Welcome to the world of quirky quiddities and question poems. Today’s poetry lesson plan explores poetry that asks a question or two. Plus, what happens when questions are unanswered, or on a lighter note, when we land ourselves in a land of quirky quiddities?! Read on to find out.

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The Question Poem Lesson Plan??

Grade Level: 3rd–5th
Poetic Form: Question

🎯 Objective

Students will understand how to generate and write a question poem, using questions as the central structure to explore a topic, feeling, or idea. They will analyze how poets use questions to express curiosity, wonder, and emotion.

🔗 Connections

• Learning Connection: Through the process of writing question poems, students will enhance their ability to think critically and ask thoughtful, open-ended questions about the world around them. Builds on students’ natural curiosity and encourages inquiry-based thinking.
• Poetry Connection: Question poems are made entirely of questions and inspire wonder, imagination, and deeper thinking about the world. Many poets use questions to invite readers into their poems, spark imagination, and encourage reflection. Helps students explore ideas and feelings through questions, not just statements.
• Book Connection (suggestions):
  • Book of Questions by Pablo Neruda translated by Sara Lissa Paulson with art by Paloma Valdivia. This is an edition made for kids!
  • If You Could Ask Your Dog One Question… by K.M. Messina with art by Nataliia Pavliuk 
  • I Wonder by Annaka Harris and illustrated by John Rowe
  • What If…? by Janie Spaht Gill and illustrated by Karen O. L. Morgan (you can read it on the Internet Archive)
  • And many more

✍️ Lesson Outline (45 – 60 minutes)

Introduction (10 minutes)

• Begin with a discussion: “What kinds of questions do you ask every day?” “Have you ever asked a question that nobody could answer?” “Have you ever wanted to ask an object a question?” Write several on the board.
  • Ask: What makes a good question?
• Read a short poem from one of the suggested books that uses questions (e.g., Shel Silverstein’s “What If” from A Light in the Attic).
  • Ask students: “Why do you think the poet asked these questions?” and “How do questions make the poem feel?”

Mini-Lesson: What Makes a Question Poem? (5 min)

A question poem:

• is entirely made up of questions, which can take many forms, like
  • Be a list of questions, about anything or around one idea
  • Ask questions to a person, animal, or object
  • Tell a story through questions
  • Sound like a conversation between two people (or more!)
  • Be creative in other ways too!
• is one where you don’t need to give any answers.
• can rhyme or not—your choice!
• can be short or long, in one piece or in stanzas.

Guided Practice (15 minutes)

• Provide a question starter (e.g., “What if…”, “Why do…”, “How does…”) and have students generate ideas about a simple topic (e.g., animals, seasons, feelings).
• Write a class poem together using the question starter. Write down student responses and discuss how each question adds to the theme.
• Example Class Poem:

Why do the stars shine so bright?
What makes the moon glow at night?
How do clouds change shape each day?
Can they carry rain or play?

Some more sample poems (asking an object/dialog) below

Independent Writing (20 minutes)

• Ask students to choose their own topic and write a question poem. They should come up with at least 5-6 questions that explore their chosen theme.
  • Offer a question challenge like using at least one simile or metaphor in their questions.

Sharing & Reflection (10 minutes)

• Allow students to share their poems with a partner or small group.
• Ask:
  • “How did it feel to write a poem of only questions?
  • “Did your poem make you think differently about your topic?”

Adaptations for Other Grades

• K–2 Adaptation: Create a class poem together. Use pictures to inspire questions. Students can illustrate and dictate their question to an adult. If they choose to write poems, they can keep it short – two to three questions.
• 6–8 Adaptation: Use deeper themes like identity, fairness, or emotions. Teach rhetorical questions, repetition, or metaphor. Challenge students to build emotional intensity or narrative through their questions. Have students write found question poems using lines from texts they’re reading

Extension Activities

1. Question Poem Collage — Have students turn their question poems into visual artwork by illustrating the questions and creating a class poetry collage, under a title “We Wonder”
2. Poetry Chain: Start a question poem chain where each student writes one question to add to an ongoing poem that builds throughout the day or week.
3. Cross-Curricular: Write question poems about science or social studies topics (e.g., “Questions for/about the Solar System”).
4. Answers!
   • Students trade poems and write a response poem answering a classmate’s questions.
   • Students pick one of their own poem’s questions, research it, and present the research with their poem. The research could also be in the form of a poem if they wish.

