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I love teaching poetry. Poems are jam-packed with teachable moments while remaining concise enough to keep students engaged. Well-chosen poems often have layers that can be revealed throughout the week with my Poem of the Week protocol that I developed when I was teaching fifth-grade ELA and history. It’s hard to find time to fit everything in during the week, and this protocol allows you to be intentional and practical about teaching poetry. We also read the poem a different way every day, providing practice with fluency, intonation, and expression. Using my Poem of the Week protocol with a class of fifth graders is my idea of nirvana.

Poem of the Week Protocol

Monday: Give students a printed copy of a poem you want to use as a mentor text for the week. Students will read it silently. Ask students to share their initial reactions. They’ve only read the poem once, so these are going to be very surface-level, like “I like this one” or “This reminds me of a time I went on a trip with my grandpa” or “I don’t get it.” This is what you want, as it will contrast with how deeply they respond to the poem by the end of the week. After a few students share their thoughts, put the poem away. That’s it for Monday! I spend about five minutes on it on Mondays, allowing for the lesson on the focus standard to take up most of the class time. I had students keep their copy of the poem in the Poetry section of their binder to retrieve each day when we work on poetry.

Tuesday: Echo read. Then I ask students my favorite question of all time: “What do you notice?” Students will silently label everything they notice, including figurative language (RL Standard 4) and anything to do with craft or structure (Standard 5) including rhyme scheme and numbering the lines and stanzas. Students can refer to anchor charts or handouts on figurative language until they have internalized possibilities to notice.

Wednesday: Choral read. We discuss what they labeled yesterday, including the theme and main idea (RL Standard 2) and point of view (Standard 6). I annotate the poem on the board, and students make sure they add to their annotations from yesterday. I tell students, “If I write it on the board, make sure you write it on your paper.” If no one notices the things I want to point out, then I will notice them, discuss them briefly, and label them.

Thursday: Read poem*. Review background or historical context, or other micro lesson on a feature the poem offers, becoming a “literary tour guide” (Gallagher, 2004). This discussion varies widely depending on the poem and the needs of the students. Allow students to briefly discuss how much they better understand the poem now than they did at the beginning of the week.

Friday: Read poem*. Friday is my favorite day because we get to imitate the poem. Writing is the hardest thing we ask students to do, a culminating activity that allows students to demonstrate their understanding of our lessons throughout the week. I invite students into the process by making an “Essential and Possible” t-chart of features their poems must and can contain. This t-chart is a staple in my classroom and is widely applicable, but here’s how it works for this activity. Under the “Essential” column I list the feature from the mentor poem that I want everyone to include. For example, when I teach “I Love the Look of Words” by Maya Angelou for the poem of the week, the feature I want my students to include in their own poems is an extended metaphor. I usually only put one thing under the “Essential” side. Then under the “Possible” side of the chart, I will list other things we’ve discussed throughout the week that they could include if they want to, having students help me generate ideas, usually naming things they labeled on their poems. I always list the length and topic under “Possible” because that is up to them as authors. Content (what they have to say) always comes before structure (how long it has to be). I have students write down this t-chart on the top half of the back side of their copy of the poem of the week. Here is an example of a completed t-chart for “I Love the Look of Words”.

Essential	Possible
Extended metaphor	Topic Length First-person point of view Sensory details Simile Onomatopoeia  Anaphora Parallelism Sentence fragments Personification

Next, we brainstorm ideas. Still on the back of their paper but underneath the t-chart, I’ll have students share and list several ideas for topics. To continue this example of working with “I Love the Look of Words”, I would explain that they have to choose two topics to compare throughout their poem for their extended metaphor since it’s our essential feature. Students will help generate examples (football and ice cream, the beach and reading, their dog and video games) and non-examples (like it might be ineffective to choose to write about football and basketball, because those come from the same category – Maya Angelou wrote about two totally different things, so we are too). Students get the chance to choose to write about things that are meaningful to them. 

After we generate ideas, students will write “My topic:____” and will fill in the blank, deciding the topic of the poem they will write then and there. I will walk around and make sure everyone has an idea listed. Do not skip these steps, you are priming the pump for every child to be successful. I share my topic of what I’m going to write about. You can even have students quickly tell their table group what topic they are going to write about. Then set a timer (usually about 5-10 minutes) where everyone is writing silently, including you. This is sacred time. They may not ask questions, go to the bathroom, talk, or do anything other than write. It’s only for a few minutes. If they finish writing their poem before time is up, they can reread their poem and edit it, pull a book out to read, or sit there quietly until the time is up but they may not do anything that would disturb their neighbors. They cannot show it to you or ask you questions because you will be writing your own poem following the same parameters as the students. At the beginning of the year, I may model writing my poem before they write theirs, modeling the writing process and how it is messy, thinking aloud through decisions, scratching through words and phrases, editing and adjusting as I go. I never, ever, write out my poem the day before and then present them with a polished copy. I want them to see that writing is messy, even for good writers, and to be explicit about showing the decisions I make when I write. After writing time is over, volunteers share their poems out loud, starting with the teacher. I have a policy where we all clap enthusiastically at least five times after each person reads aloud. This whole process is an authentic way to build classroom community throughout the year, and you will learn more about your students by listening to their poems than in any other way. Sometimes heavy topics come out. Sometimes I’ll find a poem left on my desk that a student wants me to read but they didn’t want to share with the class. It’s the most rewarding, soul-filling work of the week.

By the end of the year, students’ binders are stuffed with poems they’ve written. I enjoyed having students choose one of their poems for a published class anthology (we used Studentreasures Publishing), as this makes a beautiful memento from the year. I’d always get an extra copy to put in the school library, widening our authentic audience. 

If you follow this protocol, students get frequent, authentic practice delving deeply into literature in meaningful ways. It was one of my favorite parts of teaching and taught students to love poetry and all that it offers, not only by engaging them with the standards, but through exploring meaningful ways to discuss and express aspects of this beautiful and crazy journey that we call life.

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*Other ways to read the poem:

• one student models reading with fluency and expression
• all students line the perimeter of the room, facing the wall, and all read it out loud to themselves, practicing fluency and expression
• Alternate lines by boys/girls, khaki pants/black pants, sandals/tennis shoes, etc.
• Listen to audio, especially of the author reading their own poem, or Poetry Out Loud recitation
• Partner read

See 11 Alternatives to Round Robin (and Popcorn) Reading for more ideas and explanations of echo and choral reading.

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Citation: Gallagher, K. (2004). Deeper reading: Comprehending challenging texts, 4-12. Stenhouse Publishers.

You may also be interested in seeing 41 Poems I Love to Teach in the Middle Grades for ideas of poems your students can imitate!

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If your teachers could benefit from writing professional development, check out the Services page and contact me with any questions you may have. I look forward to hearing from you!

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