Poetry for 3rd, 4th, and 5th Grades: Learn to Love Language Using the Best Poems

The focus of this class is to hook kids on poetry. Poetic forms such as free verse, haiku, limerick, narrative, ode, sonnet, and epic will be taught each week. But talking about these forms too much can kill an interest in poetry if not done in the context of great poems that spark the imagination, so that is how these forms will be presented. Students will not be asked to memorize poetic forms, but they will read poetry that utilizes these structures, and they will attempt to use these structures in their own poetry. 
My rule for teaching poetry to children is this: if it can't be illustrated, it shouldn't be introduced to young children. They need something concrete to imagine. Each week, we will focus on two poets and a few of their poems. We will look at pictures that relate to the poems. We will talk about word choice and what each carefully placed selection was trying to help them imagine. We will play games as we move words around and try word substitutions. We will act poems out. We will watch video clips that inspire (if we are writing a poem about hippos, we might watch a 30 second video about hippos). Then we will begin writing our own poetry, and we will write great quantities of it. The more we write, the easier it will become, and the less we will worry about perfection. Our poetry will not be about perfection but about experimentation. Each week, we will break into small groups and write a short poem together (kind of like improvisation where one person thinks of a word and the next adds to it), and we will also write the beginning of a poem on our own that we will then share in small groups. Sharing our opinions and thoughts along with our creative work will be the backbone of our class. Students should expect to discuss and contribute, and they will be supported by me and their classmates as they do so. No fear of failure or looking stupid in this class. Everyone will write both great and terrible poems as we go along (me included), but we will have fun doing it!
Our schedule of poets will be as follows:
Class 1: Ogden Nash and Emily Dickinson
Class 2: Shel Silverstein and Rachel Field
Class 3: Billy Collins and X.J. Kennedy
Class 4: Mary Oliver and Bobbi Katz
Class 5: Langston Hughes and Walter de la Mare
Class 6: Walter R. Brooks and William Carlos Williams
Class 7: Rudyard Kipling and Christina Rossetti
Class 8: Lewis Carroll and Jack Prelutsky