- BY: Leslie Reese
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In addition to reading aloud from poetry books and watching the “We Real Cool” video produced by the Poetry Foundation, Dubois students discussed things they like and dislike about writing. Students reflected on things […]
- BY: Leslie Reese
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Poems from our 16th sessions reflect a mixed bag: while 2nd graders continued to write identity poems, 3rd graders played with ideas that reflected on their trip to the zoo. Ms. Reed’s class still […]
- BY: Leslie Reese
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Last week I got to meet with Twain 5th graders for our 4th and 5th sessions. Students spent more time working on their dream poems, some of which you can read, below. Before getting […]
- BY: Joy Young
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For their 5th poetry session Shoesmith 5 and 6th graders explored persona poetry. I asked students to imagine seeing the world by walking in someone else’s shoes. We joked about not actually wearing someone’s […]
- BY: Fullamusu Bangura
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Last week, Grissom’s middle schoolers got to show love to the people most important to them. We began our time together with a brief lesson on the Harlem Renaissance before reading Langston Hughes’ poem […]
- BY: Michelle Alexander
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Sayre 7th graders recalled the key terms: imagery and line. Looking to Parneshia Jones’ “For The Basement Parties at the YMCA” they sought out rich images, striking sounds, and astute line breaks. Then, they […]
- BY: Ola Faleti
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Greetings, greetings! For our most recent session with Waters 6th graders, we talked about the fun, surrealist concrete poems! We looked at a bunch of different examples before reading Juan Felipe Herrera’s “Social Distancing”. […]
- BY: Mayda del Valle
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This week in Ms. Murray’s 4th grade class, we read “Honey, I Love” by Eloise Greenfield and talked about all the things we love and don’t love. Some students noticed that the poem was […]
- BY: Timothy David Rey
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Students wrote Acrostic Poems, in which certain letters in each line form a word or words. The theme was ‘Heroes,’ both real and imagined, or Supervillains. Lesson Note: “You don’t need permission to make […]
- BY: Timothy David Rey
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Blackout Poetry: A blackout poem is created when a poet takes a marker (usually black marker) to already established text–like that from a newspaper–and starts redacting words until a poem is formed or an […]
- BY: Joy Young
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We are close to the end of our 10-week residency at Hamline Elementary. So, for our 9th week of poetry, I gave Hamline 6th graders the option of editing one of their old poems […]
- BY: Ola Faleti
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For our third week at Jordan, 6th graders delved into the wonderful world of similes! First, we talked about what a simile is and students heard their classmates give examples (for instance, this soup […]
- BY: Ola Faleti
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During our second week of poetry at Jordan, we did some thinking about what it means to belong. To start, I had students work at their tables and come up with a list of […]
- BY: Alyx Chandler
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This week, we read Kobe Bryant’s poem called “Dear Basketball” and learned all about epistolary poems, or letter poems. We talked about tone, learned that it meant the mood conveyed by the poet with […]
- BY: Alyx Chandler
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This week, we focused on our voices, and students were introduced to poetry slams and spoken word. We watched a recording of “We Day Poem” by the teenagers who were part of the 2016 […]
- BY: Leslie Reese
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For our 4th meeting, Shoesmith 4th graders had a second look at the ideas and drafts they had written about colors and using sensory details. We talked about metaphors, and brainstormed the smell of […]
- BY: Leslie Reese
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This week at Dubois, students read aloud from dream poems written by a third grader, Louise Driscoll, and Langston Hughes. Students considered the importance of having dreams: hopes and goals for themselves and others. […]
- BY: Joy Young
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Poetry Out Loud celebrates its 19th year with its new National Champion Niveah Glover. The Poetry Out Loud National Semifinals were held May 1 and the National Finals on May 2 hosted by poet, […]
- BY: Joy Young
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The 7th week of poetry was magical for Twain 6th graders. I asked students, if you could create a magical potion, what would you use it for and why? Most students wanted, unlimited riches […]
- BY: Fullamusu Bangura
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Grissom’s poets never cease to impress me with their cleverness, and this week was no exception. After reading my poem wide-toothed and discussing what we noticed in the poem, students got to brainstorm about […]
- BY: Joy Young
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For their 4th week at Shoesmith students explored ideas about nature. Students were asked, Does nature have a voice? How does it communicate with us? Students came up with wonderful responses. We discussed the […]
- BY: Mayda del Valle
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If you had the power to change the world, what would you change? That’s the question we started off with this week with our Perez 4th graders, before reading Leslie Reese’s poem “Life Is […]
- BY: Mayda del Valle
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This week our 4th graders at Perez explored all things Monsters. We started off our session by doing exquisite corpse drawings of monsters. Each table passed around their sheet of paper to everyone in […]
- BY: Timothy David Rey
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Students wrote epistolary poems in the form of letters, fashioned after basketball player Kobe Bryant’s poem, “Dear Basketball.” Lesson Note: “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what […]
- BY: Leslie Reese
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For our 15th sessions, Swift 2nd graders reviewed what they remembered from last week when we watched a video of Janet S. Wong who talked about the value of handmade, handwritten, and well-thought-out gifts […]
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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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