All posts in Timothy David Rey

“I can hear the seafood bubbling” & “My voice is rain to the sky”: Food & Voice Themed Performance Poems!

Younger students wrote food-inspired poems after reading a Nikki Giovanni poem about food! Nikki Giovanni is a well-known African-American poet who used to spend summers with her grandparents in Knoxville, Tennessee, when she was […]

“”My voice is a squirrel with wings: Slam-Style Voice-Themed Poems

Students wrote and performed short group ‘My Voice”-themed slam-style poems after watching a poetry slam teen performance video! Lesson Note: “You don’t need permission to make your art. No one needs an artistic license […]

” I think about other things during school like Netflix Netflix Netflix”: Repetition Poems

We explored the powerful device of Repetition in Phil Kaye’s poem of the same name. Some poems in our workshop are ‘after’ Kaye’s work. Lesson Note: “Repetition can make magic happen-repeat a word or […]

“My voice is disruptive like an intercom announcement.”: Voice-Themed Slam-Style Performance Poems

Students read and then created short group performance pieces of spoken word pieces, some with choreography, after watching a student poetry slam team perform on the importance of one’s voice. Lesson Note: “Do stuff. […]

“La la la la la la la la Cupid melody stuck in my head”: Meditation Poems

Students participated in a short meditation and breathing exercise. I read them I Close My Eyes by David Ignatow. After the meditation, they were asked to write whatever came to mind. Classwork was conducted […]

“3. I want my shirt to be yellow. 6.Have my dog in there 7. Put my dog in a yellow shirt:” Instructions to the Artist Poems

Young students wrote dream-themed poems and the older students read Instructions to the Artist by Billy Collins before crafting their own portrait-inspired poems. Lesson Note: According to findings by the leading researcher on the […]

“My name means a country”: Name Dropping

‘I celebrate and sing myself…’-Walt Whitman Students explored names through a series of prompts which began with a reading a a girl named jack by Jaqueline Woodson, What occurs in the naming of someone […]

“you overthink /and you overdrink the thoughts”: School Woes & Blues Poems

Students wrote ‘School Subject Woes’ with end-rhymes after watching a teen recite their original poem, ‘Mathematical Blues’. Lesson Note: “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I […]

“Phillip/ Philips/ Philippians”: Short Name Poems

‘I celebrate and sing myself…’-Walt Whitman Students explored names through a series of prompts which began with a reading of a girl named jack by Jaqueline Woodson, What occurs in the naming of someone […]

“Kind heart. We/ Are smart. We”: Gwendolyn Brooks-style Poems

Students read Gwendolyn Brooks’ classic poem, ‘We Real Cool’ before crafting their own ‘cool’ poems using their own words and ideas for what is cool, rhyme repetition, and the short form. We Real Cool […]

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