Free high school poetry resources for grades 9 through 12, including close reading, poetry analysis, literary devices, writing exercises, worksheets, and lesson plans.
Openly licensed Grades 11β12 ELA lesson that uses a slam poem alongside other texts to develop summarizing, interpretation, and concise writing skills.
A multi-day classroom poetry activity guide with guided writing exercises, student examples, concrete poetry, synonym poems, list poems, diamante, haiku, identity poems, and other structured poetry prompts.
A reference article by Gary R. Hess describing 55 poetry forms and styles, including acrostic, ballad, blank verse, cinquain, concrete, epic, free verse, found poetry, ghazal, haiku, limerick, narrative, ode, sonnet, sestina, tanka, terza rima, villanelle and visual poetry.
A grade 9 lesson introducing ekphrastic poetry through visual art analysis, virtual museum exploration, interpretation, and original poetry writing.
Openly licensed Grade 9 ELA lesson on theme, characterization, mood, empathy, and a culminating Two-Voice Poem activity.
The complete Project Gutenberg text of Beowulf, translated from the Heyne-Socin text by Jno. Lesslie Hall, with preface, glossary, bibliography, notes, and the full Anglo-Saxon epic in English translation.
A grades 10β11 lesson that uses blackout poetry to help students rethink writing, overcome creative blocks, analyze mentor texts, and create original poems.
Openly licensed Grades 6β12 social-studies lesson in which students examine competing historical perspectives and create a two-voice poem representing different viewpoints.
Openly licensed Grades 9β10 lesson that uses contrasting perspectives, characterization, comparison, and student-created Two-Voice Poems.
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 RubΓ©n DarΓo.
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 poetry exam-preparation packet teaching students how to analyze content, ideas, mood, language, structure, and personal response, with poetic terms, self-assessment, practice poems, and model analytical strategies.
A two-page haiku reference featuring examples attributed to Japanese poets including BashΕ 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.
A ten-question multiple-choice poetry quiz asking students to identify figurative language and poetic devices including simile, metaphor, alliteration, onomatopoeia, personification, hyperbole, enjambment, rhyme, and rhythm.
Free printable figurative language poetry quiz with 10 questions and a teacher answer key for classroom poetry assessment and review.
A large classroom reference and activity document covering haiku, tanka, cinquain, diamante, acrostic, couplets, tercets, quatrains, chain verse, calligrams, concrete poetry, limericks, blank verse, free verse, quinzaine and other writing forms with examples and activities.
A classroom poetry-form guide with definitions, examples, and activities covering haiku, tanka, cinquain, diamante, acrostic, couplets, tercets, quatrains, calligrams, concrete poetry, limericks, blank verse, free verse, and other forms.
A free Women's History Month poetry lesson using Ada LimΓ³n's 'What It Must Have Felt Like' to connect close reading and creative writing with the 19th Amendment and women's suffrage history.
Free high-school poetry lesson for analyzing and comparing medieval and modern ballads before students write and perform original ballads.
Free high-school poetry unit teaching ekphrasis through art analysis, poetry reading, prewriting, literary devices, original poems, revision, and a final poetry booklet.
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 Library of Congress poetry lesson for grades 6β12 in which students use Depression-era oral histories and primary sources to create found poetry.
Free poetry lesson plan for grades 7β12 using haiku to help students identify and express the central theme or thesis of analytical 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 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.
Free high-school poetry lesson in which students analyze traditional sonnets, chart rhyme scheme and meter, identify shared characteristics, and write an original sonnet.
Free printable free verse quiz with 10 questions and a teacher answer key for classroom poetry assessment and review.
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 centered on Katharine Rolston Fisher's poem about suffragist Alice Paul, with primary-source imagery, close reading, women's suffrage research, writing, and extension projects.
A free poetry and civil-rights lesson using Mahogany L. Browne's poem about Fannie Lou Hamer to explore voting rights, activism, history, close reading, discussion, and research.
A free poetry lesson using Kwoya Fagin Maples's 'Invisible Work' to explore care, family labor, women's work, imagery, close reading, creative writing, comparison, and visual culture.
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 numΓ©rica / 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.
A free poetry and history lesson using Aimee Nezhukumatathil's 'One Vote' to explore voting, the women's suffrage movement, the 19th Amendment, visual sources, creative writing, and civic research.
A free poetry lesson using Paisley Rekdal's 'Wild Horses' to explore persona poetry, Seraph Young Ford, voting, women's suffrage, the 19th Amendment, creative work, and research.
A free lesson on Alice Duer Miller's satirical suffrage poem 'Our Own Twelve Anti-suffragist Reasons,' using a political cartoon, close reading, satire, women's suffrage history, comparison, and research.
