- BY: Alyx Chandler
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For our third poetry lesson, we focused on concrete (visual) poetry. This form of poetry is where the words on the page form the shape of the thing that the poem is about. After […]
- BY: Fullamusu Bangura
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Hello again! Last week, Grissom’s poets got real about what poetry means to them. After watching a video of Jamila Wood’s “Blk Girl Art,” we discussed feelings we associate with reading poetry. Students were […]
- BY: Mayda del Valle
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This week our 7th graders read Ada Limon’s The Quiet Machine. This prose poem by the 2022 U.S. Poet Laureate, describes all of the different kinds of quiet she experiences, based on her state […]
- BY: Mayda del Valle
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What animal do you feel like on Mondays? How is a Friday different than a Tuesday and why? This week in Ms. Murray’s 4th grade class we read Francisco Alarcon’s On Monday I Feel […]
- BY: Timothy David Rey
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Students talked about and then wrote poems about emotions using personification. Lesson Note: “Developing creativity in students is not a luxury.” How Social-Emotional Imagination Facilitates Deep Learning and Creativity in the Classroom Gotlieb, Jahner, […]
- BY: Larry Dean
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The weather outside school walls happened to be warm and springlike, contrasting with the scene set in Robert Frost’s famous poem, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” Arguably, the opposite environment intensified its […]
- BY: Poetry Center
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The Chicago Poetry Center presents BLUE HOUR, a free, public monthly in-person reading series and generative writing workshop hosted and facilitated by Marty McConnell. The Blue Hour reading includes […]
- BY: Joy Young
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Spring definitely made an appearance in Springfield last Monday on March 11th. The sun was shining, the weather was warm and breezy, the ideal day for the Poetry Out Loud 2024 Illinois State Competition. […]
- BY: Timothy David Rey
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We took a look at Richard Blanco’s prose/mix/hybrid poem about missed destinations, We Are Not Going to Malta. Students were then given travel brochures exhibiting lush locales (decidedly not always depicting reality), and asked to […]
- BY: Joy Young
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Hamline 6th graders traveled back in time for their third week of poetry. We explored how to use our five senses (touch, taste, smell, sound, and sight) to recall memories. I showed students photos […]
- BY: Leslie Reese
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Swift students continued with more out-of-the-box thinking, turning to cooking-up recipes for everything but food! Despite being tired from testing and being ready for the weekend to begin, students still managed to read and […]
- BY: Russell Price
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This week the young vikings explored blackout poems and centos. They read excerpts from Austin Klein’s Newspaper Blackouts and Chicago poet Simone Muench’s “Wolf Cento.” The students were then given back issues of Chicago […]
- BY: Teresa Dzieglewicz
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We had a revision party today! We started by looking at Gwendolyn Brooks’ “We Real Cool” without line breaks and guessing where Brooks might have put them. We then looked at the actual poem […]
- BY: Leslie Reese
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When we worked on thinking out-of-the-box and “Swan of Bees” poems a few weeks ago, I was so impressed by how students worked that it was difficult to choose only a few poems to […]
- BY: Teresa Dzieglewicz
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We had a revision party today! We started by looking at Gwendolyn Brooks’ “We Real Cool” without line breaks and guessing where Brooks might have put them. We then looked at the actual poem […]
- BY: Mayda del Valle
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Have you ever woken up from a dream and scratched your head in complete confusion? This week we talked about all the strange and whimsical things that happen behind our eyes when we drift […]
- BY: Mx. Philip
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During our final two sessions, first graders selected one of their class poems to revisit and recreate. Ms. Cooley’s class agreed to focus on their color poem, which tied into other projects they’ve been […]
- BY: Mx. Philip
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During our final two sessions, first graders selected one of their class poems to revisit and recreate. Ms. Armand’s class agreed to focus on their bravery poem, inspired by Maya Angelou. Students used markers […]
- BY: Timothy David Rey
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Students made the old-school paper in-class pass time called a ‘Cootie Catcher,’ which is a form of origami used in children’s games. Parts of the catcher are labeled with words that serve as options […]
- BY: Teresa Dzieglewicz
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In honor of the fact that we’ve had every season all at one time in Chicago this week, we talked about our favorite seasons. We read Nikki Giovanni’s “Knoxville, TN” and talked about what […]
- BY: Teresa Dzieglewicz
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This week we read Fatimah Asghar’s Microaggression Bingo and discussed how each detail built up to a larger and more overwhelming whole. The students discussed how weird it felt for there not to be […]
- BY: Ola Faleti
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Hello hello! Last week, Waters students explored the ever-relevant epistolary poem. Epistolary poems are poems in letter form. We read “Another Night at Sea Level” by Meg Day, a poem rich with imagery […]
- BY: Leslie Reese
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For our 8th sessions at Swift, we read “Honey, I Love” by Eloise Greenfield. We counted the poem’s stanzas, looked for all of the rhymes, and talked about our favorite sections. We brainstormed lists […]
- BY: Fullamusu Bangura
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Last week, Sayre’s 8th graders took a detour from their ick poems to write about people and things that they love. After watching Rudy Fransisco’s performance of “If I Was A Love Poet,” students […]
- BY: Mayda del Valle
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After some schedule changes and a week off, we were back at Perez to finish off our personification poems. There were so many great pieces written this week, some to the universe, the ocean, […]
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“Writing poetry makes me feel like I can see myself, like I can see my reflection, but not in a mirror, in the world. I write and I know I can be reflected.”
-Oscar S.
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“Writing poetry is like your best friend.”
-Jessica M.
