Blank Verse Teacher Resources

Shakespeare's use of language is the focus of this short PowerPoint. Each of the three slides describes one way he chose to write his plays: in iambic pentameter, and in couplets. The final slide describes a sonnet, which is a lyric poem...

What kind of shoe is this person? What time of day is this person? Aspiring poets’ responses to a list of questions provide descriptive words and phrases that can be crafted into a blank verse poem. A link to sample poems is provided.

Break this presentation into two or three days so as not to overwhelm your kids. Fifty-four slides is a lot of slides, but the PowerShow is well-organized, and terms are defined clearly and illustrated in examples provided. A general...

What is blank verse? Iambic pentameter? Meter? Use the attached document to review these ideas with your middle schoolers. This plan has learners get up and stomp to iambic pentameter, which is a fun change from just clapping the...

Blank verse, stichomythia, soliloquy, allusion, oxymoron, malaprop? Readers of A Midsummer Night’s Dream will need to know these terms to successfully complete a study guide designed for the first two acts of Shakespeare’s comedy. The...

Consisting of a thorough and straightforward list of poetry terminology, the first part of this presentation would be a good introduction to a poetry unit, or a review for an upcoming poetry project. The list of terms is quite extensive,...

Ta DUM, ta DUM, ta DUM, ta DUM, ta DUM. The force will be strong in the hearts of your young Jedi as they use their lightsabers to strike the accentted syllables in lines from Ian Doescher's William Shakespeare's Star Wars: Verily, A New...

A good poem has form and structure built into it. Middle schoolers see that the structure of a poem consists of stanza, form, rhyme, and meter. The structure also contributes to a poem's meaning. After listening to, and discussing, a few...

Poetry is all about sound and rhythm. The sound of the words, the rhythm of the lines, and the emotional atmosphere created by these elements and the literary devices poets use, compress whole stories into a few stanzas. The specialized...

Students explore tanka, a form of Japanese poetry. They read and analyze tankas to determine the structure and intent, and compose a traditional and a non-traditional tanka.

“The mind is its own place. . .” and Milton’s Paradise Lost is sure to expand the vocabulary (and the minds) of young readers. Assist that growth with an activity that asks individuals to first select and define five unfamiliar words,...

Students explore the structure and content of the Tanka form and to arrive at a definition of the structure in English. They analyze a tanka to determine its structure and intent and compose two Tanka; one in traditional form and one...

In this online interactive reading comprehension worksheet, students respond to 15 multiple choice questions about Shakespeare's King Henry IV. Students may submit their answers to be scored.

In this reading and study guide students define vocabulary and literary terms from Act I of Julius Caesar. Students give examples of literary terms found in the reading and answer comprehension questions.

Students role cubes prepared with vocabulary and parts of speech on each side. They collect words and create poems from the words collected. They read their poems to the class.

Very clear and detailed explanation of blank verse, including related terms such as iambic pentameter and other forms of meter in poetry. Also includes a "How to and Examples," section that discusses the difficulties of writing in blank...

This discussion of blank verse is taken from a larger article on Shakespeare and the Globe Theater. It defines the term and discusses its importance in the history of British poetry.

This brief site provides a definition of the term blank verse, a short description of its history, and an example of its use from a poem.

This entry is based on "Notes on the Blank Verse of Christopher Marlowe" by T.S. Eliot (1888?1965), from The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism (1922).

Clickable list to full-text examples of the sonnets and blank verse poems of this English renaissance poet.

Explains terms used in discussing how verse and prose were used by Shakespeare, and how to recognize prose, rhyme, and blank verse in his plays, and what their functions are. RL.9-10.5 text structure effects

This page lists and defines many poetic terms commonly associated with rhyme and rhyme scheme. Unfortunately, there are no examples given. The list includes the following: anapestic meter, blank verse, couplet, dactylic meter, end rhyme,...

Paradise Lost is an epic poem (12 books, totaling more than 10,500 lines) written in blank verse, telling the biblical tale of the Fall of Mankind. Read an overview and view additional resources such as articles, collection items, and...

An article discussing how Shakespeare used prose and verse in his plays, and what we can learn from this. The author cites numerous examples from Shakespeare's plays and a few from other authors. Includes images of documents in the...