Inspired by the success of our popular syndicated series Poem-a-Day, we’re pleased to present Teach This Poem, winner of the 2018 Innovations in Reading Prize given by the National Book Foundation.
Produced for K-12 educators, Teach This Poem features one poem a week, accompanied by interdisciplinary primary sources and activities designed to help teachers quickly and easily bring poetry into the classroom. The series is produced with the assistance of Curriculum Consultant Ansley Moon and was developed with Educator in Residence Dr. Madeleine Fuchs Holzer who continues to provide oversight and guidance. Teach This Poem is available for free via email.
Watch a video about Teach This Poem and teaching with primary sources with Dr. Holzer and our Education Ambassador Richard Blanco.
Read a short essay that more fully describes the framework upon which Teach This Poem is based.
See our suggestions to help you adapt Teach This Poem for remote or blended learning.
Read more about Teach This Poem’s impact.
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.
Watch the video of Israel “IZ” Kamakawiwoʻole's “Hawai’i ‘78.”
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.
“For a while now, there have been discussions within our communities about disaggregating this grouping [Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month] because we aren’t really sure if this is actually serving any of us. So, from a Pacific Islander poetry perspective, this grouping has resulted in our issues and creative work being somewhat invisible within the American public sphere, because our work tends to be eclipsed by the really amazing work of Asian American poets.” Listen to or read the interview with May 2022 Poem-a-Day guest editor Brandy Nālani McDougall.
This week’s glossary term is speaker, the voice of the poem, similar to a narrator in fiction. Read more.