All posts in Timothy David Rey

‘like still want to live’: Tabled

A common household object became the focus of this lesson while studying Joy Harjo’s poem, Perhaps The World Ends Here. The poet James Merrill once commented that ‘we understand history from the family around […]

A Word (or Two)

8th and 9th-grade students at Taft Freshman Academy engaged in a timed writing exercise where they created their ‘life story’ in 24 words. They were then instructed to whittle that number down to one […]

Hello?: Telephone Poems

After reading Donna Masini’s short but multi-layered/ overheard conversation ‘telephone poem’, Woman On Cell Phone Dragging an Empty Cart Through Washington Square Park, students created their own phone poems and were encouraged to record […]

‘Last year I was a 12 -year- old kid.’: Reflection Poems

For our last two poems, students shared childhood stories before writing their own poem reflecting back their younger selves, as the speaker did in Billy Collin’s poem, On Turning Ten .8th Grade students reflected […]

Fractured Fables: Irony & Satire in Poetry

Students created as well as performed their own group pieces of fractured fables and fairy tales after reading aesop revised by archy by don marquis. Lesson Note: ‘…in an era when human impact on […]

In Sight: Visual Poetry

Students used their imaginations and magazines to create visual poetry! They revisited some of their original works to give them new meaning by giving them a new shape! Lesson Note: Creative Artist guru, Julia […]

In The Black: Blackout Poetry

Blackout Poetry: A blackout poem is when a poet takes a marker (usually black marker) to already established text–like in a newspaper–and starts redacting words until a poem is formed. The key thing with […]

A Star is Born! Celestial Poems & Then Some

Students read Choose Something Like A Star by Robert Frost and listened to a choral arrangement of the same poem, before trying their hands at their own poems addressing something… bigger than themselves. Lesson […]

In the Cut: Cut Up Poems

Students used magazines and created cut-up poems! They used found language and images to create new meaning. Lesson Note: Creative Artist guru, Julia Cameron, says the part of us that creates art is about […]

‘I was waiting for Peter Pan’: Kid’s Stuff

In this lesson, students had lots to day! Students shared childhood stories before writing their own poem reflecting back their younger selves, as the speaker did in Billy Collin’s poem, On Turning Ten. Lesson […]

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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