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Word Scramble Poem
Today’s prompt is inspired by Angelo Geter, AKA EyeAmBic, the Poet Laureate Emeritus of Rock Hill, SC. Before we dive in to the lesson, I want to share a couple of my favorite poems of his. In his collection More God Than Dead, he chronicles his journey into widowhood after tragically losing his wife, and deals with themes of grief,…
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How Food Invokes Poetry – the miracle of abundance
By Kashiana Singh This post is written by Kashiana Singh. When Singh is not writing, she lives to embody her TEDx talk theme of Work as Worship into her every day. Her chapbook Crushed Anthills by Yavanika Press is a loco poetic journey through 10 cities. Her second full-length collection, Woman by the Door was released in 2022 with Apprentice…
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Beat the Winter Blahs with Holiday Lipogram Poetry
Created by Betsy Potash of Spark Creativity This guest post is written by Betsy Potash of Spark Creativity. Looking for a fun holiday pop-up poetry workshop you can try this December? How about challenging students with the hilarious, fun intricacies of a lipogram?! Melissa (you know, the founder of this site!) first shared this idea with me last year and…
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Kendrick Lamar Workshop Project
DAMN. 3 Years Anniversary Workshop Series (originally posted on www.nikki-rosa.com/blog and shared here with permission) For the project, I used the workshop contents to reimagine the physical album, designing my own versions of the album cover, liner notes, and tracklist. I am also posting an image that organizes the info into a single document. The images and the document are…
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Food Poem Unit
Everything you need is in this Hyperdoc. What you will find is a task sheet in small daily chunks that includes: Your students can work at their own pace to complete their final product. If we ever go back to school, we’ll have a potluck party with all the foods we are inspired by! NOTE: I can not allow edit…
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TeachLivingPoets Virtual Learning Project
Since we’re stuck at home and have been directed to create lessons that students can complete remotely, I’m sure that many of you feel a bit of pressure to come up with engaging, meaningful lessons that don’t require TOO much oversight from yourselves. I, too, am in that boat, so I just wanted to share an assignment that worked well…
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Student poetry blogs – writing for an authentic audience
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…
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Tone Bottles: explore tone in poetry with this engaging hands-on activity for all grade levels!
Today’s post is by guest author Valerie A. Person. In her 25th year at Currituck County High School, Valerie teaches honors and academic English II as well as AP Literature and Composition. She agrees passionately with Virginia Woolf’s “teaching without zest is a crime,” striving to find engaging and meaningful ways for her students to learn. One of the tenets…
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Introduction to Spoken Word and Slam Poetry
Today’s post is a collaboration brought to you by guest author, Joe Paris, and me, Melissa Smith. You can follow us on Twitter @ParisBMS and @MelAlterSmith. Joe has curated this amazing list of spoken word and slam poems to get your class started! He also wrote a post about organizing a slam at your school here. 1) What is Spoken Word?…
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Instilling a love for poetry with middle school slams
Today’s post is brought to you by guest author, Joe Paris. You can follow Joe on Twitter @ParisBMS. Joe Paris has been teaching 8th grade Language Arts in northeast Ohio for 19 years. He and his colleagues began the spoken word project six years ago and it’s their favorite thing they do with students every year. Slam into Summer and into…
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#TeachLivingPoets virtual library
Looking to bring in more contemporary poetry into your classroom but don’t know where to start? Or maybe you have a couple favorite poems and poets, but you’re looking to add some new artists? Thanks to my friend and rock star educator Scott Bayer, a resource now exists that you can use both as an […]
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Student Podcasts Using The Slowdown as a Mentor Text
I love The Slowdown Podcast with US Poet Laureate Tracy K Smith. Listening to it has become part of my morning routine. If you’ve never listened before, it’s a five-minute long podcast in which Smith introduces a poem with an anecdote, personal story, historical or current event, or some explanation that eventually leads in to what the poem she is…
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Building a Classroom Community Through Narrative Poetry
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…
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Get Moving with Teach Living Poets Stations
Today’s post is by guest author Angelina Murphy who teaches high school English in Los Angeles. She has her Masters in Education from University of California, Los Angeles where she focused her research on trauma-informed teaching and community of care. When she is not teaching, she also manages her blog about engaging teaching, technology, social justice, and teaching strategies at Magical Ms….
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Poetry Fridays: Making Poetry Part of Your Classroom Weekly Routine
The amazing Carol Jago was the opening and closing keynote speaker at the Poetry Foundation’s Summer Poetry Teachers Institute. Her goal was to provide us a handful of poetry activities that we could use in our first days back in the classroom, and on the last day, Carol asked us to set a personal goal for incorporating poetry into our…
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The Envelope Game – easy activity to use with any text tomorrow!
My students are reading Safia Elhillo’s poetry collection The January Children. We’ve had insightful class discussions, students are reading and annotating five poems every night, and today I wanted to do something more hands-on in small groups. Before we started reading the poems, we read Kwame Dawes’s foreword–a must-read, if you ask me. It prefaces her work with information about…
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How a poem moves – a workshop with Terrance Hayes
I had looked forward to this workshop for MONTHS. Terrance Hayes! A small, intimate workshop! I am going to learn about poetry from one of the greatest poets writing today. AND I get to attend his reading the night before? Get. Out. Of. Town. I was beside myself. Let’s start with the reading. Charlotte Lit sponsored a weekend with Terrance…
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Poems to celebrate Black History Month
Today’s post is brought to you by educator extraordinaire and guest author, Cait Hutsell. Cait is a high school ELA teacher in North Central Florida. She has almost exclusively taught freshmen for seven years, but has also taught AP Lang, Yearbook, and sophomore English as well. Her superpower is reading ridiculously fast; she finished 164 books in 2018! Cait is…
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Poetry Hexagons: get your students engaged with this hands-on hexagon activity!
Today’s post is brought to you by guest author Tia Miller. Tia teaches AP Literature, AP Language, AP Seminar, and Dual Credit English at Chapmanville Regional High School in southern West Virginia. She is currently working on her doctorate in Curriculum and Instruction from Marshall University. This past semester, inspired by Melissa Smith and other awesome teachers in my PLN…
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#TeachLivingPoets Gallery Walk
Today’s blog post comes from Carrie Mattern, a high school ELA teacher in Flint, MI who has taught in Flint for the last eleven years and in Brown City, MI for her first four years of teaching. At Flint Carman-Ainsworth, Carrie greets students as freshmen in English 9 and sends them out into the real world after completing English 12….
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“If They Should Come For Us” by Fatimah Asghar – chat archive and lesson
Teachers from all over the country gathered together virtually to discuss Fatimah Asghar’s poem “If They Should Come For Us” from her collection If They Come For Us (Penguin Random House, 2018). I taught this poem to my on-level American Lit juniors and AP Literature seniors the week prior to the chat, and found it to be an extremely successful poem with…
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Finding the Perfect Match: Poetry Blind Dating
Today’s #TeachLivingPoets post is brought to you by guest writers, Kristin Dreyer and Nikki Lehman, co-teachers at Chantilly High School in Chantilly, Virginia. They have been teaching at Chantilly for the past 18 years and have co-taught together three years throughout the course of their careers; this year they are embarking on an English 10 journey for the first time….
