A Poetry Friday schedule can take as little as 25–30 minutes a week, or you can break that time into five short daily sessions. Either way, you don’t need to carve out hours of instructional time to build a yearlong poetry rhythm into your classroom.
The secret to “fitting in” regular Poetry Friday experiences is keeping the structure the same each week.
Sure, the poems will change, and the discussion might go in a different direction, but overall, the pattern of the lesson stays the same. This means you – and your students – always know what comes next.
When you don’t have to think about the schedule, there’s more brainpower available for learning the concepts.
(Related Reading: What is Poetry Friday?)
A Poetry Friday Schedule in Five Short Sessions
Monday: Read the mentor poem. Discuss what students notice about the poem and explain the poetic focus for the week.
Tuesday: Write a poem (or part of a poem) as a class using the same poetic focus and/or the same topic as the mentor poem.
Wednesday: Students write their own poems. (This might take more than 5 minutes, but it can be finished tomorrow.)
Thursday: Students revise or finish their poems.
Friday: Students copy their poems onto a template, store them in a portfolio, or present them to the class.
A Poetry Friday Schedule in One 30-Minute Session
10 minutes: Read the mentor poem. Discuss what students notice about the poem and explain the poetic focus for the week.
5 minutes: Model writing a poem (or part of a poem) using the same poetic focus and/or the same topic as the mentor poem.
15 minutes: Students write their own poems on a template and store them in a portfolio, or present them to the class.
Poetry Friday is Worth the Time
Rather than thinking of Poetry Friday as “just another thing to fit in,” think about all the benefits it will bring your students.
For one thing, poetry builds reading fluency and text analysis skills in bite-sized pieces. If you thoughtfully choose poems that are relevant and interesting to your students (instead of only using long poems written decades ago), they’ll be more engaged and willing to read with you.
(Related Reading: How to Teach Poetry)
Structuring Poetry Friday around discussions and poem creation allows you to get to know your students better and build relationships with them.
And when students revisit poetry concepts throughout the year (instead of learning them once in a single unit), they have more opportunities to practice and apply those concepts to new poems.
A Year of Poetry Friday Lessons, Done for You
Poetry Friday can be very rewarding, but it can also seem like a lot of work: You have to identify an appropriate poetic focus, find a matching poem, pick out discussion questions, figure out what to say to teach the concept, and make a template for student poems…every week!
That’s exactly why I created A Classful of Poets.
It has 38 weeks’ worth of Poetry Friday content (so you never have to scramble for a lesson), and all the mentor poems are originally written (meaning no AI or copyright issues).
The poetic focuses spiral, so students will have a chance to revisit earlier concepts with new poems, further cementing their understanding.
Some poem topics are seasonal (Veteran’s Day, spring storms) while others are more general (playgrounds or good books).
Check out A Classful of Poets and make Poetry Friday a regular part of your classroom routine.
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F.A.Q.
Poetry Friday can take as little as 25–30 minutes a week. You can complete it in one weekly block, or break the routine into five short sessions throughout the week. The exact timing can vary depending on your students, the poem, and how much writing or discussion you include.
No! “Poetry Friday” is a classroom routine, not a rule that says you can only teach poetry on Fridays. You can spread your poetry activities across the week, as in a five-session schedule, or set aside one block of time on whatever day works best for your schedule.
A simple Poetry Friday routine can include reading and discussing a mentor poem, teaching a poetic focus, modeling how to use that focus in writing, and giving students an opportunity to write and share their own poems. Keeping the basic structure consistent makes the routine easier to plan and easier for students to follow.
You need a new poem and poetic focus, but you don’t have to reinvent your entire lesson structure every week. A consistent Poetry Friday routine lets you reuse the same basic sequence while changing the mentor poem, discussion, and writing focus. This makes it possible to give students regular poetry practice without creating a completely new lesson from scratch each week.
