Printable Blackout poem worksheet for Years 7–8

Take the printed page below. Circle words that pull at you, then black out everything else. The surviving words, in order, are the poem. You may not add or reorder words.

Blackout poetry (also called erasure) starts from somebody else's page. Students circle words that pull at them, then black out everything else; the surviving words, in their original order, are the poem. Nothing may be added or rearranged. That strictness is exactly why it works in a classroom: the blank page problem disappears, and every decision is a reading decision. Before any marker touches paper, teach annotation — verbs in one colour, images in another — so students read the page as writers, hunting what it can be made to say. Rule of the first lesson: pencil first, marker second, because the poem changes as you black out and early commitments are usually wrong. Expect the first attempts to keep too much. The editing conversation is the curriculum: each further blackout is a revision, and students can defend every survivor. Source pages matter. Start with plain prose — a textbook page, a news article — and move to a public-domain classic later, where keeping one of the author's lines intact inside a new poem teaches quotation better than any worksheet on referencing.

Teaching this at Years 7–8

What changes at this level: Twelve writing lines, full source page, must keep at least one verb and one image. A second poem from the same page is required.

The Years 7–8 move is comparison. Two poems from one page, made by choosing different islands of kept words, start an argument about what the page 'really' says — and that argument is close reading, assessed without a comprehension question in sight. Require a one-sentence source credit under each poem. When the class disagrees about which poem is truer to the page, make them point at surviving words as evidence.

Worked example: From a page about tides

the moon
keeps accounts
of every shore —
nothing
is forgiven,
everything
returns

Seven kept phrases from a science page, re-lineated. The source explained tides; the poem is about debt and forgiveness. Show students that 'in order' is the only rule that survived — line breaks, which cost nothing, did all the poetic work.

What a worksheet looks like

Theme drawn for this sample: a busy kitchen. 12 writing lines. Tasks, in the order this sample drew them:

Find a poem of exactly seven words hiding in the page.
Keep at least one verb and one image from the page.
Make a second poem from the same page by choosing different words.

Your download draws a new theme and task order, so no two students need get the same sheet.

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