All posts in Poems

“crackly” and “crunchy”

For my second meeting with Swift 2nd graders, we discussed things we experience using our sense(s) of sight, taste, smell, sound, and touch. We also talked about the seasons, and some of the changes […]

Concrete Week!

This week in Ms. Smallwood’s 6th grade class and Ms. Hernandez’s 7th grade class we took a crack at concrete poems. We read “Spew Machine” by John Grandits and discussed the logistics of a […]

Being 6 is gone in a blink of an eye

Oh, nostalgia. It’s a powerful feeling, and one that 7th graders at Waters explored with the Aimee Nezhukumatathil poem “When I Was 6”. Before we read the poem, I asked students to think back […]

The clock was always there

Oh, nostalgia. It’s a powerful feeling, and one that 6th graders at Waters explored with the Aimee Nezhukumatathil poem “When I Was 6”. Before we read the poem, I asked students to think back […]

‘where the dove still sings’ : Poems of Place

Students wrote ‘Where I’m From’ poems investigating the real and fantastical in poetry. Lesson Note: “What I like about this exercise is that it asks poets to look at what we think and think […]

Just Ratio It

This past Thursday at Hyde Park Academy, a group of students came into the 4th floor art room for pizza and an open mic. What they got was a poetry workshop and an audience […]

First This Happened, Then This, But Before That

This week the young Viking writers used vintage photos to write stories in a poetic form about strangers. They used Warsan Shire’s poem “Backwards” as inspiration on how to write mirror poems. I’m proud […]

“I just wanted to say/THANK you”

This week was all about gratitude. After reading Kobe Bryant’s “Dear Basketball” (which sent the 8th grade into a very animated side quest about who the GOAT really is) students at Lawndale said thank […]

New Planets to Discover

After Holiday break, I returned back to the O-School on Monday to write poetry with two new groups (Groups A & B ) of students to kick start 2025. The theme for this week […]

Repeat, Repeat, Repeat

This week in class we read the poem “The Gift” by Ocean Vuong and talked about the way this poem uses repetition and how to incorporate it into our own poems. Students wrote about […]

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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