1. Invite your students to watch award-winning poets read their poems as part of this year’s Dear Poet project.
     
  2. Learn more about the educator resources on Poets.org with this brief video guide featuring Richard Blanco.

  3. Begin each day or class period with a new poem.
     
  4. Find your local state, county, or city poet laureate, or find out how you can create a local poet laureate position. 
     
  5. Talk to your school librarian about creating a reading list of poetry books.
     
  6. Send your students on a scavenger hunt for favorite poems in the Poems for Kids section of Poets.org.
     
  7. Ask your students to choose a poem to read aloud to their families.
     
  8. Organize a reading of your students reading original or favorite poems out loud.
     
  9. Ask each student to create an anthology of their favorite poems.
     
  10. Show your students these poets’ definitions of the word poetry and ask them to provide their own.
     
  11. Decorate your learning environment with the National Poetry Month poster.
     
  12. Read and share poems by U.S. Poet Laureate, Ada Limón.

  13. Explore the glossary and introduce your students to a different poetic term every day.
     
  14. Sign up for Teach This Poem to receive a weekly poem, classroom activities, and multimedia resources.
     
  15. Have your students make and send greeting cards to their family members featuring lines of poetry.
     
  16. Browse these lesson plans about ars poetica poems and assign your students to write their own.
     
  17. Ask your students to read aloud a poem from Respect the Mic: Celebrating 20 Years of Poetry from a Chicagoland High School.
     
  18. Have your class choose poems and write them in chalk on the sidewalk or driveway.
     
  19. Invite your students to read about ekphrastic poetry and write poems in response to their favorite pieces of art.
     
  20. Make a playlist of audio recordings of poets reading their work.
     
  21. Publish a school-wide literary journal or anthology of student poems.
     
  22. Help your students find digital events and opportunities through Poetry Near You.
     
  23. Celebrate Poem in Your Pocket Day on April 27 and ask your students to mail or email a poem to someone in their community.
     
  24. Talk about immigration and heritage in the classroom with these selections of poems and lesson plans.
     
  25. Browse this selection of poems about spring.
     
  26. Have your students illustrate poems and hang them around their homes.
     
  27. Celebrate Earth Day with this lesson plan which asks students to build a birdhouse out of reusable materials.
     
  28. Assign your students to watch and respond to a select Blaney Lecture recording.
     
  29. Challenge students to create a poetry notebook and write one poem per day.
     
  30. Download the Poetry in the Classroom Calendar and plan ahead for more opportunities to bring poetry into the classroom.

Read more ways to celebrate National Poetry Month