13 Ways to Teach a Poem

There are many things I struggle with as a teacher, but one thing that always seems to come naturally is thinking of different ways to approach a text. I get bored easily, so I try not to do the same method or activity too often. You might think this adds up to a lot of planning work for me, but fortunately I enjoy thinking creatively about approaching a lesson. This is especially true for teaching poetry, since their short structure and interpretive message opens even more doors for creative teaching strategies.

Here are 13 different ways to approach teaching a poem, most of which can be prepped in just a few minutes. For this lesson, I’ve selected Mary Oliver’s “Some Questions You Might Ask,” a poem I studied in a student workshop last week. I’ve always loved Oliver’s works and this is a great and versatile poem that can work with any level of learner.

Here’s the poem:

Some Questions You Might Ask
By Mary Oliver

Is the soul solid, like iron?
Or is it tender and breakable, like
the wings of a moth in the beak of the owl?
Who has it, and who doesn’t?
I keep looking around me.   5
The face of the moose is as sad
as the face of Jesus.
The swan opens her white wings slowly.
In the fall, the black bear carries leaves into the darkness.
One question leads to another.      10
Does it have a shape? Like an iceberg?
Like the eye of a hummingbird?
Does it have one lung, like the snake and the scallop?
Why should I have it, and not the anteater
who loves her children?      15
Why should I have it, and not the camel?
Come to think of it, what about the maple trees?
What about the blue iris?
What about all the little stones, sitting alone in the moonlight?
What about roses, and lemons, and their shining leaves?    20
What about the grass?

1. Focus on the tone

One of the first things most poem lessons target is analyzing the tone of the poem. This is a good strategy for students with limited exposure to poetry. Identifying a poem’s tone a subjective but teachable lesson. Ask students to use adjectives to describe the speaker’s intended feeling for the reader. To push students towards complexity, ask students to identify tone shifts. For example, there is a tone shift when the speaker moves from discussing the face of the moose (which is “sad as the face of Jesus”) and onto a swan opening her wings. In fact, each new natural image seems to pair with an emotion. Ask students, does each one represent a tone shift, or do they all work together to build a more complex tone (I vote the latter, but there are interesting arguments for both!).

Use this strategy for: Analyzing poetic elements and discussing complexity.

2. Focus on a skill

Teachers often select poems because we like the message, but it can be interesting to consider poems based on the skills they use. As an AP Lit teacher, I often have to consult the CED for different literary skills. In “Some Questions You Might Ask,” Oliver uses various rhetorical questions to pose figurative comparisons between herself and items of nature. Above all, it utilizes similes more than any other form of figurative language.

Because similes are pretty basic, students usually overlook them to get more difficult skills. However, this is a great poem for teaching how similes can contribute to a strong interpretation, compounding into symbols and the poem’s theme.

Use this strategy for: Analyzing poetic elements.

3. Pair it with a poem

Before its 2019 course redesign, some AP Lit poetry prompts asked students to analyze two paired poems. While this question has since been eliminated, it is still a good lesson for students studying poetry. They may struggle with one poem more than another, but the shared message or theme between the two can help them analyze both.

For this poem, I’d suggest pairing it with “A Noiseless Patient Spider” by Walt Whitman. Whitman, like Oliver, wrote plenty of nature poetry. This poem also pairs images from nature to questions of the soul. However, they differ in style and tone. Whitman’s text is more narrative while Oliver’s relies more on rhetorical questions.

Use this strategy for: Analyzing theme or teach forming an arguable claim.

4. Pair it with prose

One great way to exemplify a poem’s structure is to pair it with a prose excerpt. Students feel so boggled by poetry because of its line structure, but pairing it with a prose piece on the same topic can help make it seem more accessible. I suggest pairing it with Where the Crawdads Sing, which likewise uses lots of natural imagery to build towards symbols and theme. Here’s an excerpt from Crawdads available on the internet.

Give this to the students first, asking them to analyze the natural imagery and how it helps build the theme or tone of the text. This is a great segue into studying the poem. Coach them to see that, despite its line arrangements, the poem has a lot in common with the prose excerpt as well.

Use this strategy for: Highlighting structure or teach analyzing theme.

