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Teach your children poetry; it opens the mind, lends grace to wisdom and makes the heroic virtues hereditary.
~ Sir Walter Scott

Great Literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree.
~ Ezra Pound

This Primary Source Set includes images, newspaper articles, written drafts, oral history interviews and original play manuscripts to help teach a found poetry activity.

Use these lesson plans (created by educators for educators) to explore literature and poetry with your students in your classroom:

Enhancing a Poetry Unit - (Grades 7-9) Students create poetry based on the language found in Depression Era oral histories.

1900 America: Historical Voices, Poetic Visions - (Grades 10-12) Students work in groups to express themselves creatively through a multi-media epic poem.

Murder and Mayhem - The Great Gatsby: Facts Behind the Fiction - (Grade 11) Students create newspapers recording significant events and attitudes of the 1920s related to The Great Gatsby.

Civil War through A Child's Eye, The - (Grades 6-8) Students use literature and photographs to view the Civil War from a child's perspective.

Figuring Somepin 'Bout the Great Depression - (Grades 9-12) Students create a scrapbook from the point of view of a migrant worker. This lesson can be used in connection with a unit on The Grapes of Wrath.

Grapes of Wrath - Scrapbooks and Artifacts, The - (Grades 9-12) Students conduct ethnographic research to show how cultural artifacts from The Grapes of Wrath support one of the book's many themes.

Jacob Have I Loved - (Grades 6-8) Students use visual images as an introduction to Jacob Have I Loved by Katherine Paterson.

Marco Paul's Travels on the Erie Canal - (Grades 3-5, Grades 6-8) Students trace Marco Paul’s 1840s journey through the Erie Canal.

To Kill a Mockingbird - (Grades 7-12) Students are guided on a journey through the Depression Era South in the 1930s. They become familiar with Southern experiences through the study of To Kill a Mockingbird and the examination of primary sources.

Twain's Hannibal - (Grades 9-12) Using both primary source documents and print materials, students analyze life around Hannibal, Missouri, during the latter half of the 19th century to determine what effects this location had on the writings of Mark Twain. This information is integrated with the reading of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Visions in the Dust - (Grades 5-8) Students gain an understanding of Dust Bowl history through the eyes of a child, using Karen Hesse's Out of the Dust.

Sea Changes: A Study of a New England Industry - (Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12,) Students study photographs, maps and interviews with two New England fishermen of the early 20th century, construct "found poetry", and research in Thomas to understand legislation restricting the fishing industry.

Recreation Yesterday and Today - (Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12,) Students research entertainment and recreation in the early 20th century and then compare the rural experience for this time period to the national experience and to their own experience. This lesson features excerpts from From the Hidewood: Memories of a Dakota Neighborhood, a book by Robert Amerson reflecting life in Deuel County, South Dakota, during the late 1920s and 1930s.

Nothing to Fear - (Grades 5-8) Students learn what the World War II experience was like for Japanese Americans living on the West Coast. This lesson includes a poetry activity.

America Dreams - (Grades 4-12) Students complete an interdisciplinary WebQuest to learn the story of a decade in American history, as they help define the American Dream. In this lesson, students can take the role of a poet.

Thomas Jefferson’s Library: Making a Case For a National Library - (Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12,) Students examine a Thomas Jefferson letter and identify techniques he used to persuade Congress to purchase his personal library. Students then consider a selection of those books and write their own persuasive letters urging the books' purchase.

Is there a title (or two) that you always read to (or with) your students when teaching about literature and poetry? Are there invaluable reference books that you use when working with this theme? Staff from The Library of Congress have generously donated favorite titles for the Literature and Poetry theme. We hope you will contribute your favorite titles to our growing bibliography!

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Create your own collaborative lesson plans using material related to this month's theme assembled from The Learning Page Collection Connections:

African-American Experience in Ohio, 1850-1920, Selections from the Ohio Historical Society, The - (Summary and Teaching Resources) This collection includes examples of oral histories, biographies, literature, poems, fables, literary reviews, humorous pieces and persuasive writing.

American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940 - (Summary and Teaching Resources) The life histories, in combination with fictional novels, can engage students in the study of themes such as loss of innocence, consequences of failure, or corruption and its consequences.

American Women: A Gateway to Library of Congress Resources for the Study of Women’s History and Culture in the United States - (Summary Only) Search this collection using the terms "author", "poet" or "literature".

American Notes: Travels in America, 1750-1920 - (Summary Only) This collection presents over 250 books documenting the travel in America. Authors include James Fenimore Cooper, William Cullen Bryant, Charles Dickens, Washington Irving, Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Frederick Law Olmsted, and Robert Louis Stevenson.

American Variety Stage: Vaudeville and Popular Entertainment, 1870-1920, The - (Summary and Teaching Resources) This collection contains 257 unpublished playscripts.

Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project 1936-1938 - (Summary and Teaching Resources) This collection contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery.

California As I Saw It: First-Person Narratives of California - (Summary and Teaching Resources) This collection consists of the full texts and illustrations of 190 works documenting the formative era of California

Creative Americans: Portraits by Carl Van Vechten, 1932-1964 - (Summary and Teaching Resources) Explore this collection for images of authors, poets and playwrights.

Evolution of the Conservation Movement: 1850-1920, The - (Summary and Teaching Resources) This collection includes the writings of Mary Hunter Austin, John Muir, Ernest Thompson Seton and Henry David Thoreau.

First-Person Narratives of the American South, 1860-1920 - (Summary and Teaching Resources) The materials in this collection lend themselves to the study of American rhetoric and prose.

New Deal Stage: Selections from the Federal Theatre Project, 1935-1939, The - (Summary and Teaching Resources) This collection contains 68 digitized Federal Theatre Project playscripts.

Nineteenth Century in Print: Periodicals, The - (Summary and Teaching Resources)

Nineteenth Century in Print: Books, The - (Summary and Teaching Resources)

Pioneering the Upper Midwest: Books from Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, ca. 1820-1910 - (Summary and Teaching Resources)

Poet at Work: Recovered Notebooks from the Thomas Biggs Harned Walt Whitman Collection - (Summary and Teaching Resources)

Stars and Stripes: The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 - (Summary and Teaching Resources) Each issue contains a selection of poems.

Lewis Carroll Scrapbook Collection, The - ( Summary Only) This original scrapbook contains items collected from 1855-1872 by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll.

Zora Neale Hurston Plays, The - (Summary Only)

These terms may be useful when searching for items related to this theme in the American Memory collections.