All posts in Poems

‘In the lilac field it started’: Experimental Forms of Poetry

Students made the old-school paper in-class pass time called a ‘Cootie Catcher,’ which is a form of origami used in children’s games. Parts of the catcher are labeled with words that serve as options […]

Our Wild Seasons (5th)

In honor of the fact that we’ve had every season all at one time in Chicago this week, we talked about our favorite seasons. We read Nikki Giovanni’s “Knoxville, TN” and talked about what […]

BINGO Poems (8th)

This week we read Fatimah Asghar’s Microaggression Bingo and discussed how each detail built up to a larger and more overwhelming whole. The students discussed how weird it felt for there not to be […]

Writing You a Letter…

Hello hello! Last week, Waters students explored the ever-relevant epistolary poem. Epistolary poems are poems in letter form. We read “Another Night at Sea Level” by Meg Day, a poem rich with imagery […]

Honey, We Love

For our 8th sessions at Swift, we read “Honey, I Love” by Eloise Greenfield. We counted the poem’s stanzas, looked for all of the rhymes, and talked about our favorite sections. We brainstormed lists […]

Wintertime Love

Last week, Sayre’s 8th graders took a detour from their ick poems to write about people and things that they love. After watching Rudy Fransisco’s performance of “If I Was A Love Poet,” students […]

Personification Poems- 7th grade

After some schedule changes and a week off, we were back at Perez to finish off our personification poems. There were so many great pieces written this week, some to the universe, the ocean, […]

A recipe for me…

What are the ingredients that makeup who you are? A gallon of sassyness, infinite bowls of Kung-fu kicks, 10 cups of fortnite and snacks. This week in Ms. Murray’s 4th grade class we talked […]

Senses Matter

Students found all the constituent elements of similes on their worksheets. The class made tin foil hearts. We read “Papaya Tree” by Thanha Lai, and students looked at how similes are constructed. Students wrote […]

‘be like DJ Khaled…hang out with Tupac’: Poems & Thoughts on Community and Fame

Students read Gwendolyn Brook’s poem about superstar singer and activist, ‘Paul Robeson’ and then wrote about community and fame from their viewpoint. Paul Robeson by Gwendolyn Brooks That timewe all heard it,cool and clear,cutting […]

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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