Taylor Swift Lesson Plan: How to Use Taylor Swift Songs as Poetry

Step-by-step Guide for How To Teach Taylor Swift Song Analysis

Follow these steps to teach your Taylor Swift lesson plan. 

Step #1: Taylor Swift Songs as Poetry Discussion

As we all know, the best way to kick off a unit is to get our students’ attention. And since this is a Taylor Swift lesson plan, I recommend you blare the Tay Tay tunes as your students walk in the door. Bonus points if you are wearing your Taylor Swift swag and dancing in the hallways. 

Okay, so now your students are paying attention. They may be thinking this is just a normal day for ELA. Or maybe they are singing along to their favorite songs. Even better yet they are trying to guess what you are doing today. No matter what, those students are making inferences. And, whether they admit it or not, they are thinking about your lesson already.

To start our official lesson, we pause the tunes and take a few minutes to discuss songs as a whole. We start with the basics: thinking about lines and then the separation of lines (verses, chorus, etc.) I then lead the discussion to show them that songs are a type of poetry. Songwriters write in the poetic form. Normally, when you announce the start of the poetry unit, groans are bound to happen. But when you lead them into poems with songs, students don’t feel so intimidated. We want to sell them on the idea that poetry does not have to be so bad. And Taylor Swift is going to get us there.

Step #2: All Too Well Song Lyrics Analysis

Now that we have had a song as poetry discussion, we can move on to analyzing a Taylor Swift song. I love to use Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well”. Now, I am going to break the cardinal rule of Swifties. I am not recommending Taylor Swift All Too Well 10 Minute Version. Before you ban me forever, my reasoning has two parts. First, the 10-minute version uses inappropriate language. Secondly, ten minutes is a really long time to hold students’ attention on one song. 

You are going to need to provide resources for the students to listen to this song. I recommend using the All Too Well Official Lyric Video and providing a copy of the lyrics. You want students to be able to listen to the song. As well as visualize the words. The first thing that I have my students do with the lyrics is number the lines just they will do for every poem we read. 

Now, if you just ask the students to listen to the song, they are going to miss the key parts. So, I always give my students a purpose for listening. For our first reading, we always look for the speaker and the situation of the poem. We have a conversation that the songwriter/author is never the speaker of the poem. Remind them that Taylor Swift cannot be their answer for the speaker. 

After listening to All Too Well, give students a few minutes to write down the speaker and the situation of the song. Students should realize that the speaker is someone who has gone through a breakup. The situation is the fact that they cannot let go of the past and just keep remembering the relationship all too well and it haunts them. 

Step #3: T SWIFT Poetry Analysis as a Class

Another way that I bring Taylor Swift as poetry into my classroom is by using her name as an acronym to analyze poems. I created the TSWIFT Method adapted from the SWIFT poem analysis method. I even created Taylor Swift themed graphic organizers to go with the lessons. If you want to check them out, you can click HERE. 

So, for T SWIFT poem analysis focuses on Tone, Structure, Word Choice, Imagery, Figurative Language, and Theme. Here’s how I use each one for Taylor Swift’s All Too Well. 

T for Tone

To analyze tone, we go back to the speaker and the situation. In this case, we decided the situation is someone who is dwelling on their past relationship. I have students think about how this situation is presented. We first determine if the tone for that situation is positive or negative. Most students agree that the tone is negative. We then choose a specific tone word: apprehensive. Once we have found our tone word, we then find a line from the song to support that tone. Here’s a great example of an apprehensive tone: “Time won’t fly, it’s like I’m paralyzed by it” (Swift 38).

S for Structure

We then move on to the structure. I start by explaining that poems have lots of different structures and rules. And some poems just love to break those rules. But the nice thing about songs is that their structure is pretty set. Have a discussion with your students about verses and chorus and how to identify them in a song. 

Once they know the basic structure, we look at the lyrics again. If you use these lyrics, they label the parts for you which is a big help. All Too Well has four verses, a pre-chorus, a chorus, a bridge, and an outro. Once again, I have students find a cited example so for practical purposes we use the chorus. An example is “Cause there we are again on that little town street/ You almost ran the red ’cause you were lookin’ over at me/ Wind in my hair, I was there/ I remember it all too well” (Swift 13-16). This is also a great time to show students how to cite multiple lines in a poem. 

