All posts in Skinner West

Memento Cento

Last week, we wrapped up our remote residencies at Skinner West. I announced that for their finale, students would be contributing to a cento, or collage poem, explaining that it’s an ancient form with […]

Appreciations

For our penultimate classes, we read and discussed W. S. Merwin’s “Thanks.” The poem utilizes repetition—in particular, the phrase “we are saying thank you”—expressing it in real time—for an assortment of things: nightfall, bridges, […]

Always Be Considering Daily Events

This week, we read Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s “Hummingbird Abecedarian.” Our initial discussion, pre-poem, focused on the titular birds: what students think of when they hear the name, colors associated with them, and if they’ve ever […]

The Silent Treatment

Before discussing Jane Yeh’s “A Short History of Silence,” we thought about silence versus quiet—were they the same? If not, how are they different? We also pondered potential difficulty remaining silent or whether we […]

Right Place, Right Time

After a week off for spring break, we sprang back into action by reading Jane Kenyon’s “Afternoon in the House.” We began our discussion by thinking about who the speaker could be, keeping in […]

Shhhhh!

We began last week’s pre-spring break classes talking about secrets—under what circumstances it’s OK to keep them, if they change as we age, historically and culturally ‘famous’ examples, etc. That discussion readied us for […]

Good Night

Hard to believe we’re almost halfway through this year’s residency! With the recent switch to daylight savings time having occurred, I began classes this week asking students if they considered themselves to be a […]

Magnificent Magnification

For our third poetry class, students were introduced to another figure of speech to add to the others (simile, imagery, personification) we’ve studied so far: metaphor, which, like simile, compares two unalike things in […]

Counting on You

For our second week, we read and discussed Peter Schmitt’s “Friends with Numbers.” Continuing from the last session’s introduction of line and stanza to the conversation, I added personification, simile, and imagery as elements […]

All Tied up in Nots

Last week, we finally kicked off the fully remote 4th grade residencies at Skinner West! While my face-to-face classes were the only ones to wrap up last year prior to quarantining, and by now […]

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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