All posts in poems

‘I did/a good job, and I stayed in the game/all day.’: Poems in the form of Letters

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 […]

‘impossible….good’:Blackout Poems

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. […]

‘Everyone makes mistakes’: Potion Poems

Students read Truth Serum by Naomi Shihab Nye before penning their own special recipes and serums via poetry! Lesson Note: “When you put something out there onto a piece of paper, what you’ve actually […]

‘remember that’: Small Kindnesses Poems

Students wrote and talked about kindness before reading the poem, ‘Small Kindnesses’ by Denusha Lameris. In crafting their own poems, students focused on one idea, one stanza, and small ways they have been kind […]

‘Clapping our hands when their perforation ended’: School Memory Poems

Students crafted their own school memory poems after reading Connie Wanek’s beautiful poem, Rain Changing to Snow Lesson Note: According to findings by the leading researcher on the power of writing and journaling for […]

‘To fight the night become the light. ‘: Odes

Students read ‘Ode To My Shoes’ by Francisco X. Alacron before penning their own odes. Below are some of their wonderful poems. Lesson Note: “Go into the arts. I’m not kidding. The arts are […]

‘Everybody looks…’: Odes

Students wrote Odes about something or someone they wanted to exalt after reading ‘Ode To My Shoes’ by Francisco X. Alacron. Lesson Note: “Rhyme and rhythm have been shown to intensify emotions at a […]

Life is Full of Suprises!

This week at Smyser, just before the break, The 4th-graders looked at a poem that has a surprising ending, which is emphasized by the final line break. I reviewed what we’ve been learning about […]

Writing About our Pets

When I visited Ms. Tze’s 4th-grade class at Dulles, we first spent some time getting to know each other with a name game, then I heard from them what they’d been learning so far […]

Hot Chip as Metaphor

Later in the week at Dulles, the 4th graders had some fun with metaphor! We read, “Words are Birds” by Francisco X. Alarcón, and discussed some of the ways in which the speaker feels […]

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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