All posts in Poems

“En Otra Vida”

This week Lawndale’s 6th graders explored dreams, with everything from mystery men to goats. Enjoy! Ms. Barker 6th Grade Señor by Anonymous En mi sueño había un señor escalofrianteque me seguía y me había […]

If I were something else, I would be …

For our sixth session of poetry, the O School Group A and B students were asked to transform into different objects, animals, or people using metaphors. Metaphors are direct comparisons, saying that one thing […]

A Glossary of Glossary Poems

This week in class we read “Glossary of Terms” by Franny Choi and discussed how form affects poetry with a new and unique form. Students filled in their own categories for Choi’s terms as […]

You Say You Want a Resolution

This week we read “Burning the Old Year” by Naomi Shihab Nye. As the titles suggests, the poem is about the New Year celebration, though it focuses on its subject obliquely, through a central […]

Writing & Rewriting, pt 2

Ah, the joys of revision! As every great poet knows, much of the “work” of poetry takes place through the revision process. With Waters 6th graders, we talked about some different ways to make […]

Writing and Rewriting

Ah, the joys of revision! As every great poet knows, much of the “work” of poetry takes place through the revision process. For Waters 7th graders eighth week, we talked about some different ways […]

Love Poems -______-

This week the young viking writers were eager to try their hand at love poems–a topic they have been excited to write for weeks. They read and thoroughly enjoyed Matthew Olzmann’s “Mountain Dew Commercial […]

Chicago Over Everything

This week the young vikings explored prose poetry. They read Hanif Abdurraqib’s “When I Say That Loving Me Is Kind Of Like Being a Chicago Bulls Fan” and “The Fight in the Meadow” by […]

‘I sift my hands through the sail sand I see’: Poems of Observation

Students read ‘Along the East River and in the Bronx Young Men Were Singing‘ by Ariel Francisco, in a nod to the opening lines of Fredrico Lorca’s ode to Walt Whitman, ‘ By the […]

“big kids sound like brown bears roaring”

For our 3rd sessions Swift 2nd graders talked about comparisons. We tried to look at pairs of very different things to find similarities in color, texture, shape, size, and feeling. After examining similes written […]

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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