Poetry Activities for Blank Verse w/ William Shakespeare

This comprehensive resource on poetry explores the timeless charm of William Shakespeare's "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?" (Sonnet 18), focusing on the intriguing poetic form of blank verse. This multifaceted tool engages students in guided annotation, literary analysis through short answer and essay tasks, and an enriching creative poetry-writing activity, providing a thorough examination of blank verse in poetry.

With the ability to be smoothly broken down into separate elements, this resource serves as an excellent source for bell ringers, brief writing tasks, or substitute teacher lesson plans.

Alternatively, teachers can effortlessly unify the three provided activities to craft a step-by-step lesson lasting 1-2 weeks, dedicating attention to the adept use of blank verse in poetry.

Teaching this resource is simple! Start by presenting and discussing the poem with the poem analysis activity, which makes an excellent bell ringer. Then, give students time to complete the guided annotation activity and answer the analysis question that accompany the lesson (answer key included!). Next, students have the opportunity to write their own poem using the poetic concept analyzed earlier. Finally, you can assess students understanding of the poem and its poetic concepts with a literary analysis essay. That essay assignment comes with a prompt, writing tips, peer review, and Common Core-aligned rubric!

Your TeachSimple download includes:

• A POEM ANALYSIS ACTIVITY: Give students the opportunity to read William Shakespeare's "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?” (text included) and analyze the poem via an annotation activity and accompanying analysis questions (answer key included). Ideal for a bell ringer!

• A CREATIVE WRITING ASSIGNMENT: Provide students the opportunity to further develop their understanding of blank verse with a creative poem writing assignment (tied to one Common Core Writing Standard). Ideal for sub plans!

• A LITERARY ANALYSIS ESSAY: This essay assignment builds on students' understanding of blank verse and Shakespeare's "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?” The assignment handout includes essay guidelines, analysis prompt, literary analysis writing tips, and a peer review checklist. The included rubric is tied to 4 Common Core ELA Standards and includes a link to an editable rubric that allows for grading customization and seamless integration into Google Classroom and many other Learning Management Systems (LMS's)

Although this resource can be fitted for any secondary Language Arts classroom, it has been carefully designed to work best in grades 9 through 12. The included rubric is subtly but specifically tied to Common Core ELA Standards for Language (1 and 2) and Writing (2 and 4). This resource is provided in print-ready, bookmarked, and adjustable PDF files and PowerPoint Show files.

This resource contains 5 pages and 1 Google Sheet.