Sonnets are a staple of English-language poetry. They can also be intimidating to introduce to children, because of their density and formality and because lots of the best ones were written a long time ago. However, I’ve been teaching them — after a solid foundation in other poetry — for several years now, and whileContinue reading “Sonnets: Shakespeare wrote ’em so why can’t we?”
Tag Archives: Seattle
14 Ways to Model Literacy
As we all know so well, children don’t just learn the lessons we plan to teach them. They learn by what we model for them. So if we want kids to be capable readers and writers, we have to do more than help them learn to read and write. We have to model literacy as aContinue reading “14 Ways to Model Literacy”
Math + Poems = Swagness
Today, in honor of April Fool’s Day, we pretended to do math instead of writing. We wrote a math poem, where each line had to have an equation but everything was words instead of numbers. It was so fun it felt like a game — might be a great writing assignment for a math-focused kid.Continue reading “Math + Poems = Swagness”
Dada in Our Hearts: teaching French Surrealism and Dadaism to children
Last week, I introduced the class to French Surrealist poetry and Dadaism. This sounds very highbrow, but actually this poetry is right up the kids’ alley. Why? Because it’s totally nuts. Basically, these poets were responding to the insanity of World War One by deifying nonsense. But lots of it is very lively, wondrous nonsense.Continue reading “Dada in Our Hearts: teaching French Surrealism and Dadaism to children”
FROG HOLLOW SCHOOL 