Poetry for the Common Core

The newly developed Common Core State Standards Initiative offers English Language Arts standards that include a substantial poetry component. Individual poems are identified as study source material across the grade levels in terms of “complexity, quality, and range.” Most are from the public domain and thus are largely classic poems by poets of the past. But a sprinkling of contemporary and even multicultural poems is also included. It’s an interesting list to consider, but by no means exclusive—indeed the Standards home page (corestandards.org) notes, “They expressly do not represent a partial or complete reading list.” Here is a list of the suggested poems for your consideration.


The list begins:

K–1 Poetry Text Exemplars


Anonymous. “As I Was Going to St. Ives”
Rossetti, Christina. “Mix a Pancake”
Fyleman, Rose. “Singing-Time”
Milne, A. A. “Halfway Down”
Chute, Marchette. “Drinking Fountain”
Hughes, Langston. “Poem”


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