Openly licensed high-school World War I lesson using 'Dulce et Decorum Est' and historical sources to connect poetry, perspective, evidence, and wartime history.
A concise one-page guide to reading and analyzing poetry, covering title, first impressions, patterns, tone, narrator, pivotal moments, form, poetic devices, rereading, and a glossary of important poetry terms.
A three-page academic writing guide explaining poetry explication as close reading, with questions about speaker, structure, meter, diction, imagery, literary devices, sound, and strategies for building an analytical thesis.
Openly licensed Grade 10 ELA lesson on identity and characterization that includes an Identity Poem activity and literary-analysis handouts.
Openly licensed Grades 8β9 poetry lesson that uses Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven to teach symbolism, figurative language, textual evidence, and free-verse writing.
Openly licensed Grades 11β12 poetry interpretation lesson focused on inferencing, close reading, literary analysis, graphic-organizer work, and analytical writing.
An introductory poetry presentation covering rhyme, rhythm, meter, poetic feet, alliteration, onomatopoeia, repetition, refrain, simile, metaphor, hyperbole, personification, symbolism, imagery, free verse, and allusion.
A creative-writing presentation introducing poetic expression, idea and emotion, poetry forms, line style, concise word choice, imagery, sensory language, rhyme, rhythm, free verse, and techniques for making poems vivid and personal.
A two-page University of Nevada, Las Vegas handout explaining accentual-syllabic and accentual verse, scansion symbols, common poetic feet, line lengths, iambic pentameter, anapestic tetrameter, ballad stanza, sonnets, and catalectic lines.
A four-page narrative poetry lesson explaining how poems tell stories through character, setting, conflict, plot, rhythm, rhyme, compact language, and sound, followed by close-reading questions, brainstorming, sensory-detail work, and a guided narrative-poem writing process.
A two-page guided ode-writing worksheet that helps students brainstorm an ordinary subject, describe it with sensory imagery, explain its importance, draft an ode, and revise using a five-question checklist.
A one-page structured pantoum writing worksheet showing students how to draft four original lines, repeat lines in the correct sequence, expand ideas, and complete a four-stanza pantoum.
Free printable personification & symbolism quiz with 10 questions and a teacher answer key for classroom poetry assessment and review.
A guided poem-analysis worksheet asking students to examine physical format, title, author, repeated and expressive words, personal response, audience, author purpose, historical context, effectiveness, unanswered questions, and further research.
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 two-page student worksheet defining poetic devices and providing literary examples, with space for students to write their own examples of end-stopping, enjambment, refrain, alliteration, assonance, consonance, rhyme, simile, metaphor, symbol, hyperbole, personification, metonymy, allusion and apostrophe.
A nine-page reference guide to poetic devices covering sound, meaning and arrangement, including alliteration, assonance, consonance, rhyme, rhythm, meter, scansion, metaphor, simile, symbolism, personification, allusion, irony, point of view, line, stanza and more.
A two-page poetry vocabulary quiz and study guide covering theme, irony, tone, stanza, simile, imagery, metaphor, connotation, denotation, meter, rhyme, rhythm, diction, alliteration, hyperbole, assonance, consonance, allusion, and onomatopoeia.
A detailed English 10 poetry unit plan covering reading, writing, theme, ballads, found poetry, imagery, symbolism, hyperbole, oxymoron, paradox, allusion, assonance, consonance, meter, and student assessment.
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.
Free printable poetry analysis short-answer test with 10 questions and a teacher answer key for classroom poetry assessment and review.
A one-page general poetry analysis worksheet with twelve questions covering dramatic situation, speaker, audience, setting, theme, conflict, patterns, rhyme, rhythm, language, imagery, important lines, and tone.
A grades 9β12 lesson exploring how poets engage with social justice through close reading, discussion, current events, and elegy writing.
Free printable poetry close reading assessment with 10 questions and a teacher answer key for classroom poetry assessment and review.
Free printable poetry elements quiz with 10 questions and a teacher answer key for classroom poetry assessment and review.
Free printable poetry forms quiz with 10 questions and a teacher answer key for classroom poetry assessment and review.
Free printable poetry meter & scansion quiz with 10 questions and a teacher answer key for classroom poetry assessment and review.
A detailed meter quiz covering iambic, trochaic, anapestic, dactylic and spondaic feet, blank verse, free verse, caesura, anacrusis, catalexis, scansion, line lengths, and analysis of metrical patterns in poetry excerpts.
A short printable poetry quiz covering stanza, rhythm, rhyme scheme identification, and a final eight-line poetry writing task using an ABCB rhyme scheme.
Free printable poetry reading comprehension assessment with 10 questions and a teacher answer key for classroom poetry assessment and review.
A detailed classroom presentation on meter, poetic feet, metrical line lengths, stanza forms, rhyme schemes, exact and near rhyme, internal rhyme, alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia, repetition, and examples from well-known poems.
