“…but i will never let my tongues
be replaced
changed
beaten
I have two tongues
each one
its own value
that only I can determine.”
-Angelica Mercado, “Tongues”
“Tongues,” Latina Culture, and A Beautiful Connection Between Writers
poetry
Poetry Connections
Making text-to-self connections can be pretty simple when you’re working with a story, explanatory text, or short passage. Poetry, on the other hand, can be a challenge. That’s why I wanted to specifically work on this with my Book Club students. Continue reading
Poetry Workshop
To connect on a deeper, more personal level to Tuesdays with Morrie, I had my students write poems about their ‘Morries’, the influential people in their lives. Continue reading
Who’s My Morrie?
I wanted to switch up activities in my English 10 classes and instead of having them write another journal or essay-type of response, I decided to have them write two poems. These would be about people who influenced them positively–their ‘Morries’.
Continue reading
Anne Bradstreet Poetry
In my American Seminar classes, the advanced 11th grade course on American literature, I did a mini-unit on Anne Bradstreet poetry. Continue reading
April Fools! And Poetry
Our clinical session is about to begin, and I can hear our ten-year-old running up the library stairs two at a time. He’s holding a silver pan with a sheet of foil covering the top. Continue reading
Writing From Image [Ekphrastic]
The assignment: to focus on a specific object or image, and then concentrate on how to write about this image/picture in a descriptive way.
This strategy gets the students to start thinking about figurative language, symbols, similes, connections, etc. Continue reading
Class Poem
Poetry can be intimidating, so what better way to integrate it in a classroom than through a class poem? Continue reading
Poetry Lesson Plan – Annotations
“A woman is not a potted plant.”
Wait, what? The look of confusion on my student’s faces was prominent as I stood in front of the class with Alice Walker’s poem, “A Woman is Not a Potted Plant” and asked them what they thought that title meant.
Poetry. It’s beautiful. It’s complicated. And students often struggle to grasp the deeper meaning. Continue reading