5. Pair it with a video

When Planet Earth came out in 2006, my husband and I were absolutely mesmerized with it. I always grew up reading National Geographic and checking out books about animals in the children’s nonfiction section at my local library. However, Planet Earth took these animals off the page and made them feel close enough to touch. Even better, the animals’ lives became narratives, so much of the coverage evoked moods in its imagery, much as a poem does.

To introduce Mary Oliver’s poem, show this clip, a promo to Planet Earth II (not as good as I, but still excellent). As they watch, ask students to write down what descriptive words come to mind as they see different images in the video. For example, here are some of mine:

• Childlike (Serval cat cub)
• Solitary (Komodo dragon)
• Powerful (wild horses)
• Fierce (hawk going through cacti)
• Community (flamingoes)

When finished, ask how simple 1-4 second shots of animals can somehow evoke images or moods. What other natural creatures are symbolic in nature? These questions will get them in the right mindset for discussing Oliver’s nature poems.

Use this strategy for: Finding symbols and discussing imagery.

6. Move through it gradually

A couple of years ago, I joined Timm Freitas from The Garden of English online to discuss how we approach teaching poetry in the classroom. In the video, we discussed Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias” together. I explained how I help students transition from approaching poetry simply to in more advanced complex ways. This can happen gradually, like starting in ninth or tenth grade and building towards AP Lit. But it can also happen within one lesson.

Here’s a free infographic that asks questions about any poem. The first questions are easier to answer, but as they get more difficult, students gradually move to questions that help them interpret the poem and develop a claim in response to it.

Use this strategy for: Interpreting poems and forming an arguable claim.

7. Break it apart

I got this idea from Susan Barber’s first day activity, using Maggie Smith’s “Good Bones.” I’ve also used it with sonnets to help students not only study meter and rhyme, but a sonnet’s content as well. The idea is to cut up a poem into lines or phrases, then asking students to try to follow the poet’s train of thought and put it in the right order.

Since Mary Oliver’s poem offers so many different thoughts, I’d split this poem into just four parts. I’ve indicated those spots below:

Some Questions You Might Ask
By Mary Oliver

Is the soul solid, like iron?
Or is it tender and breakable, like
the wings of a moth in the beak of the owl?
Who has it, and who doesn’t?
I keep looking around me.   5

_________________________________
The face of the moose is as sad
as the face of Jesus.
The swan opens her white wings slowly.
In the fall, the black bear carries leaves into the darkness.
One question leads to another.      10

_________________________________
Does it have a shape? Like an iceberg?
Like the eye of a hummingbird?
Does it have one lung, like the snake and the scallop?
Why should I have it, and not the anteater
who loves her children?      15

_________________________________
Why should I have it, and not the camel?
Come to think of it, what about the maple trees?
What about the blue iris?
What about all the little stones, sitting alone in the moonlight?
What about roses, and lemons, and their shining leaves?    20
What about the grass?

If you were to study the lines in these chunks, students could see how the lines progress into each other. The first few lines establish the central question, so students should inevitably move it to the front. Line 10 says “one question leads to another,” moving to the rapid-fire questions in lines 11-15. Line 16 steps away for a moment, asking “Why should I have it, and not the camel?” Students may connect that the speaker is subtly comparing herself to these natural items, something seen as having a soul versus something that isn’t.

Yes, this is a challenge. But the student-led and whole-group discussions it creates are wonderful for discussing poem structure and meaning.

Use this strategy for: Interpreting poems and analyzing structure.

8. Hexagonal thinking

Another student-led activity is using hexagonal thinking to connect topics and themes in a text. I first learned of hexagonal thinking from Betsy Potash’s blog post, here. I printed off her free templates from her website and used them with my World Lit class on their first day of class. Some students were analyzing poems and others were analyzing prose excerpts, but it worked for each text. Instead of pre-writing words on the hexagons, I asked students to write the words themselves, then align the different images, themes, and emotions as the hexagons align. Using Betsy’s arrows, they found one point where three hexagons met and wrote a theme statement on it.

For Oliver’s poem, I could have three different hexagons saying “observing,” “nature, and “guilt.” Together, I could form a claim saying that in looking at the world around her, the speaker feels both awe and guilt at her heightened place over the beautiful natural items that surround her.

That took me like 2 minutes. Imagine what your students could produce in small groups!

Use this strategy for: Interpreting poems and forming an arguable claim.

9. Get them moving

One of my most popular methods for studying a poem is to put different questions or tasks around my room at my tables. Students group up (or fly solo) and visit each table to complete the task. Usually we read a poem together and they move around to study different skills, but I’ve also targeted one skill and students move to study different poems.

