Teaching Expertise

Poetry is still a hot subject in 6th grade! Poems can still be engaging and fun for your students. Sixth grade takes on a few more serious common core standards, but that doesn’t take away from the importance socially and emotionally for your students.

Sixth grade is a time when students are beginning to really create their own poems and analyze poems intricately. Help students understand poems and the structure of different poems.

We’ve created a list of all the different styles of poetry! Hitting literary elements along with poetic structures. You’ll find something on this list for even your most difficult students.

1. Ode to My Shoes By: Francisco X. Alarcon

Learn More: Poetry Foundation

2. The Walrus and the Carpenter By: Lewis Carroll

Learn More: Poetry Foundation

3. Lend a Hand By: Anonymous 

Learn More: Poem Hunter

4. Amazing Grace By: John Newton

Learn More: Poem Hunter

5. My Excuse By: Kenn Nesbitt

Learn More: Poetry 4 Kids

6. Keep A-Pluggin’ Away By: Paul Laurence Dunbar

Learn More: Your Daily Poem

7. The Sidewalk Racer By: Lillian Morrison 

Learn More: Blue Sky Big Dreams

8. My Friend By: Ella Wheeler

Learn More: Internet Poem

9. Oranges By: Gary Soto 

Learn More: Ed Helper

10. The Raven By: Edgar Allen Poe

Learn More: Poetry Foundation

11. Fernando the Fearless By: Kenn Nesbitt

Learn More: Poetry 4 Kids

12. Willow and Ginkgo By: Eve Marriam 

Learn More: Cor Kwant

13. I Hear America Singing By: Walt Whitman 

Learn More: Poets.org

14. I, Too By: Langston Hughes

Learn More: Poets.org

15. The Road Not Taken By: Robert Frost 

Learn More: Poem Hunter

16. The Brown Thrush By: Lucy Larcom 

Learn More: Lit 2 Go

17. The Sandpiper By: Celia Thaxter

Learn More: Poem Hunter

18. Melvin the Mummy By: Kenn Nesbitt

Learn More: Poetry 4 Kids

19. My Nobody By: Anonymous

Learn More: Poetry Foundation

20. The Wind By: Robert Louis Stevenson 

Learn More: Your Daily Poem

21. Jabberwocky By: Lewis Carroll

Learn More: Poetry Foundation

22. A House, A Home By: Lorraine M. Halli

Learn More: English For Students

23. Godfrey Gordon Gustavus Gore By: William Brighty Rands

Learn More: Victorian Web

24. When We Two Parted By: George Gordon Byron 

Learn More: Poets.org

25. The Charge of the Light Brigade By: Alfred, Lord Tennyson 

Learn More: Poetry Foundation

26. The Brook By: Lord Alfred Tennyson 

Learn More: Poem Hunter

27. A Strange Old Man Fell Out of Bed By: Kenn Nesbitt

Learn More: Poetry 4 Kids

28. Contentment By: Edward Dyer

Learn More: Discover Poetry

29. Nothing Gold Can Stay By: Robert Frost 

Learn More: Poets.org

30. There Are Birds Here By: Jamaal May

Learn More: Poetry Foundation

31. We Wear the Mask By: Paul Laurence Dunbar

Learn More: Daily Poetry

32. Another Reason Why I Don’t Keep a Gun in the House By: Billy Collins

Learn More: Lyrik Line

33. The Inchcape Rock By: Robert Southey 

Learn More: All Poetry

34. Still I Rise By: Maya Angelou

Learn More: Poetry Foundation

35. So You Want to Be a Writer? By: Charles Bukowski

Learn More: Poets.org

Conclusion

There are so many reasons to include Poetry in your classroom. Here’s a list of some great poems to create lessons with and bring to your students. They are fun, engaging and will surely promote reading, speaking, and listening skills.

These short texts will feel much less intimidating than a novel would. Making less of a focus on the actual reading, but rather on comprehension. Students should see reading as an enjoyable activity you can make that happen through poetry!

Take all of these amazing poems into consideration, read them yourself, look up some activities. The good news is most of these already have activities out there.