Rhyme Time

Over on Learning and Laptops, Maria � who is a ninth grader � wrote this:

Imagine: A place where students are adults and teachers are students. Imagine: A place where information is pulled, not fed. Imagine: A place where poetry can be real, deep, and fun at the same time.

Welcome to Ms. Smith's 9th Grade Honors English Class!!! Beware: This is NOT education as usual, please come prepared to learn in a way never experienced before. Please come excited to try new things, and to do your best, no matter the outcome.

. . . So boom! Out came student-taught poetry explications, publishing of our poems, and a opportunity that, instead of ogling Shakespeare's brilliance, we could to create our own! And our poems wouldn't simply be pieces of paper with a red grade, they would be published on the world-wide internet for others to enjoy and reply with their feedback.

The limits of blogging were pushed past the max as, each night from my computer at home, I would post the rough draft of one of my poems. Then I could scroll through all my classmates' poems, and discover new ideas and ways to improve. The next time I checked back, it was thrilling to read others' comments and feedback. It felt like a giant fishbowl, where instead of agonizing over a poem by myself, I could throw it out to a ton of different minds and we could build it up together, achieving an end result that I knew was truly my very best work.

If you go to the post, there are links to multiple examples on their blog. I particularly like this one.

Then, over on Anne Smith's ninth grade blog, the students in that class responded to this:

Students were asked to compose poems following the "I am" poem format revealing in one line who they truly are. This line is then repeated throughout the poem as they speak of their wishes, dreams, hopes and fears.

Students not only posted their poems as comments, but also commented on each other�s poems.

If you have a few moments, please check out the posts, read through some of the poems, and offer your constructive criticism in the comments.


Image Citation: Poetry and dreams, originally uploaded by Cher Amio.