This curriculum-based collection of lesson plans is designed to build student confidence for articulating their unique ideas and sensibilities about the world through literary expression. For this book, Jimmy Santiago Baca, one of the foremost poets in America today, collaborates with two National Writing Project Fellows and literacy…

The 25 mini-lessons provided in this book are designed to develop students' self-regulated writing behaviors and enhance their self-perceived writing abilities. These foundational writing strategies are applicable and adaptable to all primary students: emergent, advanced, English Language Learners, and struggling writers. Following the SCAMPER…

Suggests a course unit created in response to General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) guidelines which attempts to avoid the guidelines' inherent division between skills and creative response. (JAD)

Presents four poems of the "self" (poems that represent authors' perceptions of themselves) by secondary school students. Discusses how to assess such poems and students' development in writing poems like them. (SR)

Presents a teacher's journal entries for poetry classes she conducted for fourth and fifth graders at Anthony Chabot Elementary School in Oakland, California, located in a middle class neighborhood with an ethnic mix of students. Describes two poetry writing ideas: "What Matters" and "100 Words." (PA)

Describes a poetry writing assignment that teaches students the importance of place and objects in expressing emotions about a childhood memory. (RL)

Relates a two-part writing assignment for the study of poetry, in which students are assigned to write a critique in response to a particular question and are then asked to give a personal response. (TJ)

Claims that capturing an adolescent novel in shaped, found, or structured poetry gives students ways to tell others what the novel meant to them. Discusses five poetic forms (riddle poem, found poem, character poem, poem for two voices, and repeat poster poem) and presents student poems. (RS)

Explains the guidelines for an exercise based on the poem "The Little Mute Boy" by F. Garcia Lorca. States that students are to: discuss synesthesia, the substitution of senses; explore the surreal senses; think about life without a sense; create a net of surprises; write a poem; and read the poem aloud. (PA)

Discusses five forms of traditional oral poetry from around the world which not only provide a window into the cultures that nourish them, but inspire students to perform poetry, both their own and that from literature. Offers examples of each form, and presents writing exercises and ideas for students. (SR)

Outlines a night adventure--a poetry hike for a junior high class. Discusses the group poem they worked on and gives examples of poems students produced after listening to readings of several poets' ideas and expressions of "night." (PA)

Describes how one instructor incorporates daily poetry "breaks" in middle school. Explains that students begin by listening to Eve Merriam's "How to Eat a Poem," then imitate poems first in pantomime, then with sound and action. Notes that students later write and trade poems, and end the term with a poetry festival. (SG)

Suggests an approach to teaching the poetry of T. S. Eliot.

Argues that asking students to write in concrete images about specific events and places serves to emphasize the importance of writing from detailed personal experiences. (RL)

Offers a pedagogy that invites students to know firsthand how traditional poetic forms are both historic artifacts and living practices. (RS)