All posts in Washington

Self-Portraits with Lost Items

This week at Washington, we began by reading Aracelis Girmay’s “Self Portrait with the Pirate’s Gold,” one in a series of self-portrait poems from her poetry collection Kingdom Animalia. We looked especially at how […]

Odes to What We Can’t Live Without

This week, we switched it up a bit by first visualizing a memory with something/someone we couldn’t live without. This exercise led us into our topic of the week, odes! Francisco X. Alarcón’s “Ode […]

Letter Poems

In our first class back from break, we read letter poems by William Carlos Williams and Matthew Olzmann (Part 2 of “For a Recently Discovered Shipwreck at the Bottom of Lake Michigan”) and brainstormed […]

What’s in a Name?

This week at Washington, we reflected on our names, inspired by a session with Mrs. Mild-Thomas’s class at Haugan led by poet-in-residence Teresa Dzieglewicz. We admired the images, similes, and metaphors in “JJ” by […]

Food Poems

During our second week at Washington, Miss Davis’s eighth graders read “gum” by student poet Eleanor M., pointing out the details and imagery that made the poem strong. We wrote our own food-inspired poems […]

Magic Potions

Last week was our first week at George Washington Elementary School! Miss Davis’s wonderful 8th graders discussed Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem “Truth Serum,” the impact of description/detail in poems, and dreamed up magic potions […]

Week 7 at Washington: “The joy we have!”

So, we’ve started telling stories.. now we’re making the stories come to life! Setting and context are just as important as the stories themselves, and one of the best ode-writers helps us out in […]

Week 6 at Washington: “I unlive these memories…”

We’re getting into the thick of it at Washington! As we wrap up our first unit of this year with a review on metaphor, we enter into one on performance. My life as a […]

Week 4 at Washington: “This day is different, not just a regular bore..”

“do you know what it’s like to live someplace that loves you back?” – Danez Smith, “summer, somewhere” We often use art, and specifically poetry, to help process the more difficult things of life. […]

Week 3 at Washington: “If only the humans knew what my life was like..”

After stepping into the world of metaphor, we got the chance to explore it a bit more in Week 3 at Washington with persona and personification! We’ll spend a lot of time in our […]

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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