Teacher's Note:
      Our class first began our study of poetry by listening and analyzing other poets' work. We began to understand that each poem needs to have a narrow topic and focus on a specific purpose such as capturing a moment in time, painting a picture, re-creating a feeling, or showing an extraordinary perception of the ordinary. We also began to understand how a poem needs to look and sound like a poem by using line breaks, white space, similes, metaphors, alliteration, rhythm, rhyming, and many other poetic devices. The students were then given the opportunity to brainstorm topics of their own and become poets themselves incorporating the lessons we had learned. The result is a collection of poems as unique as the students themselves. We hope you enjoy reading them. -Ms. Sharon Graham

                                               (Click on a thumbnail to read the poem.)