Annabel Lee Fun Activities Edgar Allan Poe for Middle School and High School

Edgar Allan Poe’s famous spooky poem, Annabel Lee, is one of the most engaging Halloween ela activities for middle school and high school students. This EDITABLE, NO PREP, GOOGLE SLIDES close reading activity is filled with fun activities and is a great way to acknowledge Halloween without losing focus on teaching ELA activities that address the standards for close reading and analysis!

In this fun activity, students work collaboratively to develop their understanding of figurative language and literary devices, including imagery, word choice (diction), repetition and rhyme (syntax), foreshadowing, tone, and more! The activity ends with a fun creative writing activity your students will LOVE - writing a response poem or letter from Annabel Lee!

About the Activity

Not only do students enjoy reading this fun spooky poem, students also practice key reading strategies to support their reading comprehension. Students start the activity with several pre-reading strategies, such as quick writes, predictions, and a collaborative pre-reading vocab activity. 

An annotation guide walks students through several readings of the poem, each time with a focus on a different aspect or literary device.

NO PREP - This resource includes a fully annotated copy of the poem and a detailed analysis of each stanza of the poem - PLUS - answer keys for the analysis questions.

Students can show you their annotations in order to "earn" access to the analysis questions, which guide them to make connections between their annotations and the larger messages of the poem.

When students finish the guided annotation, they work collaboratively on a creative writing prompt - writing a poem or letter in response from the perspective of Annabel Lee! 

This activity includes both DIGITAL and PRINTABLE formats.

What is included in this resource?

Teacher Guide: Step by step directions for teachers facilitating this activity

Student Friendly Directions and Presentation: Step-by-Step directions to guide students through the activity.

Annabel Lee Pre-Reading Activity: Students complete an engaging pre-reading quick write to activate prior knowledge and build student interest in the poem. Students make a prediction based on a quote from the poem and then complete a vocabulary exercise to ensure their comprehension of the poem. 

Annabel Lee Annotation Guide and Printable Copy of the Poem: A printable and editable copy of Annabel Lee (**public domain**) with an annotation guide to direct students through reading the poem with a focus on specific literary devices, like imagery, tone, word choice, repetition, and more!

Annabel Lee Close Reading Analysis Questions: Questions help students make meaning from their annotations in connection to larger themes from the poem, author's purpose, character development, and more!

Annabel Lee's Reply Post-Reading Activity: Ask your students: What does Annabel Lee think about all this!? Students plan and write a response to the poem's speaker - from Annabel Lee's Perspective!

100% Editable in Google Slides - students can complete their work digitally or on paper.

Activity Duration:

This activity will take about 2 hours, depending on student reading levels and how teachers choose to conduct the discussion activity.

Final Notes and Details:

Please note, this activity is created in GOOGLE SLIDES and is EDITABLE so you can meet the unique needs of your students.

**This resource is a PDF with links to Google Slides documents. However, the documents can also be downloaded from Google Slides as POWERPOINT files or PDF files if you prefer (file, download as, choose your format)

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Terms of Use:

This work is copyright. Your single-user license which allows you to use this resource with YOUR students only. If you'd like to share this resource with a teacher-friend, please provide them with a link to my store, so they can download their own. Thank you for being part of the Teachers Pay Teachers community and for supporting a fellow teacher!

Cover Credit: Thank you to Aneta Designs for the watercolor strokes in the product cover!