All posts in Poems

Ode to…

For our fifth week at Henry, we looked at Elizabeth Acevedo’s “Rat Ode.” We learned about odes, imagery, and word bubbles (or word maps), and how useful word bubbles can be to our pre-writing […]

‘It felt like a trip I wanted/ to go back to:’ Meditaiton Poems

Students participated in a short meditation and breathing exercise. I read them. I Close My Eyes by David Ignatow. After the meditation, they were asked to write whatever came to mind. Classwork was conducted […]

Yum! Poems about Food

In Ms. Reed’s class, we wrote poems about food! We thought about how food can be connected with memory and people we love. We read a poem from Kwame Alexander about fried chicken and […]

First Hand

What can you hold in your hand? “Nonspecific stuff,” says Hua Xi in her poem, “Handfuls,” as well as snow “on a summer’s day” that “must come from somewhere inside me.” The speaker also […]

Strength in Writing

For our second week at Social Justice High School’s poetry club, we read and listened to Elizabeth Acevedo’s “Rat Ode.” Discussing what an ode is, we learned how to build imagery. In the version […]

“It’s really easy to get a pet…”

Last week at Swift – rather than introducing a new lesson – I asked students to look through their folders to select a poem that they would like to spend more time on. Many […]

“Lemon/Lime by itself” Odes to the Unusual

This week we read “Ode to my socks” by Pablo Neruda. Students thought about the things they love and were challenged to write an ode to the most unusual. The below poems are a […]

the opposite of me – Persona poems

For our 12th week with Waters 7th graders, we explored Persona poems. These are poems written in the voice of someone else. For this lesson we discussed examples of celeb personas (like Beyonce/Sasha Fierce, […]

I should be me – Persona poems

For our 12th week with Waters 6th graders, we explored Persona Poems. These are poems written in the voice of someone else. For this lesson we read one of my poems (!!) titled “Lavender” […]

Bravery Poems

In Ms. Reed’s third grade class, we read Maya Angelou’s “Life Doesn’t Frighten Me at All.” We talked about how bravery doesn’t mean that you’re never afraid, it just means that you figure out […]

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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