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 three-page scansion worksheet teaching students how to mark stressed and unstressed syllables, identify iambic, trochaic, anapestic, dactylic and spondaic feet, and determine line length from monometer through pentameter and beyond.
A three-page scansion worksheet that teaches students to mark stressed and unstressed syllables, identify dominant metrical feet, count feet per line, and label meter through fourteen poetry exercises.
A classroom reference sheet defining core poetry vocabulary including rhyme, rhythm, meter, stanza forms, haiku, limerick, sonnet, free verse, figurative language, imagery, allusion, tone, onomatopoeia, and alliteration.
A three-week Grade 10 poetry unit using music, close reading, workshops, sensory poetry, poetic devices, background knowledge, interpretation, SOAP analysis, performance, chapbooks, and student presentations.
Free printable poetry unit final assessment with 10 questions and a teacher answer key for classroom poetry assessment and review.
Free printable poetry unit pre-test with 10 questions and a teacher answer key for classroom poetry assessment and review.
A nine-page poetry assessment built around The West Wind and additional exercises on rhyme scheme, alliteration, imagery, figurative language, rhythm, poetic forms, sound devices, stanza types, and poetry terminology.
Free printable poetry vocabulary quiz with 10 questions and a teacher answer key for classroom poetry assessment and review.
Free printable poetry writing rubric & self-assessment with 10 questions and a teacher answer key for classroom poetry assessment and review.
An extensive eleven-page reference on rhyme in poetry covering end rhyme, internal rhyme, full and imperfect rhyme, pararhyme, eye rhyme, masculine and feminine rhyme, rhyming stanza forms, rhyme schemes, and the effects of rhyme.
Free printable rhyme scheme quiz with 10 questions and a teacher answer key for classroom poetry assessment and review.
Openly licensed Grades 6β12 text-analysis strategy that works especially well for poetry close reading by having students identify a meaningful sentence, phrase, and word.
Openly licensed Grade 9 lesson that develops comprehension of Shakespearean language through comparison, paraphrase, close reading, music, and a blackout-poetry activity.
Free printable sonnet quiz & assessment with 10 questions and a teacher answer key for classroom poetry assessment and review.
A grades 9β12 spoken word poetry unit in which students analyze performance techniques, develop voice, write original spoken word poems, and perform their work.
A grades 10β12 poetry analysis lesson using Walt Whitman's A Noiseless Patient Spider to teach metaphor, theme, interpretation, and evidence-based analysis.
Free printable spoken word poetry performance rubric & quiz with 10 questions and a teacher answer key for classroom poetry assessment and review.
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.
A grades 10β12 literature and poetry activity in which students use sensory description and texture to write poems connected to characters in The Great Gatsby.
Openly licensed Grades 9β12 U.S. history lesson connecting civil-rights primary texts, segregation and integration, paired-text analysis, and creation of a two-voice poem.
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.
Openly licensed Grade 9 poetry lesson exploring the history, cultural influences, performance traditions, and literary perspectives of spoken word poetry.
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.
A grade 12 lesson exploring whether song lyrics can be considered poetry through close reading, annotation, literary devices, discussion, and comparison.
A 29-page teacher toolkit with practical poetry-reading and writing activities, warm-ups, poem jigsaws, object-voice writing, imaginative prompts, eavesdropping, praise poems, close observation, and advice for starting to teach poetry.
Openly licensed Grade 9β10 poetry lesson in which students compare poetry and speeches, analyze word choice and rhetorical strategies, compose a poem, and consider poetry as a vehicle for change.
Project Gutenberg's illustrated 1884 edition of Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven, with commentary by Edmund C. Stedman and illustrations by Gustave DorΓ©.
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.
Openly licensed Grades 11β12 close-reading lesson that develops inferencing skills and includes a Two-Voice Poem as an extension and performance option.
Openly licensed ELA lesson using poems, mood analysis, literary response, and music-generation or songwriting extensions.
Openly licensed Grades 9β10 lesson on metaphor and the Golden Shovel poetry form, culminating in students writing an original Golden Shovel poem.
Openly licensed Grades 10β11 lesson on tone using song lyrics, nonfiction, close reading, civil-rights texts, and a Two-Voice Poem activity.
John Stuart Mill's influential essay examining the nature of poetry, emotion, imagination, narrative, description, eloquence, and the distinction between poetry and other forms of expression.
Openly licensed Grades 8β10 poetry lesson in which students analyze figurative language, brainstorm sensory memories, explore identity and community, and compose an original Where I'm From poem.
Openly licensed high-school lesson using Woody Guthrie, song lyrics, historical context, and blackout poetry to explore social commentary, figurative meaning, and poetic expression.
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.