Dear poetry-loving English teacher friends,
Last week, we paused. We paused because the kids needed a pause, and we needed a pause. In every way, I think all of us are trying to find that happy medium right now between all and nothing.
But here we are again — week 4, the final week of our poetry exploration. Next week, we will take the four poems students have drafted during this unit and enter a revision workshop to polish two of them to turn in for feedback.
This week we are focusing on a poem’s resonant ending, and my buddy Margaret Ann has planned a beautiful mini-lesson with 7 Ways to End a Poem. So smart. We’re also reviewing some good, old-fashioned poetry terms for good measure.
- The Mini-Lesson uses a Naomi Shahib-Nye poem to think about endings. What could be better? (_How Do I Know When a Poem is Finished’ By Naomi Nye – Week 4 Minilesson)
- In the annotation activities we are letting students choose a poem or song to annotate (they’ve been begging) or a beautiful poem by Rainer Maria Rilke about April:
- In their Padlet-based discussions this week, students will be building connections between their own poem drafts, the poems they are studying, and poems written by one another. Or they can choose to tackle the really hard thing — thinking about the effect of poetic devices. It’s not enough to know they exist if we can’t talk about what happens because of them.
Next week, in our poetry revision workshop, we’ll hone in on three revision tasks to make students’ poetry drafts stronger!
We hope this helps as you trudge along in this brave new world. How have you been using and tweaking these lessons to make them work for your students? We’d love to hear your ideas, too! Leave us a comment to share!
Be well,
Rebekah
moving writers 