How to Add More Rigor to Blackout Poetry in Middle and High School ELA

By The Daring English Teacher

Blackout poetry is often introduced to students as a low-stress, high-engagement activity, and for good reason. It’s creative, accessible, and a powerful way to get students truly interacting with words on the page. However, blackout poetry doesn’t have to stop at “fun.” With a few intentional shifts, it can become a rigorous, standards-aligned poetry and literary analysis task that challenges students to think deeply about theme, tone, symbolism, imagery, and author’s craft. If you’ve ever worried that blackout poetry feels too easy for your students or more like an art project than an academic one for your English class, this post is for you.

Start With a Clear Purpose and Text Selection

Rigor, especially in terms of assigning blackout poetry, begins before students ever pick up a marker. Instead of letting students choose random pages, consider:

Assigning a shared text excerpt connected to a current unit
Using passages from thematically rich short stories, speeches, or nonfiction
Selecting texts with strong diction, imagery, or figurative language

This ensures that students are working within meaningful constraints rather than relying on the chance that their chosen page might contain substance and academic merit. Teacher tip: If students are analyzing a novel or short story, use an excerpt that reflects a major conflict or turning point from the story. This naturally pushes theme and tone analysis. Plus, it’ll also work as a close read activity also!

Require Students to Identify and Develop a Theme

One of the simplest ways to increase rigor is to move blackout poetry from “finding cool words” to communicating a central idea. Before students begin blacking out words, have them:

Identify a theme or thematic statement
Write it at the top of their page or on a planning sheet
Explain how their poem will convey that theme

Then, require the final poem to clearly reflect that idea. Examples of thematic prompts:

Loss of innocence
Power and corruption
Identity and belonging
Freedom vs. control

This transforms blackout poetry into an act of interpretation, not just creation.

Focus on Mood and Tone Development

Another way to elevate the blackout poetry is to explicitly connect blackout poetry to mood and tone. Have students:

Choose a specific mood (melancholy, hopeful, tense, ironic, ominous)
Select words that consistently support that mood
Explain how diction and phrasing contribute to the emotional effect

You can also push students to consider how what they black out is just as important as what they keep. Reflection prompt: How does your word choice shape the mood of your poem? What emotional response do you want your reader to have?

Incorporate Symbolism and Imagery

To add another layer of complexity, challenge students to intentionally include symbolism and imagery in their blackout poem. Students might:

Use a repeated word or image as a symbol
Create visual emphasis by circling or boxing symbolic words
Connect their symbolism back to the original text’s meaning

This is a great opportunity to reinforce figurative language skills and author’s craft analysis. Students will also see firsthand just how important and impactful symbols and imagery are. Extension idea: Ask students to write a brief paragraph explaining what their symbol represents and how it connects to the theme.

Require a Planning Phase

Rigor increases when students are required to think before creating. Plus, adding a planning phase also encourages students to work through more of the writing process. Instead of jumping straight into blackout mode, have students: Annotate the text for key words, phrases, and ideas Draft a rough version of the poem in a notebook Identify theme, mood, and literary devices in advance This mirrors the writing process and reinforces that poetry is crafted, not accidental.

Pair the Poem With Analytical Writing

One of the most effective ways to raise the academic level of blackout poetry is to pair it with analysis. In addition to the blackout poem that students turn in, have them complete an additional component with the project to increase the rigor. Consider requiring:

A short written reflection
An explanatory paragraph
A mini literary analysis response

Possible prompts include:

Explain how your blackout poem reflects the theme of the text.
Analyze how diction and imagery contribute to the poem’s mood.
Justify your word choices using evidence from the original passage.

This transforms blackout poetry into a hybrid creative-analytical task rather than a seemingly easy art project.

Use a Rubric With Academic Criteria

If you want students to treat blackout poetry seriously, your grading criteria should reflect that. Rather than every student receiving a credit/no credit grade for the assignment, consider using a rubric to add in the rigor. A rigorous blackout poetry rubric might assess some of the following criteria:

Clarity and depth of theme
Intentional word choice
Use of imagery and symbolism
Mood or tone consistency
Quality of written explanation or reflection

When students know what you’re looking for, it provides them with more clarity and guidance.

Creative Does Not Mean Low-Rigor

Blackout poetry is more than a fun filler activity to assign students at the end of a term or between units. When intentionally designed, it becomes a powerful way to teach theme and central ideas, diction and tone, symbolism and imagery, and/or analytical thinking. By adding structure, purpose, and reflection, you can transform blackout poetry into a rigorous, meaningful assignment that works just as well in middle school ELA as it does in high school English classrooms.

Looking for an All-in-One Blackout Poetry Resource?

If you’re looking for a ready-to-use way to bring structure and deeper thinking to your blackout poetry lessons, check out my Blackout Poetry, Found Poetry Unit with Poetry Analysis resource on Teachers Pay Teachers.

This comprehensive unit includes a 19-slide instructional presentation, clear teacher instructions, an assignment sheet, a standards-based rubric (with an editable digital version), and 60 ready-to-print blackout poetry pages, giving you everything you need to teach, assess, and extend this creative activity with intentional depth. Whether you’re introducing students to found poetry or reinforcing close reading and analytical skills, this resource helps scaffold the process while saving planning time, and it’s been highly rated by fellow ELA teachers.

How to Teach Blackout Poetry

Other Creative and Rigorous Poetry Activities and Resources:

- The blackout poem - A type of found poetry by Room 213

- Poetry Assignments for Any Poem by Presto Plans

- Guided Poetry Presentation and Handouts by Tracee Orman