All posts in Robbie Telfer

#sorrynotsorry

This week found us looking at Martín Espada’s “I Apologize for Giving You Poison Ivy by Smacking You in the Eye with the Crayfish at the End of My Fishing Line.” I love that […]

Grow Up!

Today’s workshop was inspired by Sharon Olds’ “Rite of Passage” which traces the roots of how young people grow up into their possible personalities. So the 8th graders looked back on their long lives […]

There’s a First Time for Everythang

This week the 8th graders of Taft read Tim Seibles’s amazing simile explosion “First Kiss.” This poem shows not just the power of a simile, but how it can serve the poem with energy […]

Happy Valentimes!

Every day can be Valentine’s Day if you have love in your heart! Or at least if you have me as a teacher. We read and responded to Naomi Shihab Nye’s “Valentine for Ernest […]

Beastly

Writing persona poems in the voices of animals is always one of my favorite workshops not just because the students all have personal and interesting relationships with animals but also because the personas can […]

Dance Like Only 8th Graders are Watching

“Hanging Fire” by Audre Lorde is all about being 14 and therefore I love teaching it to 14 year olds to get their reflections on her reflections – and to also show them that […]

Talk To Me

This was the first of my ten weeks with all the 8th graders at Taft. I already miss the 7th graders but I suppose the 8th graders aren’t evil either. So we looked at […]

Bug Off! (pt. 2)

This was my last day with the 7th graders and I’m going to miss them. I was dreading teaching 7th grade because I remember how horrible MY 7th grade inner and outer life was. […]

Bug Off! (pt. 1)

Once again, I brought in the University of Illinois Extension Master Gardener’s Insect Petting Zoo to teach bug facts through poetry. I had some giant African millipedes, Madagascar hissing cockroaches, and Rosie, the rose-haired […]

Totes Awk (pt. 2)

Mrs. Asvos 7th Grade, 6th Period “Cake” A poem by Claudia M. Me and cake, we go way back. To my very first birthday. I can’t look at you, because if I do, I […]

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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