Classroom resources for studying famous poets, their lives, writing styles, historical backgrounds, major works, and contributions to poetry.
A large PDF collection of Edgar Allan Poe's short tales and poems, including The Raven, Annabel Lee, The Bells, The Haunted Palace, The Conqueror Worm, and many other works.
A Spanish-language Project Gutenberg collection of Edgar Allan Poe's poems, including Annabel Lee, Eldorado, The Bells, Ulalume, The Raven, and other works, with a prologue by Rubén Darío.
Project Gutenberg's complete collection of Edgar Allan Poe's poetry, including The Raven, The Bells, Annabel Lee, Ulalume, Eldorado, To Helen, Dreamland, and many other poems, along with notes and essays.
Robert Frost's essay and lecture on poetry, metaphor, judgment, taste, and the role of poetic thinking in education, originally delivered at Amherst College and published in 1931.
Project Gutenberg's first series of Emily Dickinson poems, edited by Mabel Loomis Todd and T. W. Higginson, featuring a broad selection of Dickinson's poetry on life, nature, love, death, faith, and the inner life.
Project Gutenberg's Poems: Three Series, Complete by Emily Dickinson, edited by Mabel Loomis Todd and T. W. Higginson, collecting a large body of Dickinson's poetry.
Project Gutenberg's second series of Emily Dickinson poems, presenting a wide selection of her lyric poetry for reading, literary analysis, and classroom study.
A two-page haiku reference featuring examples attributed to Japanese poets including Bashō and Issa along with selected Western haiku, plus brief background notes on the poets and the form.
A four-page poetry analysis worksheet using Langston Hughes's A Dream Deferred to teach simile, imagery, theme, historical context, personal response, and original figurative-language poetry writing.
Free classroom poetry activity for grades 1–2 celebrating African American poets through selecting, discussing, reading aloud, and collecting poems for a class anthology.
Free Smithsonian K–2 poetry lesson introducing the three-line blues stanza, rhythm, music, and Langston Hughes, with younger students composing their own blues poems.
A free interdisciplinary lesson on Emma Lazarus's 'The New Colossus' using historical photography, repeated reading, vocabulary, evidence, immigration history, and poetry analysis.
Free Library of Congress interdisciplinary lesson combining primary-source research, historical analysis, poetic craft, multimedia, and collaborative epic-poem writing.
Free Grade 9 interdisciplinary lesson connecting Harlem Renaissance poetry with art, music, dance, research, museum exhibits, and historical context.
A free lesson using Joy Harjo's 'Perhaps the World Ends Here' and Carrie Mae Weems's Kitchen Table imagery to explore family rituals, imagery, voice, visual analysis, and creative writing.
Free high-school poetry lesson using Langston Hughes to connect poetry analysis, historical context, research, social issues, and original writing.
A free poetry lesson using Maya Angelou's 'Alone' to teach speaker, repetition, theme, close reading, listening, discussion, creative response, and broader study of Angelou's poetry.
Free middle-school poetry lesson using Maya Angelou's writing and primary-source photographs to connect poetry with civil rights, history, research, and visual literacy.
Free K–2 poetry and art lesson using visual art and William Blake as inspiration for discussing poetic language and creating original contrasting or grotesque-inspired poems.
Free high-school poetry unit using Romantic art and William Wordsworth to teach literary history, close reading, TP-CASTT poetry analysis, and analytical writing.
A free poetry lesson using Sara Teasdale's 'The Crystal Gazer' to explore imagery, speaker, stanza, selfhood, close reading, discussion, creative response, and modernist context.
A substantial classroom unit introducing students to women's voices in poetry through thematic reading, research, technology, creative writing, critical writing, discussion, and cultural stereotypes.
A free collection of Women's History Month poems appropriate for young people, with links to related lesson plans and works by classic and contemporary women poets.
A free background resource highlighting women who served as U.S. consultants in poetry or poets laureate, useful for Women's History Month research, poet studies, timelines, and classroom presentations.
