Found Poetry - Poetry Activities for Fiction and Nonfiction - Writing Poetry

Writing found poetry is a great way to deepen understanding of a fiction or nonfiction text. This packet of poetry activities helps students understand, enjoy, and create “found” poetry. Students reshape an existing text into something new.

⭐️ What is “found” poetry? Students choose words and phrases from an existing page of text and use these to create a poem. This is a great exercise to practice understanding theme and mood.

What You Get:

This resource contains three source texts and three sample "found" poems. While “found” poems can be created from any text, I’ve chosen three types to showcase here:

1. A poem created from a single fiction text
2. A poem created from a single newspaper article
3. A poem created from two newspaper articles on the same topic

The Sample Texts:

• excerpt from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
• "Steamboat Burnt" from The National Gazette (1834)
• "William Penn" from The National Gazette (1834)

⭐️ Use these poetry activities to introduce found poetry to your students. After practicing with these texts, they can apply this technique to your class novels, independent reading, and more! Found poetry is so flexible and fun!

What other teachers are saying:

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ “This was really helpful to use for a mini-unit at the end of the year. Poetry worksheets were print ready and very user friendly! Thanks!” -Laura L.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! I am using this to help my students with close reading techniques; however, I've also turned this into our month's independent reading project. This lesson was a great way to introduce it!” -Marilyn M.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ “Great resource for a poetry unit. The scaffolding for creating a Found poem is very effective.” -Renee H.

❤️ You can also check out all of my Poetry Resources in my store.

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-Danielle @ Nouvelle ELA