All posts in Sayre

Personification: To Ask a Star or the Universe

For our 4th week of poetry at Sayre with the 7th graders, their prompt was to write to something bigger than themselves like a star. We reviewed similes, learned the definition of personification, and […]

Rhyming Animal Couplets

Lesson Note: This week, practiced rhyming and learned what a couplet was–two lines where the end of the line rhymes! We then wrote about various animals and what they were up to.   Mrs. […]

” my clothing, simple; to hold my dog; my hair, curled in; and I, sitting on a stool;”: Portait Poems

Students read Instructions to the Artist by Billy Collins before crafting their own portrait-inspired poems. Lesson Note: According to findings by the leading researcher on the power of writing and journaling for healing purposes, […]

An Ordinary Object Transformed

For our third week with the 7th graders at Sayre we used simile to transform everyday classroom objects into… anything our imaginations conjured! Our reference poem was “Paper clip” by Valerie Worth, in which […]

Persona Poems

Lesson Note: This week, we tried out persona poems. Everyone envisioned they were an object, place or person and wrote about how they would feel and what secrets they wanted to share!   Mrs. […]

“can you end wars?” (translated from the Ukranian) & “so bright but so dark” : Star Poems

Students read a student poem that used personification to talk to a star before trying their hands at their own poems addressing something… bigger than themselves while using words from legendary poet/teacher Kim Addonizio’s […]

Imagery and Food Poems

During our second week of poetry at Sayre we focused on writing detailed imagery of familiar objects and our favorite foods. We started by writing collaborative descriptions of objects, expanding on the descriptions using […]

Sound poems

This week, we focused on what we hear every day! Students thought about the sounds they listen to at home, at school, and outside. Lesson Note: By focusing all o our attention on only […]

“more and more people/ are getting mad yet some still find a way” Table Poems (part 2)

8th Grade students wrote about a household object, mainly a table, and things that happen around the eating place. Inspired by Joy Harjo’s poem, ‘Perhaps the World Ends Here.’ Lesson Note: We live in […]

Poetry Can…

For Sayre’s 7th graders’ first week of poetry lessons, we focused on what poetry (or their chosen art/music/activity) can or cannot do, reading “what can a poem do?” by Darius V. Daughtery for inspiration. […]

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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