“…Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!”

            Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

–The Raven, Edgar Allen Poe

The American Academy of American Poets introduced April as National Poetry Month in the United States in 1996 and in Canada in 1998 as a way to increase awareness and appreciation of poetry.
Engage and inspire your students with the imagery, musicality, and joviality from the likes of Edgar Allen Poe, Robert Frost, Brewster Higley, and Sara Teasdale. Perhaps there is a budding Emily Dickinson or Langston Hughes among your students just yearning for the proper encouragement and instruction. Writing poetry improves cognitive function, may heal emotional pain, may lead to greater self-awareness, and offers a vehicle for students to express themselves. But perhaps you are asking yourself, “How does teaching poetry meet CCSS?”

Here is just a short list of the comprehensive strategies that poetry can address, thanks to a recent EdWeek post:

• Making inferences
• Citing specific textual evidence to support conclusions and answers
• Determining and analyzing the theme of a text
• Analyzing the way ideas develop over the course of a text
• Interpreting words and phrases
• Analyzing connotative and figurative meanings of words
• Analyzing how word choice shapes a text
• Assessing how point of view shapes a text

So if you’re a Benchmark Universe user, we suggest incorporating these timely e-book titles into your classroom activities/lessons/daily plans. Just imagine asking your very attentive class: “Why would the poet choose that title for the poem?” or “What word is most important in this poem?” or “How are the sentences and stanzas connected?”

All of these books are available with audio, so to hear all their delicious linguistic intonation, inflection, and dramatic pauses, just click the PLAY button at the top center of the navigation bar.

– Opinions About Three Victorian-Era Poets: Christina Rossetti, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Emily Dickinson Level O/34

– The New Colossus Levels N-Y (30-70)

– Analytical Arguments About Poetry: Interpretations of Three Classic Poems Level Y/70

– Haiku, Nine Poems no level

– Cinquain no level

– Limericks no level

– Text Connections Poetry (13 titles) – Book number denotes suggested grade level

E-Poster:

– From the Poem “Paul Revere’s Ride”

Did you know? Some historians believe that William Shakespeare was born and died on the same day in April, April 23^rd.

† Please note: If these titles are missing from your library, they may not be included in your current Benchmark Universe subscription. Contact your rep or e-mail us to learn more about adding new titles to your subscription!