April is National Poetry Month and a wonderful time to explore how to use poetry in our classrooms to express our understanding of and feelings about the world. Poetry offers us an opportunity to play with language in a way that writing prose traditionally doesn’t. It gives a chance to communicate our ideas in raw, more concise ways as well. Given the different poetic forms that could be used, there are also many choices for our expression.
If you’re in need of classroom ideas, Poets.org has quite a few for you to consider. I personally love exploring the Poetry Foundation’s website as well. For more education centered concepts, Read Write Think has resources for all ages, while PBS Learning Media’s Poetry in America, and Poetry Everywhere are focused more on secondary students.
What ideas do you have for National Poetry Month?