Lesson Plan: Using a Poetry Slam to Teach the Mechanics of Poetry

A poetry slam is a competition in which poets get up in front of the audience, perform an original poem and receive "Olympics" style marks from a group of judges. This lesson plan brings the excitement of a poetry slam to the classroom. This lesson plan will involve students in defining, composing, practicing, performing and judging poetry. It will help them realize that poetry is a living art form-- not just words on a page. Once students are introduced to various poetry devices, techniques, and forms, they are exposed to the origin, rules, judging, performance skills, and scoring involved in a poetry slam competition. Click here for the full lesson plan.

Teaching Poetry from the Favorite Poem Project:

One of our teacher friends, who teaches middle school in Chelsea, Massachusetts, suggests a miniature Favorite Poem anthology. She asks her students, over the course of one week, to find three people who have favorite poems. They must find three, and must bring copies of the poems written out by hand to the class. If their parents are not poetry lovers, they must ask their parent's friends, their neighbors, their grandparents or each other. From the poems, the students make a class anthology and all the students are given a copy to read and enjoy. The lesson demonstrates to students that people around them are attached to poems and it exposes them to several poems that they may not have yet known or seen.

Another anthology project, which combines poetry and technology is Judith Lightfoot's "Poetry on the Web" project, which she created for her 10th grade English class. Her students compiled, introduced and titled their own "E-book" anthologies from poems they discovered on the Internet. Check out her Web site for details and examples.

If you have a poetry lesson plan idea please let us know! Click here to submit it.