All posts in Mayda del Valle

Identities and Lesson From Nature

I was really looking forward to getting back to LYHS this week and introducing my students to one of my favorite poets. Chicago’s very own Jose Olivarez. I really enjoy sharing work that students […]

Emotion Machines

If your sadness was a machine how would it work? This week we started off by exploring Ada Limon’s poem “The Quiet Machine”. In it Limon uses the structure of a prose poem to […]

Getting Started

Today I got started at Latino You High School in Little Village with Ms. Gualitos’s English Class, and the after school poetry club. An unexpected treat with this group, is there’s always great food […]

Food Glorious Food

This week we wrote about all things edible! This is one of my favorite lessons to work on with students of all ages. Food is such a great way to engage all five of […]

No Silly Questions

Do all questions have an answer? This question was our jumping-off point for this week’s lesson as we read excerpts from Pablo Neruda’s Book Of Questions. After a lively discussion about the nature of […]

Weekend List Poems 

What does a perfect weekend look like to you? This week we read Pat Mora’s “To Do List” and came up with our own poems using the structure of a list poem. In her […]

I Am Poems

How would you describe yourself to others, and how would others describe you?  That’s the question we started off with this week to open up the topic of the “I Am” poem. Students had […]

I Feel Like I Can Fly- Ode Poems

This week we read “Ode to Tomatoes” by Pablo Neruda and discussed how we can celebrate everyday objects that we sometimes take for granted. Students brainstormed about different objects they interact with daily, and […]

Oh My Unique Name!- Name Poems

This week we wrote about the importance of our names and how they can represent us out in the world. We read an excerpt from “The House on Mango Street” where the main character […]

Where I’m From

Welcome back! This week students finished up the pieces they started during our last session about “Where I’m From”. They all did a great job of using imagery and the five senses in their […]

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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