Teach This Poem, though developed with a classroom in mind, can be easily adapted for remote learning, hybrid learning models, or in-person classes. Please see our suggestions for how to adapt this lesson for remote or blended learning. We have also noted suggestions when applicable and will continue to add to these suggestions online.

Featured Poem

Related Resource

View NASA’s images of climate change from space.

View the animated map or high resolution image showing the displacement of Native American land.

Classroom Activities

The following activities and questions are designed to help your students use their noticing skills to move through the poem and develop their thinking about its meaning with confidence, using what they’ve noticed as evidence for their interpretations. Read more about the framework upon which these activities are based.

  1. Warm-up: View the images of climate change from space. As you see each side-by-side image, what do you notice about the before image and the after image? 

  2. Before Reading the Poem: View this map or high resolution image. What do you notice about the map as it changes? 

  3. Reading the Poem: Read the poem “Map” by Linda Hogan silently. What do you notice about the poem? Annotate for any words or phrases that stand out to you or any questions you might have.

  4. Listening to the Poem (enlist two volunteers to read the poem aloud or listen to the audio): Listen as the poem is read aloud twice, and write down any additional words and phrases that stand out to you. 

  5. Small-group Discussion: Share what you noticed in the poem with a small group of students. Based on the details you just shared with your small group, and the discussions from the beginning of class, how does the map depicted in the poem compare to the maps you viewed at the beginning of class?

  6. Whole-class Discussion: The Poetry Coalition, an alliance of more than 25 independent poetry organizations across the United States, will devote March 2021 to exploring the theme “It is burning./ It is dreaming./ It is waking up.: Poetry & Environmental Justice.” How is this poem related to environmental justice? How does the map in the poem change over time? What happens to the ice in the second part of the poem? (Teachers, learn more about environmental justice.)

  7. Extension for Grades 7-8: What might a side-by-side map of the poem look like? Draw it and illustrate your map with lines from the poem. 

  8. Extension for Grades 9-12: Research what environmental justice, or injustice, looks like in your community, and the community leaders responsible for these issues. Write a letter to one or more of these leaders, expressing what you have learned and your opinion on the issues.

More Context for Teachers

The Poetry Coalition, an alliance of more than 25 independent poetry organizations across the United States, will devote March 2021 to exploring the theme “It is burning./ It is dreaming./ It is waking up.: Poetry & Environmental Justice” in a series of programs in eleven cities. Poetry Coalition members aim to demonstrate how poetry can positively provoke questions in their communities about environmental justice and spark increased engagement with this urgent topic. Browse the events and programs beginning March through June.

Poetry Glossary

This week’s poetic term is nature poetry, referring to poetry that engages with, describes, or considers the natural world. Read more.