All posts in Waters

Don’t Go into the Waters!

Today we started one of the favorite lessons for middle schoolers. The fear lesson! The Poets from Waters Elementary School read and discussed “The Cremation of Sam McGee” by Robert service and “Raven” by […]

Not So Simple Similes

Today the poets from Waters Elementary School learned about the power of one of the most used literary devices in poetry; similes and metaphors. After reading “Dreams” and “Harlem” by Langston Hughes, they were […]

Let’s Rhyme!

The Poets from Waters Elementary School learned a little lesson in hip hop. One of the most used rhyme schemes in rap music are couplets. After studying the lyrics and watching the performances of […]

Making Sense

The poets from Waters Elementary School took an exercise in description and metaphors. We experience the world through our senses. The young writers wrote of an experience through describing it by only using their […]

‘when you separate it/ Into sections:’ Wallace Stevens Imitations

Inspired by Wallace Stevens’s Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, students examined a sea shell from different angles and then used similes to describe it in verse. Lesson Note: Perspective and Reality. As […]

‘it’s a living thing you can’: Turning Tables

A common household object became the focus of this lesson while studying Joy Harjo’s poem, Perhaps The World Ends Here. The poet James Merrill once commented that ‘we understand history from the family around […]

‘A taste of the bloom’: Food and Memory Poems

A discussion of food and memory began our class in preparation to study Gary Soto’s Narrative Style poem, Oranges. Nostalgia and feelings came up a lot in our talks. What emotions are attached to […]

Lyrical Shapes

The poets from Waters Elementary learned how poems not just meant to be read, and heard, but also to be viewed as visual art. The poets read poems that written in the shape of […]

‘I did not know the room I was sitting in/ I was’: School Memory Poems

Students used school memories (both real and imagined) to craft this week’s poems. Lesson Note: According to findings by the leading researcher on the power of writing and journaling for healing purposes, James Pennebaker, […]

‘I can see the light…’: Night Poems

Students thought and wrote about what happens at night after reading, ‘Quiet Night Thought by Li Bai Lesson Note: ‘My approach to writing has this belief at its core: To become…a more confident writer […]

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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