$10 - $20 12th Grade Poetry Lesson (by date, oldest first)

UPDATED FOR THE 2024-2025 SCHOOL YEAR: Finally, a poetry unit designed for high-school English that teenagers genuinely love!! Your students' skills in close reading and literary analysis of poems will skyrocket....

The 3-week unit features 60+ canonical poems written by a diverse spectrum of English-speaking poets. The poems and accompanying lesson plans are organized into 12 thematic packets which can be used in sequence over two weeks. That's over 200 pages worth of editable poetry resources!

This unit promises to elicit dynamic engagement from all students without compromising on intellectual rigor. The discussion questions, quick writes, literary device quizzes, and analytical writing assignments will challenge your students to dig beneath the surface of the text and generate profound interpretive insights!!

Here are some highlights from this editable 200-page curriculum:

• Homework Packets with Poems (5-6 Poems per Packet): The 12 homework packets contain a total of 71 poems by a diverse range of award-winning poets such as William Shakespeare, John Keats, Christina Rossetti, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Robert Hayden, Theodore Roethke, Maya Angelou, Audre Lorde, Mary Oliver, Gary Soto, Li-Young Lee, Ada Limón, Elizabeth Acevedo, and others. The poems are collected into ten reading packets that focus on prominent literary devices and themes: 1) poems using sensory imagery, 2) poems using figurative language, 3) love poems, 4) poems on ethical dilemmas, 5) poems on complex parent-child dynamics, and 6) poems on cultural identity. Because teenagers have a lot to say about these themes, the poems will set the stage for your class to have fascinating and profoundly productive discussions!! (75 pages)

• Literary Devices Glossary: A glossary with definitions and examples of the various types of figurative language, imagery, stanzas, and syntactic devices. Many teachers already have a glossary of literary devices, but I'm providing this in case you need one. (2 pages)

• Literary Devices Quizzes: A total of ten quizzes, each with 10 questions about a wide range of literary devices: metaphor, personification, symbolism, imagery, alliteration, etc. Open each class with a quiz to assess whether your students can accurately identify the literary devices used in the poems from the homework packets. Answer keys included. (24 pages).

• Discussion Questions: This bundle features a list of discussion questions for the first poem in each of the homework packets. The discussion questions will ensure that every class discussion starts on a productive foot. Every discussion question is grounded in concrete textual details and challenges students to arrive at lucid interpretive insights! The questions lend themselves to a range of different pedagogical uses: 1) to focus students’ thinking prior to beginning a discussion, 2) to prompt in-class writing, 3) to assign written reflections for homework, etc. Guaranteed to elicit student engagement and foster deep thinking! Answer keys included. (60 pages)

• Quick Writes: The quick writes give students an opportunity to capture and refine the best ideas generated in the discussion. Quick writes can also help reticent students to gather their thoughts so they'll feel ready and eager to contribute. (24 pages)

• Analytical Writing Assignment: Challenge students to take their interpretations one step further by writing an analytical paper on a poem of their choice. The assignment sheet contains detailed instructions for how to generate a formalist analysis of a poem (analyzing how the poem's formal features contribute to its meaning). This kind of formalist analysis is exactly what students are asked to generate on the AP Literature exam! Sample paper included. (15 pages)

This entire resource packet will come to you in two separate formats: Word docs *and* PDFs. Because the Word docs are fully editable, you'll be able to customize the materials to suit the skill levels of your students — year after year! If you don't have Microsoft Word, you'll still be able to access all of the materials as PDF documents — which are easy to navigate and quick to print!

My store is called “Rigorous Resources” because all of the resources contain rigorous content that will motivate students to engage in thought-provoking and productive discussions. Thank you for choosing Rigorous Resources.

Happy teaching!

Adam Jernigan, Ph.D.

adamjernigan@gmail.com

Should you prefer to purchase the poetry units individually, here are links to the five poetry units:

Poetry Unit #1: Sensory Imagery in Poetry

Poetry Unit #2: Figurative Language in Poetry

Poetry Unit #3: Love Poems

Poetry Unit #4: Poems on Ethical Dilemmas

Poetry Unit #5: Poems on Family Relationships

Poetry Unit #6: Poems on Cultural Identity

Store: https://www.TeachShare.com/Store/Rigorous-Resources

This bundle includes the in-class and digital versions of our Poetry Escape Room.

There is no wonder why escape rooms are so popular; they are highly engaging and encourage people to work together and think creatively in order to solve different puzzles... all while trying to beat the clock! Now, you can facilitate our popular Poetry Escape Room at home for distance learning or in the classroom with this meticulously-crafted resource. Whether they are in school or at home, your students will be having so much fun that they won’t even realize how much they are learning about poetry while trying to escape!

How does it work?

The ghosts of Walt Whitman, Edgar Allan Poe, Langston Hughes, William Shakespeare, and Maya Angelou have risen from the grave to lock your students inside your classroom. They are upset because they believe that students spend too much time talking about (fill in the blank with whatever is cool with students these days... probably making TikToks) and not enough time reading and writing poetry. Students cannot escape until they complete 5 poetry-based tasks to show these ghosts of poets past that they do in fact know their poetry.

• Match 'Em Up: In the first task, students must match up poetic terms and devices with their definitions. Letters intersected by the lines between the terms and definitions will reveal their first code.
• Figuratively Speaking: In the second task, students must correctly identify the figurative language used in poem excerpts. When matched correctly, shaded boxes reveal their second code.
• Television: In the third task, students must closely read the poem, Television, by Roald Dahl. Then, they must correctly identify poetic terms and devices within the poem. When matched correctly on a chart, the third code is revealed.
• Playground Blues: In the fourth task, students must perform a close reading of Back in the Playground Blues by Adrian Mitchell. Letters of the multiple choice CCSS-aligned question answers following the poem reveal their fourth code.
• Jig Saw Quote: In the final task, students must assemble a jig saw puzzle that forms a quote about poetry. Once the puzzle is assembled and students bring the quote to you, they may escape the room.

In-Class Escape Room Includes:

- Escape Room Basics

- Detailed Day-Of Instructions

- Escape Room Print Checklist

- Student Teams Chart

- Welcome Sign for Your Door

- Materials for 5 Tasks: task signs to be folded upright, task instructions (2 per page for easy printing), and necessary information to be kept at stations

- Student Answer Booklets (small and large options)

- Teacher Answer Keys

- Code Word Theme Open Response for homework or in-class writing activity

Digital Escape Room Includes:

- Instructions for how to access and share escape room and answer key through Google Drive

- Materials for 5 Tasks: digital task signs, detailed task instructions, and supplementary materials

- Digital Student Worksheets

- Digital Teacher Answer Key

This escape room is suitable for middle and high school students and is ideal any time during your poetry unit. Students will need to know definitions of poetic devices and terms in order to complete the activity. Some of the terms covered: alliteration, imagery, free verse, internal rhyme, tone, mood, stanza, stress, onomatopoeia, allusion, hyperbole, syntax, extended metaphor, haiku, oxymoron....

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