All posts in Poems

‘Clapping our hands when their perforation ended’: School Memory Poems

Students crafted their own school memory poems after reading Connie Wanek’s beautiful poem, Rain Changing to Snow Lesson Note: According to findings by the leading researcher on the power of writing and journaling for […]

‘To fight the night become the light. ‘: Odes

Students read ‘Ode To My Shoes’ by Francisco X. Alacron before penning their own odes. Below are some of their wonderful poems. Lesson Note: “Go into the arts. I’m not kidding. The arts are […]

Large & Small Joys

Hello, poetry lovers! After a bit of a holiday break/poetry hiatus, Waters 6th graders were ready to jump back in. For this session, we read Ross Gay’s “Sorrow Is Not My Name” and explored […]

Like a Simile

Ms. Widman High School Creative Writing   The poets at Amundsen this week had a blast writing exquisite corpses inspired by the poem “Like a Simile” by Mark Cox. The young poets paired up […]

Running into a New Year (5th)

In 5th grade, we read “Running into a New Year” by Lucille Clifton. We discussed how her lack of punctuation and short lines and single stanza gives us a sense of movement and speed. […]

Running into a New Year (8th)

In 8th grade, we read “Running into a New Year” by Lucille Clifton. We discussed how her lack of punctuation and short lines and single stanza gives us a sense of movement and speed. […]

4th graders create a community of poets!

This week Twain 4th graders celebrated not only the New Year but also the final day of our poetry residency. Our theme for our last week was about community. I asked students, “What is […]

‘Everybody looks…’: Odes

Students wrote Odes about something or someone they wanted to exalt after reading ‘Ode To My Shoes’ by Francisco X. Alacron. Lesson Note: “Rhyme and rhythm have been shown to intensify emotions at a […]

The Whole Rainbow

We had a great time in Kindergarten today! We read the poem “Green” by a 4th grade student named Malik and then went on an adventure through the rainbow. We stopped at different colors […]

How Would YOU Write a Poem?

For our 10th and final session – which took place the week before school let out for the winter holidays – Twain 3rd graders brainstormed what is needed to write a poem. As students […]

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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