Mrs. Payette's Class Samples

Check out poetry project at http://www.desertskyone.com/Poetry05/Paye2.html.

It has a variety of shape poetry from students in Mrs. Payette's class.

nora sanchez

Shape poetry comes to life in Mrs. Magnani's class...

Here are a few illustrated concrete poems from Mrs. Magnani's class, which I stumbled onto while looking for a few examples. These are really great. The website has a few examples only, but they are excellent student work samples. These sample concrete poems can be found at http://comsewogue.k12.ny.us/showcase/magnani/shapepoems.htm.

Technically, It's Not My Fault: Concrete Poems by John Grandits

Poetry Break 3: A poem written in concrete form.

Introduction: Ask students to think of their most favorite thing or most prized possession. Afterwards, have students draw it on a piece of paper. Read "My Sister is Crazy" by John Grandits, and let students identify the correlation between the message in the poem and its shape.

Book: Technically, It's Not My Fault: Concrete Poems
Author: John Grandits
Published: 2004

"MY
SISTER
IS CRAZY "

My sister wears a
pyramid on her head.
That’s right. She has a
little pyramid-shaped hat.
“What is wrong with you?”
I ask her. “You look like a jerk!”
My sister sighs and rolls her eyes,
as if I’m the one who’s a total loon.

“The pyramid is a source of ancient power,”
she says. “The Egyptians had pyramids, and
their empire lasted 3,000 years. The Aztecs ruled
Mexico with an iron fist. Or was it the Incas? No, Aztecs,
I think. Anyway, they had pyramids. And how about the
pyramid on the one-dollar bill? Coincidence? I don’t think so.”

That’s why I wear aluminum foil on my head. I have a very good looking
ray-deflecting foil hat that I made myself. Not in the shape of a pyramid!
You’d have to be nuts to think that a pyramid would protect your brain from
evil alien rays coming from outer space. Which proves my point: My sister is crazy.

Extension:

Students will create a poem about their most prized (favorite) possession in the shape of the drawing they previously drew. Students are to work on a poster board. They will read it to the class and later put it on display.

Fires Burning Deep Inside by Charles Albano

Albano, Charles. Fires Burning Deep Inside. New York, NY. BookSurge Publishing. 2001.

This spiritual and breath-taking book is created especially for teenagers and young adults as well as the young at heart. His book of poetry contains five sections, and they contain themes such as humor, love and romance, inspiration, and diversity. family, the search for the spirit, and ancient topics. All the poems in this book are written in Haiku format, which give the reader a new sense of value to the creativity that Haikus allow.

Young teenagers can relate to these poems from the beginning to the end. All poems are universal like "Algebra"

"Fourteen X, squared,
minus six X
equals thirty...
You could have fooled me."

and "Appetite Attack."

"Defeating many rounds
Of appetite attack,
He lost four dozen pounds,
Before he gained them back!"

These are just a few among the hundreds of haiku poems in his book. Such poems are complex enough for the teenage mind yet simple enough for a young child to enjoy. Filled with universal themes from first love to the complexity of algebra class, Albano's poetry makes childhood memories come to life for the older audience and links poetry to life for the young adults.

Every Time I Climb a Tree by David McCord

Poetry Break 2: NCTE Award winning poet.

Introduction: Teach students onomatopoeia and assonance by modeling for students. Teacher will then read the below poem by David McCord to the class and outline onomatopoeia and assonance to the class.

After the lesson, students will create a list of five words that depict onomatopoeia and a list of five words that illustrate assonance. Teacher will evaluate their mastery of these devices by evaluating their word list.

Book: Every Time I Climb a Tree
Author: David McCord
Published: 1999

"The Pickety Fence"
by David McCord

The pickety fence
The pickety fence
Give it a lick it's
The pickety fence
Give it a lick it's
A clickety fence
Give it a lick it's
A lickety fence
Give it a lick
Give it a lick
Give it a lick
With a rickety stick
Pickety
Pickety
Pickety
Pick

Extension:

Students will be put in pairs and create a poem using both onomatopoeia and assonance. Both students are to work as a team to come up with a topic for their poem first. Once the topic has been determined and approved, each small group will create a poem that contains assonance and onomatopoeia. Once their work is done, they will present it to the class.

The Gift of Poetry...

...it unwraps itself.

Welcome to my Blog

Nora Sanchez Najera

Hello! My name is Nora Sanchez and I am a high school English teacher with BISD. I studied at the University of Texas at Brownsville where I received my bachelor's degree in English and an almost double-major in Art, but wanting to graduate sooner than later, I kept a hefty list of art courses as electives instead.

After my first year of teaching high school English language arts classes, I began taking library information courses at Texas Womans University. A year and a half of graduate classes later, I earned my master's degree in Library Information Science, however, I was not quite ready to transition into the library.

[updated 2017]

I transferred over to IDEA Public Schools after four years of teaching high school students to begin a new journey teaching Reading and Writing to 7th graders - a challenge indeed, but I met it head-on, earning IDEA's Teacher of the Year Award that first year. After teaching there for three years, I decided my work as a classroom English teacher was done, and I was ready to make a difference in the library.

I then began working with BISD as an elementary librarian, and although my goal had always been to work in at the high school level, I took the challenge of working with the wee-ones. Upon entering the library classroom in 2010, I took on the non-traditional role of librarian. I started my library classes with a short lesson and fun activities and afterward, students checked out books. After my first year, I decided to begin to reform the system that was already in place by challenging students to read their books since most of them were checking out books for the sake of checking out and very few were actually reading. This was not an overnight change. It took several grants and lots of free new books later to really peak students' interest. I began weeding our collection, getting rid of almost 50% of our outdated books, some dating all the way back to 1900--really.

Accelerated Reader was also a system in much need of reform. By individualizing students' AR goals to match their comprehension levels, reading suddenly became more attainable to them. Each year I had more and more students reach their AR goals both in points and proficiency so that after my 6th year at our school, our campus earned 3rd place in the district as far as reading comprehension goes. On my 7th year, we accomplished 1st place in the district, and this year we are still at 1st place. Our students have completely changed the way they see reading. Behavior problems are minimal at the library for the very reason that even the students that have behavioral issues love to read, and they dare not risk losing their library privileges by misbehaving.

I started teaching thinking that my love for literature was enough to get me through the hard days, but I soon learned that first year was that the most important thing to love was not literature itself but those I was teaching. This got me through every hurdle and seemingly impossible task, knowing that everyone deserved to learn, to grow, and to feel capable of achieving even what some have told them they never could.