All posts in Waters

the opposite of me – Persona poems

For our 12th week with Waters 7th graders, we explored Persona poems. These are poems written in the voice of someone else. For this lesson we discussed examples of celeb personas (like Beyonce/Sasha Fierce, […]

I should be me – Persona poems

For our 12th week with Waters 6th graders, we explored Persona Poems. These are poems written in the voice of someone else. For this lesson we read one of my poems (!!) titled “Lavender” […]

‘To be hapcited’: Emotion Poems

Students talked about and then wrote poems about emotions using personification and other poetic devices. Some students created new emotions to write about by combining two existing emotions. Lesson Note: “Developing creativity in students […]

‘I take a big, deep breath’: Meditation Poems

Students participated in a short meditation and breathing exercise. I read I Close My Eyes by David Ignatow.  After the meditation, they were asked to write whatever came to mind. Classwork was conducted in […]

Erasure Poems

This week we took a look at some examples of erasure poetry. Students saw many different forms, using the page they were given for their own poems to make a variety of poems with […]

why isn’t it baseball season already? Letter Poems

For the 11th session with Waters 6th graders, we looked at letter poems, also known as epistolary poems. Students thought about figures they would talk to if they could (living or dead, fictional or […]

stop what you are doing – Instruction poems

Why do we give instructions and whom do we give them to? These are the questions that anchored this 11th week with Waters 7th graders. We read Dana Levin’s “Instructions for Stopping” and tried […]

Collage poems

Poetry and collage aren’t so far removed! Water’s 7th graders explored the intersection of the two by looking at examples from artists like Krista Franklin and Marcus Dawson. Then students created their own collage […]

most things are beautiful firecrackers

For our most recent session with Waters 6th graders, we delved into erasure poems, also known as blackout poems. After looking at a variety of examples, each student received an excerpt from Sandra Cisneros’ […]

Poems (with footnotes)

This week Water’s 6th and 7th graders in Ms. Smallwood and Ms. Hernandez’ classes read “Thank you Letter (with footnotes)” by John Grandits. In class we discussed creating double meanings in our writing and […]

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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