This lesson of mine was originally posted on Wakelet, curated by Kristin Runyon for National Poetry Month in April 2017. Click here for more poem pairings by other teachers across the country. This is my favorite poem pairing of all time for several reasons. First, I LOVE both of these poets’ work. Second, Hayes INVENTED a new form of poetry and…
Today’s #TeachLivingPoets post comes from Adrian Nester, educator extraordinaire with 17 years’ experience in Pittsylvania County, Virginia. She is passionate about equity in rural education and the power of Twitter. She currently teaches AP Literature, English 11, and Journalism. She is also a T-ball coach, Interact sponsor, and Sunday school teacher in her spare time. She enjoys traveling, spending time with her…
Today’s post will provide a lesson, inspired by the body, that has students free-writing, reading several mentor text poems, viewing a video performance of a mentor text poem, and finally writing a poem. My students had fun with this lesson, and produced impressive work! In all, it took us about three 50-minute class periods to get through. Another couple of…
Today’s #TeachLivingPoets post is brought to you by guest writer, Matt Brisbin. Mr. Brisbin teaches English at McMinnville High School in McMinnville, Oregon, and has been a high school English instructor for 12 years. Aside from reading and writing, his passions in life include spending time with his family and cheering on various sports teams at the high school, college, and…
Earlier this week, the third installment of the #TeachLivingPoets Twitter chat dropped. The August 28th chat was hosted by Susan Barber, who teaches in Atlanta public schools. Clint Smith’s poem “There Is a Lake Here,” which is the last poem in his collection Counting Descent (Write Bloody, 2016), was our focus as the common text for the chat. There were so many innovative…
Last year, my students read RA Villanueva’s Reliquaria (University of Nebraska Press) and Kaveh Akbar’s chapbook Portrait of the Alcoholic (Sibling Rivalry Press) (which I am changing to his full collection for this year, Calling a Wolf a Wolf, Alice James Books). New this year in AP Literature will be Safia Elhillo’s The January Children (University of Nebraska Press); and in…
I’m no booking agent, but I have individually planned poet visits to my school, so maybe telling you about my process will help you to give it a whirl as well. And I sincerely hope that you do because it is a remarkably inspiring experience your students will remember for a long time. I remember reading an edu-blog a couple…
Family names, nicknames, going by your middle name, common names, cherished names, meaning of names, unique names–these were all up for consideration as students drafted a poem about their name. Pre-writing Students wrote their full legal name at the top of a blank sheet of paper and spent a couple minutes making a list of all the names they are…
My white boards cried when I finally erased their notes from the day (or was that me?), and if I try hard enough, I can see a flash of Ron writing them in my memory. Another flash I can still conjure is of Kaveh’s rocking back and forth, as if possessed by language, reading from his book. I try to…
Quick — think of a polysyllabic word that starts with R. How about a word starting with C? Okay, now think of four words in a row (in a phrase that makes sense) that all start with W. This post is all about playing with letters using the Abecedarian form, lipograms, and alliteration poems, along with fun mentor texts by…
Last week, following the annual AWP conference, poets L.A. Johnson and Kate Partridge visited my class on their way up the east coast for readings and book tour events. L.A. Johnson is author is Little Climates (2017) published by Bull City Press; Kate Partridge’s book Ends of the Earth (2017) published by University of Alaska Press. My class had read some of their…
Students need to realize the impact a sweet line break can have in order to truly appreciate the structure of a poem. They need to learn the difference between end-stopped and enjambed lines, and the potentialities of poetic line structure. Parts of this lesson are inspired by poet and educator Nicole F. Tong, who graciously sent me some of her…
Do your students struggle with analyzing rhyme in poetry? How many more times must we teachers hear “it helps to make the poem flow” or the cringe-worthy “it creates a sing-song effect”? Or maybe they avoid rhyme completely because they don’t know what to say if they can’t use the words “flow” or “sing-song.” I have a solution that will…
This week, my Creative Writing students are in serious drafting mode. We’re working on crafting partner slam poems, an assignment given to us by Terry Creech, artist educator and Executive Director and founder of BreatheInk. Watching my students workshop with Mr. Creech and getting messy playing with language, sounds, and performance ideas are the inspirations for this post. In this…
End goal: Students will write a poem about or inspired by color. DAY ONE Step 1: Pre-write Activity – Shades of Green Across the top of my front board, I hung a row of sheets of paper of different shades of one color. I got the sheets at my local craft store in the scrap booking section for a dime each. It…
This past week, we were in school a grand total of one day. Due to Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and some crazy snowy weather, students got to spend most of the week cozy on the couch. Okay okay, and teachers too. Spending a full week in my house with my 3-year-old and 5-year-old has been… Let’s just say I’m…
This week, Creative Writing class has been hard at work preparing their performances of their chosen poems for Poetry Out Loud’s school competition. This is the first year my school has entered the competition so it has been an exciting learning experience for all of us. Poetry Out Loud is a national organization, and it is certainly serving as an effective way…
Day 1’s lesson was a discussion on students’ initial definitions of poetry, using a Play-doh and FlipGrid mash up (see my previous post) Today, I wanted them to reflect on, add on to, and hopefully gain some new perceptions of what poetry is and what it can accomplish. Over the course of two 50-minute class periods, I showed them a…
Today, I start my adventures in teaching Creative Writing. And blogging. Basically, blogging about teaching Creative Writing, neither of which I have done before. I requested to teach Creative Writing last year as I started to immerse myself in contemporary poetry. Now willfully drowning, I am grateful to my school for granting my request. I don’t know my students yet–I…