I also used this strategy earlier this year with my silent discussion lesson, posted here. With all of my lessons like this, I make use of standard-based questions, such as ones you would find in the AP Lit or Lang CED. I created these printable task cards that I can grab in a pinch, meaning this lesson requires no prep at all.

Use this strategy for: Analyzing poetic elements and analyzing theme.

10. Model its style

If you want to embrace some creative writing, poetry models are always a great lesson. After reading through a poem and discussing it (which can be brief), students must write their own poem, modeling it after the style of the mentor text.

This lesson works perfectly with Oliver’s poem, in fact, because you don’t need to change the title. While Oliver poses questions on the soul-status of natural images, that fits with her personality. What introspective, maybe even random thoughts cross your mind? For example, I often sit at a stoplight and wonder about the lives of those in their cars around me. So I might write a poem, still titled “Some Questions You Might Ask,” that starts with the line:

Are you going home, weary from a day of work?
Are you headed to the pharmacy,
Nostrils aflame and chest aching?
Or is it your child, red and sweaty
With an inexplicable rash?
I can’t help but wonder
As I look about the cars around me…

(I didn’t spend as much time on that as I could, so please forgive me). Students love this lesson because they don’t get much time for creative writing or introspection in advanced literature classes.

 Use this strategy for: Interpreting poems and analyzing structure.

11. Hear its sound

To exemplify the sound of a poem, I love to do choral readings. I learned this strategy in an AP Lit workshop as a new teacher. My instructor told us to read a certain poem, underlining words or phrases that we felt were important. We did this in silence. When we finished, she told us she would read the poem aloud. But, when she was on a word that we had underlined, we must read aloud with her.

The effect, which I have successfully recreated in my classes numerous times, is amazing. The poem’s words swell with voices in and out as the poem is read. Afterwards, I ask students why they selected certain phrases as “important” and what that means to them. Usually, they’re more inclined to answer this after the reading, since they learn that other students chose the same lines as them if they read with them during the choral reading. On the other hand, there are some parts where no one reads with me. Why are these lines “unimportant?” If they are, why include them?

I use choral readings especially for narrative poems, where a poem might be simpler or the analysis a quicker study.

Use this strategy for: Interpreting poems and studying musical elements.

12. Backwards design

Lately, I’ve been planning some lessons in the backwards design fashion. I think about what I want them to be doing by the end of class (or for homework), then move backwards from there. This works best with a writing prompt. Try giving students a writing prompt WITHOUT the associated text first. Make sure they understand what is meant by the words in the prompt. It’s a great opportunity for tackling claims and line of reasoning in an AP class. Here’s a sample writing prompt for ““Some Questions You Might Ask”:

The following excerpt is from Mary Oliver’s “Some Questions You Might Ask.” In this passage, the speaker observes objects from nature and compares them to herself. Read the passage carefully. Then, in a well-written essay, analyze how Oliver uses literary elements and techniques to develop a complex statement on our place in the natural world.

After reading and annotating the prompt, ask students the following questions:

1. What am I being asked to do?
2. What kind of poem will I probably read?
3. What does “complex” mean and how might it apply to this poem?
4. What literary elements can I predict might be important?

Even without reading the poem, students might anticipate that imagery will be an important element and that it will have something to do with flora, fauna, or both. The most important thing is to make sure students know to go beyond identifying literary elements and to make an arguable claim that evolves into a line of reasoning. Once they’re ready, give them the poem and they’re off to analysis!

Use this strategy for: Discussing complexity and forming an arguable claim.

13. Keep it classic

I wrote this blog post over the series of several days and it’s creeping towards 3000 words. There are a lot of ideas here and I hope some of them inspired you. However, I wanted to include one more to help reassure you: there’s absolutely nothing wrong with simply talking about a poem. Most people who love poetry grew in that love because of conversations like this. Here’s a go-to lesson that anyone can do.

Read a poem. Talk about it. What does it mean? Why does it matter?

There you go. That’s all you need, really! Does it help to change it up from time to time? Absolutely. But there’s also nothing wrong with keeping it simple. In fact, I try to do one bare-bones poem lesson every month. I just pick one that I like and we talk about it. When the conversation has run its course, we move on. Zero prep, zero pressure.