Do you struggle with how to teach poetry? Do your students groan at the mere mention of rhyme or prose? Are you secretly glad National Poetry Month in April is only one month of the year? I understand! But what if we started to look at teaching poetry in a new light? What if our excitement about teaching poetry was contagious? When we truly learn its benefits and how to teach poetry effectively, it can be a meaningful (and fun!) addition to our literacy block all year long.

Benefits of Teaching Poetry

You may already know that poems are a great resource for modeling and practicing fluency, but that’s not their only benefit! Teaching poetry also has many comprehension and critical thinking benefits. When we learn how to teach poetry effectively, it can also:

• Enhance language and vocabulary development through exposure to new and nuanced words in a creative context.
• Encourage critical thinking by requiring students to analyze and interpret the meaning behind each line or stanza.
• Improve reading fluency as students engage with the rhythm and meter of poems, learning to read with expression and pace.
• Boost memory and retention as the unique structure of poems often requires students to memorize and recall verses, strengthening their overall reading skills.

With all those benefits in mind, here are a variety of ways to teach poetry all year.

Poem of the Week

You can help your students read and comprehend poetry with these 40 original poems spread throughout the year. Each poem is designed to practice poetry,  fluency, and close reading skills and is accompanied by thoughtful tasks to help students focus on their oral reading fluency and reading comprehension. 

You can: 

• Give the poem to your students on Monday and take 2-5 minutes each day to practice reading it out loud for fluency practice.
• Use as a whole class poetry comprehension activity or lesson
• Use to extend learning
• Perfect as a literacy center
• Use as differentiated poetry comprehension practice

Poem of the Week Bundle

Help your students to read and comprehend poetry with 40 original poems designed to practice poetry and fluency skills! Each poem is accompanied by thoughtful tasks to help students focus on their oral reading fluency and reading comprehension.

I NEED ThESE!

How to Teach Poetry and Reading Comprehension

When we think about poetry, we often think about rhyme, figurative language, and emotions. However, when we learn to teach poetry effectively we can cover SO MANY additional skills like:

• Annotating Skills (Vocabulary, Figurative Language, Connections, Details)
• Author’s Purpose
• Cause and Effect
• Character Traits
• Compare and Contrast
• Context Clues
• Descriptive Word Choice
• Drawing Connections
• Inferencing
• Main Idea and Details
• Main Idea and Key Details
• Point of View and Perspective
• Sequence
• Story Elements
• Summarizing
• Synthesizing Information
• Text Analysis
• Theme
• Visualization
• Vocabulary
• Written Response to Text

I created these passage and poem sets with multiple tasks to combine all of those reading skills with poetry and fiction texts. This will help your students increase critical thinking and reading comprehension. Your students will learn how to integrate information from a poem and story, each with a similar theme.

There are 4 sets of paired passages to help you teach poetry, each with a different theme:

• Set 1: Ships & Swapping Stories: Overcoming Adversity
• Set 2: Serpents and Sports: Honesty
• Set 3: Flea Markets and Friends: Feeling Invisible
• Set 4: Seasons and Sorrow: Change

The Peak Podcast Bundle

Get started with paired passages! This is the PERFECT starting spot for teachers in 4th, 5th, and 6th grades looking to help their students find success with two paired reading passages. The process is easy: read and annotate two passages, answer text-based questions, and then analyze both passages together using carefully crafted response activities.

I NEED ThESE!

Another great way to get your students practicing their reading comprehension, fluency, and annotating skills is with my Reading Comprehension Poems. These twelve poems are set up similarly to our Poem of the Week resource, but with a focus on specific reading comprehension skills. Take a look at the skills are covered:

• Inference
• Story Elements
• Sequencing
• Compare and Contrast
• Cause and Effect
• Main Idea
• Fact and Opinion
• Author’s Purpose
• Context Clues
• Character Traits
• Character Conflict
• Genre

These poems feature various rhythm and rhyme schemes, designed to enhance reading skills, fluency, and poetry comprehension. The poems and comprehension questions vary in difficulty, allowing for easy differentiation. This resource is perfect for reviewing reading skills, extending learning, using in a literacy center, or even conducting a whole-class poetry comprehension lesson.

More Poetry Practice

You can use poetry as a new approach to teaching more specific literacy skills throughout the year too.

Figurative language is one of the more common skills we think of when it comes to teaching poetry. These 10 original figurative language poems are designed to practice figurative language, comprehension, fluency, and annotating! Each poem is accompanied by thoughtful tasks to help students focus on figurative language and reading comprehension in an engaging booklet format. 

These poems offer a range of different rhythm and rhyme schemes. The poems and comprehension questions also range in complexity, making it easy to differentiate.

We can also combine morphology with poetry. These prefix poetry booklets will help your students identify prefixes and practice reading skills, comprehension, fluency, and annotating with 8 original poems! Each poem is accompanied by thoughtful tasks to help students focus on prefixes alongside reading comprehension.

I hope this post has given you a variety of new ways to infuse poetry into your literacy block all year long. For even more poetry tips, visit this How to Teach Poetry in Upper Elementary post.