- BY: Joy Young
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For our second session of poetry this week, Twain 6th grades traveled to other places, through vivid imagery. Imagery is when a poet paints a picture inside their readers minds. What make a place […]
- BY: Larry Dean
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Last week, we read and discussed Philip Larkin’s “Far Out.” Unlike the previous selection, this has a regular rhyme scheme, along with four-line stanzas (called quatrains), and (mostly) unambiguous language. However, there are a […]
- BY: Josie Levin
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How do you fix things? How do you know what needs fixing? This week Waters 6th and 7th graders discussed the poem “What is handed down” by Ada Límon and what it means to […]
- BY: Joy Young
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O’ School students had their 13th session of poetry on Monday. This week’s theme was about names. I asked students: Why are names important? If you could choose another name for yourself, what would […]
- BY: Ola Faleti
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Greetings! Waters 7th graders have already had plenty of experience connecting the dots between poetry and visual art. continue that trend with concrete poems, which are poems that are shaped like a object or […]
- BY: Leslie Reese
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I met Brennemann 2nd graders for the first time this week. They were curious about everything from what I was wearing, to what is a poem? and what do I think about animals? and […]
- BY: Ola Faleti
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Greetings! Waters 6th graders have already had plenty of experience connecting the dots between poetry and visual art. continue that trend with concrete poems, which are poems that are shaped like a object or […]
- BY: Leslie Reese
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For our first session upon returning from spring break, I thought we could spend time reviewing, as well as looking at some illustrated poetry books and reading poems aloud. This is what we did […]
- BY: Joy Young
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Last Friday was my first poetry session with Twain 6th gradera. Since it was our first time meeting each other, we discussed the importance of names. Names are part of our identities; names are […]
- BY: Timothy David Rey
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Students wrote elegies on lost people, places, things, and feelings. Lesson Note: “…research reveals the role of elegy writing in acknowledging and nurturing ongoing bonds with lost loved ones.” – The Literature of Loss: […]
- BY: Teresa Dzieglewicz
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Today, we had a revision party in Ms. Reed’s third grade! We chose a poem we love and wanted to spend more time with, talked through some of the things we’ve learned and then […]
- BY: Leslie Reese
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It was my pleasure to meet with Brennemann 5th graders for the first time last week. They were energetic, curious, and open to going with me on a creative writing journey with poetry. We […]
- BY: Madison Mae Parker
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Starting off our poetry class at Smyser Elementary, we looked at a poem by Delia Garcia titled “Paint Me Like I Am” (workshop adapted by another PIR, Joy Young). These young poets learned about […]
- BY: Noel Quinones
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Many of our 5 senses are deeply connected to memory. This week the 7th graders of Clinton reflected on their favorite foods and the people, places, and things connected to them. After reading “From […]
- BY: Noel Quinones
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Many of our 5 senses are deeply connected to memory. This week the 8th graders of Clinton reflected on their favorite foods and the people, places, and things connected to them. After reading “From […]
- BY: Joy Young
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This past Thursday, I was excited to meet Twain 5th graders for the start of our 10-week residency. Some students I had worked with last year as 4th graders, so it’s great to see […]
- BY: Joy Young
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For their 12th week of poetry O-School students explored myths. A myth is an ancient story or legend explaining the early history of a group of people or about a natural phenomenon. Students were […]
- BY: Josie Levin
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This week 6th and 7th graders worked together to create exquisite corpse poems. Each student responded to a prompt “What animal scares you the most?” and passed their papers to the next student to […]
- BY: Ola Faleti
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For our last session with Waters 7th graders before spring break, it felt fitting to explore the haiku. This traditional Japanese poetic form is often used to describe observations in nature, and often accompanied […]
- BY: Larry Dean
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The speaker in Sonia Sanchez’s “This Is Not a Small Voice” talks about “large / voice[s] coming out,” listing the names of a half-dozen children “navigating the hallways / of our schools spilling out […]
- BY: Cai Sherley
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This week at Hyde Park we discussed calls to action and what it means to push for changes large and small. These young men brought their grievances and visions to the table, confronting everything […]
- 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 or image is formed. […]
- BY: Ola Faleti
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Colors are all around us, and some show up in our lives more than others. For this 15th week at Waters, we talked about the colors that are meaningful to us. We watched the […]
- BY: Joy Young
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Monday March 17th was a magnificent day for the Poetry Out Loud 2025 Illinois State Competition. In Illinois this year, 48 high schools were part of Poetry Out Loud, 200 teachers, and over 7,900 […]
- BY: Timothy David Rey
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What were our favorite TV shows when we were young? What did they teach us? What makes a hero (both real and imagined), and how can we learn from them (even the villains) and […]
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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.”
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