Songs and Project Ideas for Teaching Poetry in Middle School

Although I was not a poetry fan when I was a college student, poetry became my absolute favorite topic to teach when I taught 8th grade English.

My "aha moment" happened when I was student teaching, and my mentor teacher told her students "Poetry is meant to be heard." Well, no wonder I didn't like it—we always read poems silently, then discussed them in class.

This revelation completely changed my thinking. Songs are poetry. 

Using music to teach poetry engages students immediately. It makes sound devices and figurative language real to them. And rocking out in class is the absolute best!

Here are some of my favorite songs to use for teaching poetry.

1. "Waving Through a Window" from Dear Evan Hansen. It's perfect for helping students grasp the concept of a speaker in a poem. My 8th graders could immediately relate to the theme and had the lyrics memorized the next day!
2. "Life is a Highway" by Rascal Flatts. Perfect for metaphor.
3. "Viva La Vida" by Coldplay. Allusions. Personification. Alliteration. Rhyme.
4. "My Wish" by Rascal Flatts. Its theme is ideal for 8th graders who are about to go to high school. It's also great for teaching the concept of speaker.

After introducing the elements of poetry and reviewing the definitions using handouts and foldables, we play Quizlet Live™ in class to master the terms.

Then we read poems by Longfellow, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and Langston Hughes. My students loved acting out "Paul Revere's Ride" to see how Longfellow uses sound to build suspense. It was a version of a poetry slam with the entire class reading and creating the sound effects.

One of my favorite projects is after reading and analyzing Whitman, Dickinson, and Hughes, my students wrote poems about their heroes, hopes, and dreams.

The hero poems were especially poignant. One football player wrote the most beautiful tribute to his grandmother using a tree as a metaphor.

Inspiring and drawing out deep thinking takes practice. After a year or two of trial and error, I created some graphic organizers to help students pause and reflect. The results were better than I imagined. 

These projects made a powerful bulletin board and their parents treasured their child's work.