4 Poetry Activities for Middle School Students

Each year when I begin to talk about poetry activities with my middle school students, I am met with a lot of groans. To be honest, I get it! Poetry is probably the hardest genre to teach and to learn. It involves critical thinking and inferencing, skills that many students struggle with.

After several years of trial and error, I have found my favorite poetry activities for middle school. These activities will challenge your students and expose them to a wide variety of poetic forms! Here are my go-to poetry activities.

#1: BLACKOUT POETRY

If you haven’t done blackout poetry before, you are missing out on one of the most fun poetry activities there is! Blackout poetry gives students the opportunity to create their own poem without it feeling so intimidating.

Give each student a page torn out from a book (I always choose a book that’s falling apart or is collecting dust in a corner). Have students find a few powerful words that stand out and underline them. Then, they should find other words that can be added on to create a sentence or phrase. Lastly, they will blackout or color everything on the page except for their chosen words.

I highly recommend showing students an example before they begin. If you search for blackout poetry online, you can find tons of examples. Take a look at these with students, so they understand what to do.

#2: POETRY BOOKLET

Poetry comes with lots of new vocabulary, which is why I always recommend this booklet as a great poetry activity for middle school. By having all of the poetry terms and concepts in one place, students have an organized reference guide to help throughout their poetry unit.

This booklet is a great companion to your poetry lessons. This booklet contains a mood and tone word list, figurative language guide, literary device guide, poetry types, and poetry terms. If you are teaching mood and tone, for instance, use the mood and tone word list in the booklet as you practice. By the way, using popular songs is a great way to practice mood and tone! And your students will love it.

GET THE POETRY REFERENCE BOOKLET FOR FREE!

#3: VERSE NOVEL LITERATURE CIRCLES

I love doing literature circles with verse novels. My students’ favorite is probably The Crossover! I found these verse novel literature circles to be so effective that I created a middle school poetry and verse resource around them! This unit will challenge your students’ understanding and have them making deep connections with various texts.

This unit can be used with any verse novel or poems, but I provide plenty of recommendations for sixth through eighth grade. The unit contains four weeks of lessons that cover concepts from the author’s purpose, point of view, structure, figurative language, poetry writing, and more.

Best part? I give you all the resources you need to easily implement this poetry unit. There are examples for all reading responses, ready-made slides, graphic organizers, literature circle forms, mentor sentences, and the poetry booklet is included!

GRAB THE COMPLETE MIDDLE SCHOOL ELA POETRY UNIT

#4: BOOK TASTING WITH VERSE NOVELS

This poetry activity is a spin on a classic book tasting. If you haven’t heard of a book tasting before, think of it like speed dating – but with books! Students get a chance to preview and read parts of a book. The goal is to introduce students to a diverse range of books and get them excited about reading them.

By doing a book tasting with verse novels, you can introduce your students to a new genre type that many students may not have read independently before. You can get students excited about reading a new genre independently (because we know independent reading is excellent for growth in reading skills).

A book tasting can be as elaborate or as simple as you want! Essentially, you want to put students into groups. Give each group a few books to preview and look at. Have them write down what interests them about the book and if they would be interested in reading it. You can conduct this in your classroom or the school library. Personally, I love to create a “Starbooks” experience with my students! This adds a little bit of extra fun.