April is Poetry Month throughout the nation and what an exciting and creative way to have your students write about the subject you teach!  Their writing will help you “see” them more personally, too. Depending on the grade you teach, you may have students write a traditional poem with rhyme and rhythm, one of the [...]

How are you going to celebrate?     “What you learn through reading and writing poetry will stay with you throughout your life,” Michelle Obama said in a statement about a national initiative to support the study of poetry. “It will spark your imagination and broaden your horizons and even help your performance in the [...]

You can use class time more efficiently if you pre-test to determine what students already know and what you need to teach.  By the time students reach middle school, most have been introduced to some of the basic literary terms.  Let them show you what the know already by administering a early no-stress assessment. Here are [...]

First, of course, it’s important to decide what you want to learn about the students and their ability to write poetry.  Will students have studied poetry already and have a working definition of what a poem is?  If so, you could measure how well students create a poem that fits that definition. Here’s one I [...]