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skinny poem

December 5/5-Day Writing Challenge

Thank you for joining us on our last day of the December writing challenge. A very special thank you to Glenda Funk who developed all the poem inspirations and encouraged us each day. Next month, Stacey Joy will guide our writing from January 18-22. We …

bop poem

December 4/5-Day Writing Challenge

Inspiration Bop: The Bop poem form functions as a poetic argument, much like the persuasive speech we teach in speech and the argumentative essay we teach in English  classes. The Bop has a distinct structure, but the refrain, I think, is the glue holding the …

echo

December 3/5-Day Writing Challenge

Inspiration One of my favorite poems to teach is “An Echo Sonnet: To An Empty Page” by Robert Pack. (Scroll to page 2 for the complete poem.) The  poem appeared on the 2011 AP Lit and Comp exam in the free-response section, tasking students with …

fibonacci

December 2/5-Day Writing Challenge

Inspiration Fib (Fibonacci poem): A Fib poem marries math and poetry. Gregory K. Pincus created the Fib to commemorate  National Poetry Month in 2006. From that first post, a Fib movement began. Fibs are based on the Fibonacci sequence, according to this post from the …

golden shovel

December 1/5-Day Writing Challenge

Inspiration Golden Shovel: Inspiration for our poems comes from many places. Terrance Hayes created the Golden Shovel poetry form from Gwendolyn Brooks’s poem “We Real Cool.” Hayes named his poem “The Golden Shovel,” and if we look at the last word in each line of …

Tenure Track Prof

Tenure-Track: The First Semester Check-In Reflection

This week,  I wrap up my first semester as tenure-track faculty.  In case you missed it, I left my 15-year position as a junior high language arts teacher in June to become a full-time teacher educator. How does that happen, you ask? Since you asked, …

FOMO

Conference FOMO? I really didn’t mean to make you feel left out.

Social media is a blessing and a curse. As an introvert, social media offers access to people, places, and lives I would otherwise never know because, except for certain times of the year, I am mostly a hermit. Still, when on social media I see …

#NCTE19 & #ALAN19

This year I have the privilege of attending all four days of NCTE and two days of The ALAN Workshop. Up until now, I had always been a classroom teacher who had to pay her own registration and travel, take her only two personal days, …

November #5daywritingchallenge

November: 5/5-Day Monthly Writing Challenge

Thank you for joining us to write this November. I hope to see you at NCTE. This is where I will be: If you have teacher-friends and writers who would enjoy our community, please invite them to sign up for December with the wonderful Glenda …

November #5daywritingchallenge

November: 4/5-Day Monthly Writing Challenge

Inspiration Try a quatrain today and see if it restricts or liberates — or some combination. A quatrain is a four-line poem that can have the same number of syllables in each line to create rhythm. You might try an end-rhyme pattern like abab, aabb, …