All posts in 6th Grade

‘When I go to the water …’: Exquisite Corpse-Style Group Poems

Working on poetic lines, students crafted visual and then poetic Exquisite Corpses! Afterward, they were challenged to create a clay figure of one of their collective group drawings! Below are some images and some […]

Hip Hop as Self-Empowerment

When we can, we love to collaborate with the other after school programs.  The dance program was asked to prepare an assembly for today, so some of the boys in our Poets with Class […]

Building Trust Through Theater Games

Today’s theater games were centered around building trust and communicating with their body language and eye contact.  The youth had to invent situations and gestures that invite another student to collaborate with them on […]

despierto (awake)

So many of our students speak a second language, or at least have experience with a language other than English. In “[Let Us Gather in a Flourishing Way],” Juan Felipe Herrera delivers his message […]

Dada!

We focused on collaboration for this session using a game that originates in the Dada art movement. When writing an “Exquisite Corpse,” students work in pairs and trade off writing two lines per turn. […]

A Certain Age

Glimpsing into the complicated world of a 14-year-old girl, “Hanging Fire” by Audre Lorde articulates the thoughts and worries of a teenager on the brink. Our students chose a particular age and wrote a […]

What Do You Believe?

Moos – Week 12 This week we were looking at out-going poet laureate Natasha Trethewey’s “Southern Fires.”  This poem is about keeping silent when you know something wrong is happening, so I asked the […]

Bam-Woosh-Meow

Moos – Week 11 I wanted the young poets to write about sounds this week, and so what better model poem than Li-Young Lee’s “Falling: The Code”?  There is no better poem.  Well maybe. […]

Insect Petting Zoo, Too…

Moos – Week 10 My second workshop with the University of Illinois Extension’s Master Gardener Insect Petting Zoo went just as good as the first one.  The younger kids reacted similarly, though actually less […]

Ode to Joy

In celebration of the imminent summer and great summer food, we read “Oda al tomate” or “Ode to the Tomato” by Pablo Neruda. We followed his example and wrote poems of high praise for […]

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I’M FROM THE CITY LIGHTS / STREAMING OUT IN THE NIGHT / AND HUGE SKYSCRAPERS / TOWERING OVER THE LAKE – MELISSA E., 7TH GRADE POET