W for Word Choice

Next, we move on to word choice. Since Taylor Swift is a wordsmith genius, there are so many good choices for this section. I ask students to find the most powerful line in the song. A line that my students normally pick is “But maybe this thing was a masterpiece til you tore it all up” (Swift 30).” I then have students explain why they chose that line. My students shared that Using words like “masterpiece” and “tore” shows that is was something good and turned it into something destructive. 

I for Imagery

For the next section, students focus on imagery. Since students have been taught imagery at a really young age, this should be the easiest section of the Taylor Swift poetry analysis. Have students find the most prominent image that stands out to them and then describe what senses they are using. A popular image my students use is “We’re dancing round the kitchen in the refrigerator light” (Swift 25). Students like this example because they can clearly visualize the couple dancing in the kitchen. 

F for Figurative Language

In addition to imagery, figurative language is an easy section for students to analyze. Especially because Taylor Swift utilizes so much of it in her lyrics. One of my all time favorite lines from any of her songs is in this poem. That’s of course the one that I use for this section because it is a metaphor. “I’m a crumpled of piece of paper lying here” (Swift 35). This example is a metaphor because it compares the girl’s feelings of being discarded with a piece of paper and doesn’t use like or as. 

T for Theme

Finally, students work together to create a theme from this song. 

What I love about theme is that there are always so many options for theme. A theme for this song is that love will not go away even when the relationship ends and continues to break the heart. As always, we need to find evidence to support our theme. Here’s an example for theme: “And I know that it’s long gone and there was nothing else I could do/ And I forget about you long enough to forget why I needed to” (Swift 22-23).

Step #4: Taylor Swift Songs to Teach Poetry

Once my students have analyzed a song together, it is time for them to try this poetry analysis on their own. To keep with the Taylor Swift lesson plan theme, I created a choice board on Google Slides that has a song from each of Taylor Swift’s 10 eras. Think of these songs as your poems for analysis. *Note: For next semester, I am going to revise my board because Taylor Swift is releasing her newest album The Tortured Poets Department. 

Here is my list of Taylor Swift songs that I use: 

1. Taylor Swift: Picture to Burn
2. Fearless: Love Story
3. Speak Now: Mine
4. Red: I Knew You Were Trouble
5. 1989: Out of the Woods
6. Reputation: Getaway Car
7. Lover: Miss Americana
8. Folklore: Exile
9. Evermore: Willow
10. Midnights: Anti-Hero

Students always ask why they have to use my song choices. Especially the boys in my class who loathe Taylor Swift. I always take the time to explain my thinking for the Taylor Swift songs to analyze in English class. The purpose of this part of the lesson is to have students analyze a song like they will a poem. If I allow students to choose their own songs, they spend the entire class period looking and listening to their favorite songs. Plus, they might pick a song that can’t be filled out completely for the T SWIFT analysis.

Step #5: Individual Taylor Swift Poetry Analysis 

Students choose a song from the choice board and listen to it. Once, they finish I have them complete a TWSIFT Poetry Cheat Sheet. This acronym poetry analysis worksheet organizes students’ thoughts by having them think about Tone, Structure, Word Choice, Imagery, Figurative Language, and Theme just like we just did as a class. As they listen, students will pull lyrics from the song to find examples for each part of the T SWIFT poem analysis and then explain their answers in complete sentences. If you want to check out my TSWIFT Poetry Cheat Sheet, click HERE.

Other Ways I Teach Taylor Swift in My Classroom

How to Teach Taylor Swift as Poetry for High School Students

T SWIFT Poetry Analysis

The Taylor Swift Classroom: How to Transform Your First Day of School

How to Create Classroom Transformations That Excite High School Students

How This Ultimate SPACE CAT Example Will Actually Improve Your Students’ Writing

Wrapping Up How to Teach a Taylor Swift Poetry Lesson

Hopefully, you can see now that with just a little creativity, you can bring Taylor Swift into any classroom. You can easily follow these five steps and have your students analyze Taylor Swift poetry right away. If you want to make your life extra easy, don’t forget to check out my  TSWIFT Graphic Organizers that you can use for this lesson plan and any poem in your unit.

If you found this blog post to be really helpful and you want to see more like it, go check out the rest of my blog posts at www.theteacherrewrite.com. And on Instagram @theteacherrewrite. I hope to see you over there! And as always, remember to think smart, not hard. So steal my Taylor Swift lesson plan and let’s get started.