How to Create a Fall Poetry Unit for the Classroom

Teaching about poetry is known to be an effective way of getting your students to start writing, as well as teaching them about parts of grammar. Many teachers do mini-units, or a week or two of poetry, during each quarter, with each unit focusing on a few different forms of poetry. Doing a poetry unit in the fall is a good way to be able to evaluate just where your students are in terms of writing abilities, which will allow you to adjust the curriculum to meet their needs during the rest of the year.

Things You'll Need

• Poetry anthologies
• Butcher paper
• Coloring or painting supplies for illustration
• Autumn-themed snack foods
• Writing tools

Instructions

1. Introduce the students to poetry. Read some poems aloud to them from different anthologies. Make sure the poems are different: Choose funny poems, serious poems, poems that rhyme and some that don't. Discuss with the student what the definition of poetry really is. Make sure you emphasize the fact that anyone can be a poet!

2. Choose an easier form of poetry for their first poem. Fall is back to school time, and most of the students probably did not write much, if at all, during the summer. Start by introducing a simple form of poetry, such as writing similes. Read a sample of a simile aloud from one of your poetry books, and point out to them how similes compare things using the words "like" or "as."

3. Write a simile together. Next, tell the students they will be writing a class poem together. Have the class brainstorm a list of "autumn" topics on the board, such as pumpkins, leaves, scarecrows, etc. Then, together write a fall simile using these words. For example, you could ask the students to complete this sentence: "The pumpkin is as round as ________." When your poem is completed, write it on a large sheet of paper and hang it up in the classroom.

4. 

   Take it up a notch. Now that the students have thought about the season of fall for a little bit, move on to a more complex form of poetry, like acrostic poems. Many people think acrostic poems are simple, but they are usually more difficult for children to write than some other forms of poetry. Use their names, or the word "Fall" or "Autumn," and show them how to write a poem using each of the letters in that word. For example, "Fall" could end up being: "Falling autumn leaves sometimes leave me sad." Let the students illustrate these poems, and hang them on the bulletin board for fall decoration.

5. Introduce the students to free-form poetry. Have them think of a fall holiday such as Thanksgiving or even Christmas, although that is technically a winter holiday. Ask them to write a free-form poem about that holiday. Use this opportunity to teach a mini-lesson on the use of good adjectives. For example, forbid the use of "fun" or "nice" in their poems.

6. Invite the parents or another class in for a poetry reading. Let the students who wish to read their poems aloud, and serve fall refreshments such as hot apple cider, pumpkin cookies or bread, and mixed nuts. Bind the student's poems into their own little "poetry anthology," or bind all of the poems into one large classroom poetry book to be placed in the classroom's reading center.

Tips & Warnings

• Check out a bunch of books on poetry from your library and set them up in your classroom library or on a special table.

• Make sure you preview the students' poems before they read them aloud to an audience! You don't want any surprises.

Resources

• List of children's poetry anthologies on Amazon.com
• Tips for teaching poetry to children and people of all ages.