Poetry Unit - 5th Grade

 

To end the school year we spent about three weeks studying poetry and different poets. When we started we learned about poetry devices and used a check list for each poem we read to look for the poetic devices. Each day we read and talked about different types of poems. The students were given time to write their thoughts and try to understand what the poem was talking about with a partner or group. 

We mainly focused on the following poets: Emily Dickinson, Robert Louis Stevenson, Edgar Allen Poe, Robert Frost, and Shel Silverstein.  The class also read a bully poem, school poems and we read the song Forever Young by Bob Dylan and discussed what it was about. Adding in other poems gave the students chance to see a variety of different poem styles. 

At the end of the unit students completed a Poetry Writing Assignment. The assignment required the students to read two poems from two different poets listed above, they wrote their own poem and wrote a poem titled Last, First. This poem told about things they would experience for the last time in elementary school and first they would experience in middle school. The assignment is linked below.

Poetry Writing Assignment 

Students Mental Image of a Poem

Students Title an Emily Dickenson Poem

Student Thoughts on a Poem