There are two types of English teachers out there…

Those that love to teach poetry and those that hate it. Which camp do you fall into?

Personally, I’m a big poetry fan. And I’ll admit that I was on a personal mission during my poetry units: convince every student that poetry is awesome.

Let’s face it, poetry is having a bit of a PR crisis.

Students think it’s too complicated and it doesn’t make sense. That is until they read The Crossover or Long Way Down. Then they are hooked. 😉

Of course, before you can jump into dissecting a verse novel or diving head first into your poetry unit, students need to know the basics of poetry.

And well, there is a lot of material cover.

To help out, I created a Free Poetry Reference Booklet. You can make a little reference guide from it or have students glue it into their interactive notebooks.

The reference booklet will help you review -

✔️ Mood and Tone

✔️ Figurative Language

✔️ Literary Devices

✔️ Types of Poems

And other terms in poetry.

You can use this booklet to introduce the concepts, review terminology, and keep vocab top-of-mind during poetry analysis. Poetry comes with a lot of terminology and having this guide will make poetry less intimidating!