My freshmen have been studying and writing poetry since we came back from winter break. At the outset I told them that when we got to the end, they would beg me to keep doing poetry. They scoffed and laughed and told me I was nuts. And true to who they want me to think they are, they whined and complained each and every day about having to write so much poetry, but they did and it was awesome.

The unit culminated in a poetry project. They had to create an anthology of their poems and present them in some creative way: a Google slides presentation, or a magazine format, or a poster, or an altered book. I showed them the awesome altered book a student had done last year and they were impressed. The majority of them went to the library to request, as I told them, “an altered book book.”

I received about eight posters and maybe nine Google slide presentation and the rest were blow me away altered books. And I was right, in their quiet “you haven’t hooked me” way, they begged me not to move on from poetry. Ha! Another bunch of recruits. I’ll add more photos tomorrow.