Poetry and poems

This collection of 50 short video documentaries showcases individual Americans reading and speaking personally about poems they love. The Favorite Poem Project is dedicated to celebrating, documenting and encouraging poetry’s role in Americans’ lives. 

This article discusses strategies for writing poetry with ELLs, presents an overview of poetry forms that can be used effectively in writing lessons, and suggests some ideas for ways to share student poetry.  Shared by Reading Rockets. 

The Poetry Out Loud program encourages students to learn about great poetry through memorization and recitation. In addition to the yearly contest, the Poetry Out Loud website hosts curriculum materials which include the online poetry anthology, a comprehensive teacher’s guide, videos of student performances, lesson plans, and promotional and media guides. 

The Library of Congress' poetry and literature archive contains nearly two thousand audio recordings of poets and prose writers including Elizabeth Bishop, Gwendolyn Brooks and Robert Frost, Mario Vargas Llosa, Czeslaw Milosz, Ray Bradbury, Margaret Atwood, and Kurt Vonnegut. 

A list of 30 ways teachers can encourage the celebration of National Poetry Month this April.  Shared by poets.org, which is produced by the Academy of American Poets.

Lessons and resources from Scholastic for National Poetry Month.

The following poems explore the themes of immigration and heritage and are appropriate for young people. Many are accompanied by lesson plans and ideas for how to teach the poems. Shared by poets.org

An article by Edward Hirsch on how to read a poem. May be most useful as background reading for teachers and/or with AP students. 

Billy Collins hosts the "A Poem a Day" program with the hope of making  poetry an active part of the daily experience of American high school students.  There are some guidelines for implementing Poetry 180,  but the main purpose is to give students the opportunity to read and listen to a poem each day without any academic requirements. The site also has a list of  180 recommended poems. Billy Collins is a former  Poet Laureate of the United States.

This poetry engine prompts students to create different kinds of poems. From Scholastic.

This mini assessment from Achieve the Core includes two poems (“I Hear America Singing” by Walt Whitman and “I, Too, Sing America” by Langston Hughes,) eleven text-dependent questions (including one optional constructed-response prompt for students), and explanatory information for teachers regarding standards alignment to the CCSS. 

Poetry Foundation offers many resources on teaching poetry to children, including a curricula on teaching African American poetry developed with Maya Angelou. The website also includes videos and audio clips of poetry readings, articles and essays about poetry, and links to public domain poems.

A series of poetry lesson plans for all grade levels. Provided by the National Council of Teachers of English. 

The description and details of the New York Times Found Poetry contest can be found here.  Found poetry is creating poems from words and phrases found in other texts. This year, the contest runs from April 4-May 4, 2018. 

William Logan writes a piece for the New York Times on the relevance of poetry today. 

This Twitter feed is for stories told in just six words, inspired by Ernest Hemingway's famous challenge. 

This "Poetry of America" collection of field recordings by a wide range of award-winning contemporary poets is shared by the Library of Congress. Each poet reads a singular American poem of his or her choosing, and also speaks to how the poem connects, deepens, or re-imagines our sense of the nation. The feature includes a print version of the poem to complement the recording, as well as a piece by the participating poet.