Since Robert Frost encouraged our founder Marie Bullock to “get poetry into the high schools” in the 1960s, we’ve been assisting teachers in bringing poetry into the classroom. Here, you’ll find poetry lesson plans, poems for kids and for teens, essays about teaching, a calendar of teaching resources for the school year, a glossary of poetry terms, and more. Our lesson plans, most of which are aligned with the Common Core, have been reviewed by our Educator in Residence with an eye toward developing skills of perception and imagination. 

Read more about Teach this Poem’s impact. 

Summer: Poems for Kids

The following poems are about summer and warm weather with poems like “A Boat, Beneath a Sunny Sky” by Lewis Carroll, “Fishing on the Susquehanna in July” by Billy Collins, and more.

School: Poems for Kids

Read a selection of poems about school, learning, and the classroom by poets like Catherine Barnett, Eamon Grennan, Brenda Hillman, and more.

Lesson Plans for Summer

Browse this selection of lesson plans featuring poems related to summer, travel, and warm weather

Lesson Plans by Theme

Find poetry lesson plans organized by theme, occasion, and class subject, including lesson plans featuring poems about social justice, the environment, and many other topics.

Teach this Poem: The Classics

Teach this Poem is a weekly series featuring a poem from our online poetry collection …

How to Read a Poem

Reading poetry well is part attitude and part technique.