Writing poetry can sometimes intimidate middle and high school students, but these fun, engaging activities will have your teen hooked! Poetry can be exciting when you ditch the pencils and get creative.
To create found poetry, you will need to plan ahead. Ask family and friends to save magazines and newspapers for you.
To create the poems, students will cut words and letters from magazines and newspapers to piece their poems together. When they have their lines organized, they can glue them down on construction paper. The end result is bright and interesting.
Blackout poetry is a great way to include poetry in your child’s reading curriculum. You can use any novel or short story your child has recently read.
To create blackout poems, photocopy some pages of your chosen text. Students will use the words from the text to create their poem and black out any words they don’t need.
You can make this more challenging for your teen by having them base their poem on a theme or symbol from the text.
Magnetic poems can be a fun activity for the whole family. You can find little tins of magnetic words on Amazon. If you have small children at home, you may also have letter refrigerator magnets on hand. Either can work.
Give your teen (or the whole family) challenges to complete on the refrigerator. For example, who can create a 15 line poem that includes an extended metaphor? Who can create a poem with a specific theme in just 15 minutes? Your teen can try this on their own, but a competition is always fun.
I hope you found a poetry activity your teen will love, but if these require too much prep work for you, there are other creative options. My poetry creative writing unit takes the prep work out of engaging poetry writing activities. It’s just one more resource to help your teen fall in love with poetry.
Happy teaching!
– Laura Daly
