Describes efforts and results of teaching students to write free verse by recasting old poems, e.g., taking a poem heavy with rhyme, meter, and inversions and modernizing it freely using some of the techniques of free verse. (HOD)

Notes the villanelle is one of English poetry's most demanding forms. Discusses two distinct ways in which a villanelle unfolds - as a satellite or as a snowball. Describes how the meaning of the repeating lines in a snowball villanelle change and increase with each recurrence. Presents exercises for teaching the villanelle. (SG)

Offers a 20-item list (put together by high school students) of features characteristic of Whitman's poems. Uses the list of features to write original poetry. Offers additional writing ideas for use with Walt Whitman's poetry. (MG)

Teachers teach literature to help students expand and develop their image-making powers, "to imagine, conceive, fancy, picture," to think. To get students involved in literature, especially poetry, Robert Frost's poem, "The Witch of Coos," is particularly useful because it is so immediately accessible. In order to help engage…

Each of these ten creative writing assignments includes a model poem, a writing idea, and suggested discussions or activities related to the writing idea. The assignments can be used to stimulate either poetry or prose writing. (Author/AA)

Just as spoken language is intended to be heard by an audience, written language aims to be read by an audience. In helping kids learn to write, teachers have ignored this crucial fact. The article discusses how a high school English teacher on the Navajo Indian Reservation got the students to do poetry and other creative writing. (Author/NQ)

Describes a technique used in an English composition course to encourage student experimentation with different language choices. The students are given a Chinese poem, along with a romanized pronunciation and dictionary translation of each character. They are then instructed to write a few sentences in English conveying the poem's message. (SED)

Suggests using poetry's short short forms for a methodical and rapid series of writing assignments that emphasize both careful writing at the sentence level and overall planning and respect for form. (HTH)

Deals with teaching a Walt Whitman unit in a high school American literature course. Discusses ways of making the poet's work relevant to the current generation of students. (RBW)

Suggests pre-poetry writing exercises can introduce poetry writing as fun rather than frustrating. (RB)

Presents two teaching methods that lend structure to the teaching of poetry writing. (MAI)

Provides a step-by-step approach to teaching students the elements of poetry, such as similes, acrostics, metaphors, and odes. Copies of handouts are included. (HTH)

A poet-in-residence discusses some of his teaching techniques for exposing students to a variety of poetry. (MM)

Describes an exercise to elicit student interpretations of Robert Wallace's poem, "Ungainly Things." (MM)

The poetry unit presented in this paper is designed to teach high school students how to write poetry through personal observation, journal writing, and small group discussion. Using the unit, students progress through the stages of writing according to the following steps: observing a familiar person and noting words and phrases about that…