamante Poems, or other Poetry Types to do this. Have each student select one form of poetry and write an original poem, which he or she can also illustrate. On their assigned days, have students read their poetry out loud to the class.

Websites

National Poetry Month

This website from the Academy of American Poets includes information on the history of National Poetry Month. Find out what happens during National Poetry Month on the frequently asked questions page.

The Poetry Learning Lab from the Poetry Foundation

The Poetry Learning Lab is a great source of knowledge, including a glossary of poetry terms, links to public domain poems, and inspiring essays on poetry from writers and educators.

Writing With Writers: Poetry

Scholastic offers this poetry resource for grades 1–8. There are tips from authors of children's poetry, a teacher's guide, step-by-step workshops, and more.

Favorite Poem Project

The Favorite Poem Project, cosponsored by Boston College and the Library of Congress, is dedicated to celebrating, documenting, and encouraging poetry's role in Americans' lives. Watch or listen to citizens read poems they love.

Related Resources

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Grades K - 2 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson Poetry Portfolios: Using Poetry to Teach Reading Teach your students about sentence structure, rhyming words, sight words, vocabulary, and print concepts using a weekly poem. Grades 3 - 5 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson Composing Cinquain Poems with Basic Parts of Speech Reinforce student understanding of parts of speech through the analysis of sample cinquain poems followed by the creation of original cinquains. Grades 9 - 12 | Lesson Plan | Minilesson Is a Sentence a Poem? Students use their own poetry to analyze syntax, imagery, and meaning in a one-sentence poem by a canonical author to decide what makes it a poem. Grades 3 - 5 | Lesson Plan | Unit Compiling Poetry Collections and a Working Definition of Poetry This unit introduces students to a variety of poetic forms and elements, as they compile their own collections of poetry. Grades 3 - 5 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson Letter Poems Deliver: Experimenting with Line Breaks in Poetry Writing Students explore letter poems and experiment with writing letters as poems, using the placement of line breaks to enhance rhythm, sound, meaning, and appearance. Grades 9 - 12 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson Poetry: Sound and Sense Students' groans about studying poetry may disappear with this lesson in which students read poetry from various writers and use these poems to examine the sounds and sense of language. Grades 3 - 5 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson Poetry from Prose Working in small groups, students compose found and parallel poems based on a descriptive passage they have chosen from a piece of literature they are reading. Grades 3 - 5 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson Dynamite Diamante Poetry

Introduce gerunds and review nouns, adjectives, and verbs through engaging read-alouds; then apply these concepts through collaborative word-sorting and poetry-writing activities.

Grades 3 - 5 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson Theme Poems: Writing Extraordinary Poems About Ordinary Objects

Students select a familiar object online, build a bank of words related to the object, and write theme poems that are printed and displayed in class.

Grades 4 - 8 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson Lonely as a Cloud: Using Poetry to Understand Similes Students identify similes in poetry and gain experience in using similes as a poetic device in their own work. Grades 3 - 5 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson Color Poems—Using the Five Senses to Guide Prewriting Students use their five senses as a prewriting tool to guide their poetry writing as they compose free-form poems using imagery to describe a color. Grades 7 - 12 | Lesson Plan | Unit Crossing Boundaries Through Bilingual, Spoken-Word Poetry Students explore the idea of "crossing boundaries" through bilingual, spoken-word poetry, culminating in a poetry slam at school or in the community. Grades 1 - 3 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson Theme Poems: Using the Five Senses Students write theme poems in a flash using the picture book Flicker Flash by Joan Bransfield Graham and the online, interactive Theme Poems tool. Grades 6 - 8 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson What is Poetry? Contrasting Poetry and Prose

Students often find poetry frustrating and meaningless. By helping students think critically about the differences between poetry and prose, this introduction sets the stage for different strategies for comprehending poetic texts.

Grades 3 - 5 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson Seasonal Haiku: Writing Poems to Celebrate Any Season After listening to haiku poetry, students use seasonal descriptive words to write their own haiku, following the traditional format. They then publish their poems by mounting them on illustrated backgrounds. Grades K - 12 | Student Interactive | Writing Poetry Acrostic Poems

This online tool enables students to learn about and write acrostic poems. Elements of the writing process are also included.

Grades K - 5 | Student Interactive | Writing Poetry Theme Poems

Formerly known as Shape Poems, this online tool allows elementary students to write poems in various shapes.

Grades K - 12 | Student Interactive | Writing Poetry Diamante Poems

This online tool enables students to learn about and write diamante poems.

Grades 3 - 8 | Student Interactive | Writing Poetry Line Break Explorer

The interactive explores the ways that poets choose line breaks in their writing. After viewing the demonstration, students are invited to experiment with line breaks themselves.

Grades 3 - 12 | Student Interactive | Writing Poetry Haiku Poem Interactive Students can learn about and write haiku using this interactive that guides them through the writing process. Grades 3 - 12 | Student Interactive | Writing Poetry Word Mover

Word Mover allows children and teens to create "found poetry" by choosing from word banks and existing famous works; additionally, users can add new words to create a piece of poetry by moving/manipulating the text.

Grades 9 - 12 | Professional Library | Book Teaching Poetry in High School Albert Somers offers teachers a vast compendium of resources for teaching poetry in a highly accessible format. Grades 6 - 8 | Professional Library | Book Living Voices: Multicultural Poetry in the Middle School Classroom Jaime Wood offers middle school English language arts teachers material for teaching poetry by Nikki Giovanni, Li-Young Lee, and Pat Mora; the text includes graphic organizers and other resources. Grades 7 - 12 | Professional Library | Book Wordplaygrounds: Reading, Writing, and Performing Poetry in the English Classroom O'Connor offers new approaches to teaching poetry in middle and high school with more than 25 writing activities that can constitute an entire course or work as individual lessons. Grades 9 - 12 | Calendar Activity | Author & Text Poet Emily Dickinson was born in 1830. Students discuss Dickinson's poem "This Is My Letter To The World" and use it to focus on how audience affects voice. Grades 3 - 6 | Calendar Activity | Literacy-Related Event Participate in Poem in Your Pocket Day!

Students select a poem and create a Stapleless Book using the interactive tool.

Grades K - 12 | Calendar Activity | Literacy-Related Event United States Congress officially adopted the position of Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry in 1985. Students investigate the website of a past Poet Laureate's project and use it as a model to celebrate poetry that appeals most to them.

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