Poetry in Your Classroom: a lesson plan for grades 7-12

By Tanya Neumeyer; created with the support of the League of Canadian Poets and the Ontario Arts Council.

Download the slide deck for this lesson plan.

Overview

One of the most effective ways to get students excited about poetry is to invite a spoken word artist into your classroom. It’s a great way to make poetry come alive. Much of what happens on a poetry stage is not recorded, but spoken word videos can give students a sense of what it can feel like to be in the room with a poet giving a live performance.

You can use the lesson below to show students how to use their voices and bodies to tell their stories and share their thoughts, and imaginings. There are 5 videos of spoken word artists performing a poem here that can serve as an example to prepare your students for a poet’s visit. They can also be used to follow up on a poet’s visit and build on what they shared.

The links and leading questions provided are to facilitate students’ learning on this subject. The framing for the lesson is highlighted in the introduction and the guiding questions are outlined for each video. While this lesson could be done in an hour, if needed, using each of the conversation questions and writing prompts could easily stretch it to 2 hours.

You may find that some of the conversations arising from the spoken word poems will challenge your students to think or feel something. Give time as needed to debrief after each poem before moving to the next one. Let the students lead the reflection conversation after watching the poems. The idea is to spark interest and wonder in spoken word poetry, not to dissect the poems for the poet’s intentions.

Visit poets.ca/pits to find out more about booking a poet for your classroom. Find more spoken word resources at poets.ca/spoken-word.

Introduction

Spoken word poetry uniquely combines poetry and performance to make what a poet says come alive. Poets use their voices and bodies to make this happen. Spoken word is a form of performance art that has its roots in Black and Indigenous oral storytelling and theatre.

The intention of the conversation starter questions below is not to talk about what the poet intended in the poem but to use it as a jumping off point for looking at how gesture, tone, pace, body language, and volume can be used as performance tools.

For each video there is also a writing prompt to turn students back to their own writing process. This could instead be used as a strategy to consolidate the students’ learning and wrap up the lesson (i.e. at the end, select from the 5 prompts and write your own poem). The goal of this lesson is for students to become interested in poetry as a tool to tell their own stories.

Hook

Invite students to write for three minutes about anything they want. Each learner will need a pen, paper, and/or accessible writing device.

Download the PDF of this lesson plan to view all content and exercises.

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