7 Powerful MUST-TEACH Activities & Poems For High School Students-I am not sure about you, but I have a difficult time teaching poetry! First, you have to decide what poems inspire you and will inspire your high school students. Then, you have to figure out what standards or skills you want to teach. Finally, you need to choose the assignments your students will need to produce to show you what they have learned!
If you are teaching high school students, it can be even more difficult. So many poems can be too simple and cute or super hard even for most college students. We don’t want to frustrate our students. We want them to become engaged and stay engaged. Read on for 7 Powerful MUST-TEACH Activities & Poems For High School Students!
Need help with Test Prep? Check out this FREE Pack of 3 Test Prep Activities to help students achieve success on standardized tests!
7 Powerful MUST-TEACH Activities & Poems For High School Students
1. Poetry BOOM™ Cards
If you haven’t tried out BOOM™ Learning, check out this online platform that makes teaching poetry just a LOT more fun! You can set up a classroom for a yearly fee (it’s around $15 for up to 50 students), assign various activities in quiz-like formats, and get data for your classroom and for individual students! Check out my store Integrated ELA Test Prep for poetry quizzes that connect to the standards!
2. Poetry Writing Templates
I am a huge fan of helping students through the use of templates! Using an already-created format can assist our students who want to write but don’t know how to get started. This Poetry Writing Pack encourages students to write a how to poem with specific, detailed language. Make writing poems for high school fun and accessible with this NO PREP lesson!
3. Poetry Device Analysis
Poetry is so much fun, because poems for high school challenge us with the rhythm, rhymes, sounds, and images we can see and hear! Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Bells” includes a ton of onomatopoeia and “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley incorporates lots of alliteration. You could have students choose a literary device, find a poem that contains that device, and explain this device to the class after they read the poem of course!
Here are some devices you can focus on while teaching poems for high school:
- Sounds: alliteration, consonance, assonance
- Figurative Language: metaphor, simile, hyperbole, personification, anthropomorphism, oxymoron, etc. See HERE for more!
- Syntax: rhythm, internal rhyme, end rhyme, beats, etc.
Click below to get one of Edgar Allan Poe’s best poems for high school students: “The Bells!”
4. Celebrate National Poetry Month in April
National Poetry Month in the month of April is a time to read, enjoy, and celebrate poetry and poets that really connect with who we are! In 1996, the Academy of American Poets decided that we needed a month dedicated to making the everyday person aware of the people and poems that inspire us in so many ways. Whether you like reading poems by celebrated authors Maya Angelou and Paul Laurence Dunbar, acting out the dramatic poems of Edgar Allan Poe, or basking in the Romantics like Percy Bysshe Shelley or William Wordsworth, there is a poem for every student during National Poetry Month!
5. Poems for High School that integrate Social Studies, Physical Education, Science, & Electives
Integration is my jam and it is so easy to integrate various ideas when reading poems for high school! I love weaving everything together in a beautiful tapestry of learning. Nothing needs to be taught in isolation. Instead, we can help students make connections with every topic they encounter through poems for high school!
- Civil Rights & “Harlem” by Langston Hughes
- Civics & “I Hear America Singing” by Walt Whitman
- Plants & “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” by William Wordsworth
- Ancient Civilizations & “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley
- American Revolution & “Paul Revere’s Ride” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- Physical Science & “Fire and Ice” by Robert Frost
- British History & “The Charge of the Light Brigade” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
- Music & “Song of Myself” by Walt Whitman
- Film & “The Bells” by Edgar Allan Poe
Do you teach short stories? Check out this post with LESSON IDEAS and ACTIVITIES for Edgar Allan Poe Short Stories!
6. Poetry Writing Responses
When it comes to teaching poetry, you don’t really want to read it and move on. You want students to respond in some way. You could have students answer questions about characterization, theme, structure, etc. in quick responses, paragraph-long responses, or in full essays. My personal preference is a quick short response. When students don’t have to write a ton, I see more of a willingness to do the work!
Here is an example based on the poem “The Passerby” by Kristin Menke!
Short Response: How does the author of “The Passerby” use imagery to set the mood of the poem? Use evidence to support your ideas.
Short Response Paragraph: Sentence-By-Sentence
- Answer the question by referring to the mood
- Incorporate a piece of evidence; be sure to embed the quote
- Explain how the evidence links to the mood
- Incorporate another piece of evidence; be sure to embed the quote
- Explain how the evidence links to the mood
- Reiterate how imagery impacts mood
Want to integrate teaching songs with poetry as you include poems for high school? Check out Poem Song of Myself: 3 Engaging Activities!
7. High School Activities that incorporate Test Prep
So often, our kids enter the test prep season with trepidation. We totally get it, right? If you incorporate some test prep involving poetry throughout the year, it will help students prepare for what they might encounter on the state standardized test 🙂
These tests might ask students to cite evidence, determine the central idea or theme, analyze how a character develops, examine how the text starts and ends, and think about the author’s choice of words and descriptions. By including these standards in what you teach, we can have fun with teaching poems for high school and teach for test success!
Check out these examples from Robert Frost’s poem “Fire and Ice!”
What is the effect of the repetition of the word “some?”
- A. It portrays that people have varying beliefs.
- B. It highlights that the fire is greater than the ice.
- C. It confirms the argument that people think in the same way.
- D. It establishes the idea that the earth’s end with affect several people.
What is the tone of the poem?
- A. Hopeful
- B. Meditative
- C. Depressing
- D. Disappointed
Why should we teach poems for high school students throughout the year?
Sharing what we love about language and learning is the ultimate goal! So many students encounter poetry through songs, and making poetry connect to music could be a fantastic way to relate to students. We come into contact with poetry through lyrics whether from an artist we love or an advertisement or a greeting card or even a jingle we just can’t get out of our heads.
Let’s help our students out by teaching them to love literature, no matter the form!
Want more help teaching lessons, activities, and quizzes that connect to poems for high school? Check out my store, Kristin Menke-Integrated ELA Test Prep!
