How to Use Interactive Partner Poems to Celebrate Poetry Month

Are you looking for some new poems for your next poetry unit or to celebrate poetry month? Every April, in honor of National Poetry Month, I like to do a poetry unit that dives into different types of poems. One of my favorite poetry structures to spotlight is partner poems, also known as “poems for two voices.” 

Introducing Poems for Two Voices

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If you haven’t been introduced to partner poems or “poems for two voices,” you’ve been missing out. They’re fun, interactive, and students love them!

When I first started using partner poetry with my students, I mostly used Partner Poems for Building Fluency by Tim Rasinski. I still use a lot of those poems but have since developed my own poems with different perspectives and a back-and-forth narrative structure.

Each poem is structured like a readers theater script with assigned character parts, and most of my poems have a problem and solution, as well as a sequence of events that students can retell. Many of the partner poems I’ve created have obvious narrative elements, but others are just looking at ONE situation from two different points of view. (Check out some of the poems in the collection here!)

How to Integrate Partner Poems

Partner poems are great for “poem of the week” lessons or to use as part of a poetry or fluency unit. For a sprinkle of fluency around the holidays, I like to integrate my seasonal poems to use with my small groups. The poems are great for literacy centers or to even use for fluency warm-ups with your small groups. They even make a great sub activity to keep in your back pocket, since you can have them printed and ready to go at a moment’s notice!

If you want to take the poems one step further, the collection of partner poems can be used for integrated literacy skills, as well. They’re great for character analysis, making inferences, making connections, analyzing point of view, and so much more!

Learn more about using these partner poems in the classroom by checking out my blog post: Using Partner Poetry to Analyze Character Perspective.

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A FREE Partner Poem + Graphic Organizer

Ready to try out a partner poem? I’m sharing a FREE sample partner poem for email subscribers. If you’d like to download this poem, complete the form below or click here. If you’re already a subscriber, you may complete the form again (you won’t be subscribed twice) or download the resource from the resource library here.

Included with the free partner poem is a graphic organizer for comparing the characters’ point of view. You can use this graphic organizer with ANY of my partner poems (or any text that features two different perspectives). Students can record or illustrate the point of view of the two different characters. 

Additional Resources

If you like “Wake Up, Grizzly Bear!,” you’ll be sure to like the other partner poems in the collection! 

The poems are sold individually, seasonally in Spring/Summer and Fall/Winter bundles, or you can scoop them all up at a discount with the Everyday Bundle or Mega Bundle. I also have JUST the poems available (without the activities) in a growing anthology, which is perfect for printing out or using digitally!

Looking for more ideas? Here are additional poems and poetry books for multiple voices that I currently use in my classroom:

• Partner Poems for Building Fluency, Gr. 4-6 (Tim Rasinski)
• Partner Poems for Building Fluency, Gr. 2-4 (Bobbi Katz)
• Seeds, Bees, Butterflies, and More!: Poems for Two Voices (Carole Gerber)
• Messing Around on the Monkey Bars: and Other School Poems for Two Voices (Betsy Franco)
• Big Talk: Poems for Four Voices (Paul Fleischman)