This post features poetry activities for the classroom, including a poem of the week ideas. Read these weekly poems in your class (don’t forget to grab FREE poems!).
Poetry Activities & Routines
How-To Use Poetry Activities
- Introduce a poem each week that suits your theme, the time of year, or celebrations going on. The poem of the week resources features a ton of poems for all your themes, celebrations, and topics of study.
- Use the poem to teach and reinforce various language arts skills. These activities are great for differentiation as they meet the needs of many students, on many levels.
- Offer different choices (three ideas below) for learning the poem of the week. Differentiate the activities to meet the needs of all learners.
- Have students re-write the poem out on lined paper. This exercise helps them develop their fine-motor and handwriting skills.
- Have students sit in front of the pocket chart to copy, use their poetry folders to copy, or try to write from memory.
- Students only need to finish each sentence. They must be reading and following the poem to complete this correctly.
Poetry Activity Ideas
- Encourage students to read the poem as much as possible.
- Search for words that rhyme and look for sight words.
- Have them draw a picture that goes along with the poem’s meaning.
- Given a list of missing words, they read the poem and write in the correct lyrics.
- Practice their reading skills to figure out which words from the word list go where.
- Cut paper strips with the lines of the poem and glue them back in order. The strips are mixed up, and students must figure out the right order using their reading skills and knowledge of the poem.
Resources for Teaching Poetry
FREE Poem of the Week Pack
This FREE Poem of the Week resource includes 2 original poems and 1 nursery rhyme to add to your collection of poems. There are 6 differentiated activities included, as well as sentence strips and a bulletin board banner. Your students will be reading and writing poetry all week long!
Click the image below to get the resource.
FREE Social-Emotional Learning Poem & Activities
This FREE empathy poetry pack includes an original poem and engaging activities. The poem and activities will help you teach the concept of empathy and build important reading skills at the same time.
Click the image below to get the resource.
Poetry Mega Bundle with 3 Complete Resources
Find essential resources for the K-3 classroom with the Poetry Mega Bundle. It includes three complete resources that will encourage a love of poetry in your class!
See the three poetry resources in action!
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FREE Poetry Email Series
Sign up for the poetry email series filled with tips to get you started, strategies for success, and tons of FREE poems and poetry writing tutorials you can access right away. Everything you need to have fun and build reading skills with poetry!