Quirky Quiddities and Unasked Questions

A Question Here

Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt challenges us to write a poem that tells a story in the style of a blues song or ballad. One way into this prompt may be to use it to retell a family tragedy or story, or to retell a crime or tragic event that occurred in our hometown. Read Brigit Pegeen Kelly’s poem “Song” for inspiration.

My Attempt

🎵 Questions Unanswered: Songs Unsung 🎵
(A Blues Ballad)

She walked past us as we strolled each day,
We smiled at her, she smiled our way.
Sometimes her eyes would linger long—
Like maybe she wanted to belong.

🎶 Refrain:
If only we knew… if only we’d asked…
Now we’re left with questions unanswered, lost in the past.

We were caught in our teenage talks,
She—just a neighbor we passed on walks.
But oh, her voice—so pure, so bold,
Spoke like fire, wrapped in gold.

I’d watch her rehearse for the shows in town,
Got a front-row seat as I helped around.
And I’d wonder if that love duet was true—
Did she sing for him, or just sing it through?
She glowed beside him in the spotlight’s glow,
A spark in her eyes he’d never know.

🎶 Refrain:
If only we knew… if only we’d asked…
Now we’re left with questions unanswered, lost in the past.

We still passed her on that same old street—
A nod, a smile, a word or two to greet.
The show ended, the lights went black,
And she never looked quite the same after that.

One day she stopped us, eyes gone gray,
Said, “Hold on to the friends who stay.
I chased a dream and lost my way—
Don’t let your people slip away.”

That was the last we saw of her…
The next we heard, she was gone forever.
No final smile, no last goodbye—
Just silence hanging in the sky.

Now when I walk down memory lanes,
I think of her and all her pains.
We were young, her eyes held dreams,
Now just whispers of what might’ve been

🎶Final Refrain:
If only we knew… if only we’d asked…
Now we’re left with questions unanswered, ghosts from the past.
Still I wonder, still I sigh—
Some songs end without goodbye.
~Vidya Tiru @ LadyInReadWrites

A Quiddity There

I loved exploring today’s resource, the Gallery of Strange Museums. And the Hattiesburg Pocket Museum totally inspired me to write a whole other poem, for writing poems seems to be…

My Quiddity

The Quiddity of Quirk
I walked down a street I’d never seen,
found myself in a world the size of a sigh—
A Gulliver in a place that seemed in between,
Magic woven with quirky reality.

It seemed a haven for things lingering and lost,
for cast-aways that were more than their pasts,
a place where buttons remembered their coats,
where toys whispered secrets to unused keyholes.

I walked deeper into that alley of oddities,
where tales tumbled down in tangles and tiers,
and stories shrank to fit sidewalk cracks.
This place, built from whispers and what-ifs,
where fables lived in brickwork holes,
and knick-knacks napped in the nooks.

There, stories didn’t ask to be told—
they lived in the sidewalk seams,
they curled inside chipped teacups,
hung like the fairy lights of my dreams.

A toy horse blinked from a brick’s shadow,
its saddle patched with sticker stars.
A bottle cap spun slowly in a crack,
humming the last song it ever sealed.

And?! A teaspoon saluted me as I passed!

This must be the place, I thought,
where tiny people swam in coffee pools,
while Poe looked on and thought, “What fools!”

A cul-de-sac, a place of magical maybes!
Where every bauble and bric-a-brac,
from chipped teacup to that red thumbtack,
hummed with its very own quiddity—
its thingness, its this-ness,
its beautifully bonkers reason for “being me.”

Magic here was made to fit a pocket,
but it overflowed—
it spilled into the soles of my “Gulliver” shoes,
and followed me home.
~ Vidya Tiru @ LadyInreadWrites

And Now, the End of This Post

Dear reader, will you write a question poem? If so, do share it here! And any other comments and thoughts on my post are welcome as always. Any stories that you could spin into a ballad? What is the quirkiest discovery you have had? I know I want to visit the Hattiesburg Pocket museum someday, what about you?

I am linking up to A-Z, Blogchatter, UBC, NaPoWriMo.

And you can find all my A-Z posts (this year and previous years’ as well) here:

A to Z Challenge Posts