April 14 is National Poem in Your Pocket Day. Help your students celebrate this poetry day by instructing them to write a short poem on one side of a three-by-five index card. All day on April 14th, they can carry their poem around and recite it to friends and family, who will sign the blank side of the card. Offer a prize to the student who gets the most signatures.
Making poetry fun encourages fifth grade students to develop an appreciation for the art form. Ask your students to decide on a topic for a poem, then list words and phrases that describe or otherwise pertain to their topic. Next, they'll make a simple line drawing that represents their topic. For instance, if they chose cats as their topic, they'll draw a cat's face. Once their drawings are complete, they can write the words and phrases around it with commas between each one.
Your fifth grade students are mature enough to study a more difficult poem together as a group. Choose a poem and read it out loud a few times to your students. Now take the poem line by line, discussing the meaning. Students can look up any words they are unfamiliar with and spend time coming to understand deeper meanings of the poem as a whole.
Make poetry a year-long study for your fifth graders with a poetry journal. Have students fill a notebook with a poem a week throughout the school year. Make a shelf of poetry books available, and give students time to look through them and choose a poem to copy into their journals. At different times during the year, students also write their own original poetry into their books. Have a few students a day read a poem from their journals for the class, which gives practice for public speaking as well.