A curated collection of free poetry lesson plans for Women's History Month featuring women poets including Lucille Clifton, Emma Lazarus, Adrienne Rich, Joy Harjo, Rita Dove, Maya Angelou, and others.
A free poetry lesson pairing Rita Dove's 'Girls On the Town, 1946' with Rosie the Riveter imagery to explore women, beauty, World War II, history, close reading, and Women's History Month writing.
A free classroom poetry lesson using Lucille Clifton's 'sisters' to develop close reading, listening, discussion, interpretation, poetic-technique analysis, and understanding of women's voices.
A free poetry lesson using Mara Pastor's bilingual poem 'Flora numérica / Numeric Flora' to explore imagery, historical women and trailblazers, women poets, discussion, and research.
A broad free Women's History Month poetry collection with poems, women-poet profiles, audio, video, essays, archival material, books, and lesson plans for classroom exploration.
A free collection connecting poetry with the centennial of the 19th Amendment, women's suffrage, women's history and rights, and new work commissioned from women poets.
Openly licensed Grades 8–9 poetry lesson that uses Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven to teach symbolism, figurative language, textual evidence, and free-verse writing.
Project Gutenberg's extensive collection of Robert Burns poetry and songs, including To a Mouse, Auld Lang Syne, Address to a Haggis, Tam o' Shanter, ballads, elegies, songs, epistles, satires, and other works.
A poetry-analysis quiz using Shakespeare's Sonnet 116 and William Blake's The Lamb to assess rhyme scheme, meter, syllables, poetic form, personification, imagery, refrain, sonnet structure, theme and literary techniques.
A classroom presentation covering poetic rhythm, cadence, meter, metrical feet, scansion, stanza lengths, rhyme schemes, rhyme types, sound patterns, and examples from Shakespeare, Blake, Poe, Lear, Longfellow, and others.
A grades 10–12 poetry analysis lesson using Walt Whitman's A Noiseless Patient Spider to teach metaphor, theme, interpretation, and evidence-based analysis.
An extensive 80-page high school poetry unit from Jefferson County Public Schools with lessons on active reading, poetry vocabulary, oral reading, poetic conventions, sensory imagery, voice, titles, rhyme, figurative language, poetic devices, organization, line breaks, revision, and classroom strategies.
Project Gutenberg's large public-domain edition of Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales and other poems, with editorial notes, glosses, historical material, and Middle English literary works.
Project Gutenberg's collection of Rupert Brooke's poetry, based on the 1915 edition and including an introduction, biographical material, sonnets, lyric poems, and poems associated with Brooke's First World War reputation.
A Smithsonian classroom guide connecting poetry and music through ballad stanzas, blues, iambic rhythm, meter, scansion, Langston Hughes, Emily Dickinson, and hands-on activities that move poetry from the page into rhythm and performance.
A grades 7–8 lesson using Emma Lazarus's The New Colossus to teach author perspective, vocabulary, poetry analysis, immigration history, and perspective writing.
Project Gutenberg collection of Walt Whitman's patriotic, Civil War, democracy, and American poems, including O Captain! My Captain!, When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd, I Hear America Singing, and other works.
Project Gutenberg's illustrated 1884 edition of Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven, with commentary by Edmund C. Stedman and illustrations by Gustave Doré.
Project Gutenberg's full text of T. S. Eliot's modernist poem The Waste Land, including its five major sections and notes from the public-domain edition.
Project Gutenberg Volume 5 of the Raven Edition, containing Poe's poems and poetic essays including The Raven, The Bells, Ulalume, Annabel Lee, The Poetic Principle, Old English Poetry, and many other works.
A three-week Grade 10 poetry unit by Tom Deshotels connecting poetry with popular music, poetic devices, sensory writing, poem analysis, background knowledge, performance, chapbooks, and student presentations.
PoetrySoup's teacher resources are designed to help educators find useful poetry lesson plans, worksheets, writing activities, poetry analysis materials, and classroom resources for students at different grade levels.
Resources may include original PoetrySoup teaching materials, openly licensed educational resources, and carefully selected links to trusted educational organizations. Downloadable materials can be printed and used in the classroom according to the license and attribution information provided with each resource.