All posts in Waters

In the Black: Blackout Poetry

Blackout Poetry: A blackout poem is created when a poet takes a marker (usually black marker) to already established text–like that from a newspaper–and starts redacting words until a poem or image is formed. […]

Blue is everything good – Color Poems

​Colors are all around us, and some show up in our lives more than others. For this 15th week at Waters, we talked about the colors that are meaningful to us. We watched the […]

Blue, do I know you? Color Poems

Colors, colors, colors. There are many poems, songs, and paintings devoted to particular colors and how they show up in our lives. So during out 14th session with Waters 7th graders, we explored colors. […]

Ears like an elephant – Self Portrait poems

Last week, Waters 6th graders read and wrote self-portrait poems. First, students drew a “cartoon” self portrait of themselves, some of them in human form and some in the form of a different creature. […]

‘For fortitude fills each word that I speak.’: How We Talk Poems

Students read Langston Hughes’ poem, ‘Motto,’ and then wrote their short poems using modern slang.  “Motto” by Langston Hughes I play it cool And dig all jive That’s the reason I stay alive. My […]

“power already in my bones” Corrupting the Sonnet

This week in class we read “My earliest memory is telling myself stories without” by Diane Seuss and expanded on some of the history of poetic forms we started with odes. We discussed how […]

“How can you tell a name is yours? / You hold it tight”

This week in class we read “Everyone who happens to live where” by Kimberly Alidio. We talked about our names, what they meant in the past and what they might mean in the future. […]

Once I was funny like really funny: self-portrait poems

For this 13th week with Waters 7th graders, we explored the self-portrait poem. How do we paint ourselves? Mary Jo Bang’s self portrait poem paints a pretty odd, confusing version of herself. We talked […]

Instructions: Grow up to be troublemaker with hair as gold as wheat

For our lucky 13th poetry session with Waters 6th graders, we talked about instructions – why does one give them? What makes for good ones? We opened with an activity where a few students […]

“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 […]

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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