This comprehensive resource is a must-have for teachers who want to fill their classrooms with poetry. With descriptions of poetic genres, lessons and teaching tools, sample poems, and ideas for sharing and exploration, this book will inspire, inform, and entertain. Select from a wide range of response activities that will involve children in reading, writing, role playing, and the arts. Assessment techniques for supporting the poetry program complement this highly readable volume. Stimulate creativity and imagination and learn to create a "culture of poetry" that demonstrates the power of words and strengthens the language lives of children.