Latest Lesson Plans
“What If”: Trusting Students with Difficult and Challenging Model Texts
In this article, teacher Brittny Ray Crowell brings the poem, "I saw Emmett Till this week at the grocery store,"…
Where Does It Take You?: Using the Poetry of Paz, Pacheco, Gutierrez, Blanco, and Deltoro as Models
"I urge my students, whether elementary school age or adults, to work for "abundance" as they walk: Look hard, pick…
Feel: Exploring Emotion in Poetry with Kendrick Lamar
Teacher Andrew DeBella shares how he uses Pulitzer Prize winning artist Kendrick Lamar's music to create a visceral experience of…
Writing a Dream Poem
In this article from the T&W archive, educator Bill Zavatsky teaches his students to create free-verse dream poems, using dream…
Are We Teaching In A New World?: Yahdon Israel on Language Barriers, Educational Politics, and Online Teaching
Read this interview by T&W teaching artist Matthew Thompson with Yahdon Israel, a Brooklyn-based teacher and writer who has used social media and virtual learning to make critical engagement with the written word available and accessible to students across the globe and class spectrum.
“What If”: Trusting Students with Difficult and Challenging Model Texts
In this article, teacher Brittny Ray Crowell brings the poem, “I saw Emmett Till this week at the grocery store,” by Eve Ewing to “help students see that poetry can offer a means of reckoning with history and trauma, and to show them that there is power, and perhaps even beauty, in the process of artistic re-envisioning.”
Where Does It Take You?: Using the Poetry of Paz, Pacheco, Gutierrez, Blanco, and Deltoro as Models
“I urge my students, whether elementary school age or adults, to work for “abundance” as they walk: Look hard, pick up the messages in the cracks you’ve stepped over every single morning. Later you can choose among your riches for your poem” Naomi Shahib Nye writes. In this T&W archive article from 1997, Nye writes about her experience teaching in San Antonio where she and her students read poetry by Latinx poets closely, to inspire their writing processes, attentiveness to detail and their perceptions of their neighborhoods.
Feel: Exploring Emotion in Poetry with Kendrick Lamar
Teacher Andrew DeBella shares how he uses Pulitzer Prize winning artist Kendrick Lamar’s music to create a visceral experience of poetry in his classes. We are reminded here that to connect to poetry’s deeper meanings, we have to first feel it awaken within ourselves. Here is how Andrew creates this experience in his classroom:
Writing a Dream Poem
In this article from the T&W archive, educator Bill Zavatsky teaches his students to create free-verse dream poems, using dream poems as an opportunity for students to create visual art pieces from their dream poems.
The Well of Words: The Poetry Workshop as a Place of Social-Emotional Learning for Adults
T&W writer Libby Mislan reflects on the healing nature of processing emotion through poetry. To meet the perceived needs of students, she created the “Poetry as Processing” workshop where students learned SEL skills and wrote from their experience of this telling 2020 year.
Origin Story Lesson Plan Using Afro-Latina by Elizabeth Acevedo
National Book Award finalist Candice Iloh shares a lesson using the spoken word poem “Afro-Latina” by Elizabeth Acevedo, to ground students in their multiple identities and lived experiences and to utilize literary devices and source material in generative writing exercises.
Teaching Creative Writing in Covid Times
Teacher Ben Berman reflects on the challenges and opportunities for deeper care and connection with students, brought on by the pandemic and virtual learning. Read how creative writing continues to serve an essential purpose through COVID.
A Korean Poetry Competition Motivates Students to Write
Teacher, Elizabeth Jorgensen helps students engage in the creative writing process by giving them an opportunity to publish or gain recognition for their work. Read how her students express themselves through the sijo and find success in The Sejong Cultural Society’s annual poetry competition.
How is THAT a Poem? Winning Over Skeptical Students with E. E. Cummings
Laura Wheatman Hill shares ideas to intrigue students with E. E. Cummings’ poem “l(a…(a leaf falls on loneliness)” and teaches students how a poems’ subject matter can often inform its structure.