All posts in Waters

One more revision round!

How quickly 20 weeks flies by! We’ve come close to the end (!) of poetry sessions for Water’s 7th graders. They’ve already proven to be experienced revisers of their writing, and we’re wrapping up […]

“pero tu luz como un ángel no se esconde entre la frazada oscuridad “: Star Poems

Students read a student poem that uses personification to talk to a star before trying their hands at their poems addressing something… bigger than themselves, using words from legendary poet/teacher Kim Addonizio’s word bank […]

New Personas “pulled out of / a pile of all my / paper friends”

For our penultimate workshop, students in Ms. Smallwood and Ms. Hernandez’s classes wrote poems from the point of view of people, animals, and things other than themselves. To get us started, we read “According […]

‘For once I feel like my life isn’t dirt cheap’: Poems of Routine and Repetition

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 […]

Revision, revisited

As all good writers know, revising is as important to the writing process as writing. Waters 6th graders went through a first round of revision some weeks back, so now they’re like old pros. […]

Not home, not yet

Spring is here, which means summer isn’t too far behind. Last week, Waters 7th graders pondered things to look forward to (big and small) before reading Rita Dove’s vacation. After discussing the astute people […]

Roses that like to play tag: odes & personification

Oh, odes. An homage to the things we hold close. Last week, Waters 6th graders were inspired by Francisco X. Alarcon’s Ode to my Shoes/ Oda a mis zapatos, an ode that delightfully indulges […]

‘Being alone but feeling accompanied’: ‘If I were…’ Poems

After reading Michael Salinger’s poem ‘ If I Were A Gear, ‘ students experimented with metaphors and extended metaphors. Lesson Note: “The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor. It […]

“But the scar is still there” Diagramming Poetry

This week, students leaned about another visual poetic form, diagram poems! We discussed there crossover between poetry and diagrams, how we can represent metaphors and allusions in this combined form, and how to integrate […]

“Pero no se alarmen / que ese polvo de estrellas / cáe en las personas / buenas de este / Tierra” (“Don’t be alarmed / that star dust / falls on the good people / of this Earth”)

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 […]

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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