April is National Poetry Month, a time to celebrate the beauty, power, and creativity of poetry in our classrooms. Engage your students in the magic of verse with these five lesson ideas tailored for National Poetry Month!
1. Poetry Slam Showcase
Host a poetry slam for National Poetry Month where students can showcase their original poems or recite works from famous poets. Encourage creativity and self-expression while fostering public speaking skills. Provide a supportive environment where students feel comfortable sharing their thoughts and emotions through poetry.
2. Poet Study and Analysis
Select a diverse range of poets and their works for students to study and analyze. Explore different styles, themes, and literary devices employed by poets such as Langston Hughes, Emily Dickinson, and Maya Angelou, or contemporary poets like Amanda Gorman. Engage students in critical thinking by discussing the significance of each poet’s contributions to the world of literature. It’s a great way to celebrate National Poetry Month.
3. Found Poetry Workshop
Introduce the concept of found poetry, where students create poems using existing texts such as newspapers, magazines, or even their favorite books. This can be a fun National Poetry Month activity or you can use it at any point throughout the year! Teach students how to extract meaningful phrases or words from these sources and arrange them to create new poetic compositions. Encourage experimentation and creativity as students repurpose language to convey their own unique messages.
4. Collaborative Poetry Anthology
Divide students into small groups and assign each group a theme or topic to explore through poetry. Encourage collaboration as students brainstorm ideas, write individual poems, and then compile them into a collaborative poetry anthology. This project promotes teamwork, creativity, and a sense of collective achievement as students contribute to a shared body of work. Incorporate this activity during National Poetry Month or use it to make connections to content at other points during the year.
5. Dear Poet 2025
Each National Poetry Month, Dear Poet provides an immersive educational initiative inviting 5th-12th grade students to craft letters in response to the works of celebrated poets. Through this multimedia project, participants engage with poetry on a personal level, connecting with the artistry and insights of award-winning poets through their written and spoken words.
National Poetry Month provides an excellent opportunity to ignite students’ passion for poetry and cultivate their skills as writers, thinkers, and performers. Incorporate these lesson ideas into your classroom to inspire creativity, critical thinking, and a lifelong love of poetry among your students.
Diamante Poem – This type of poem is in the shape of a diamond. Each line uses specific types of words (adjectives, -ing words, etc.). What makes it especially nice is that it doesn’t have to rhyme. This app has some examples to illustrate how to write a diamante poem, and it leads you through creating your poem step by step. When you’re finished, you can save the poem as an image to your photo gallery. 
Acrostic Poem – Think of a word and then write a word or phrase for each letter in the word. This app will lead you through creating an acrostic poem and even helps you brainstorm words. Acrostic poems are often used when students write their name vertically and then write out adjectives going across that describe them, but the uses are endless. 
Haiku Poem – This app makes writing this Japanese-style poetry super simple. Walking you through the steps of brainstorming words and phrases and making note of the syllables, you’ll find that constructing one is easy and can be very profound. 
Poems By Heart from Penguin Classics – This well-crafted app introduces students to a wide variety of poetry. Even without the premium downloads, the free ones supplied each come with audio that highlights the lines as the poem is read with inflection. Students can record themselves reading the poem and even earn poetry points by memorizing them. 
POETRY from The Poetry Foundation – Let students encounter a wide variety of poetry in this app. They can discover titles by spinning the category wheels (emotions and events) or by searching for a specific author in the index. Poems that have audio are indicated with a small speaker icon, great for extra support for struggling readers/writers as well as students who may benefit from hearing it read aloud. 
