Reading Poetry in the Middle Grades: 20 Poems and Activities That Meet the Common Core Standards and Cultivate a Passion for Poetry

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"As teachers today, everything we teach has to be turbo-charged with skills and the promise of advancing our students academically. Here's the cool thing: poetry can get you there. It is inherently turbo-charged. Poets distill a novel's worth of content and emotion in twenty lines. The literary elements and devices you need to teach are all there, powerful and miniature as a Bonsai tree."

-Paul B. Janeczko

You'd like to teach poetry with confidence and passion, but let's face it: poetry can be intimidating to both you and your students. Here is the book that takes the fear factor out of poetry and shows you how to use this powerful genre to spark student engagement and meet language arts requirements. Award-winning poet Paul B. Janeczko is the master for creating anthologies for pre-teen and adolescent readers, and here he's chosen 20 contemporary and classic selections with step-by-step, detailed lessons for investigating each poem from the inside out. Kids learn to become active readers of poetry, using graphic organizer worksheets to help them jump over their fear and dive into personal, smart, analytical responses. There's no better genre than poetry for helping students gain perspective on their own identities and their own worlds, and Paul provides a space on each reproducible poem for private thoughts, questions, feelings, and ideas. Your students will discover what each poem means to them.

The 20 poems in this collection were chosen for their thought-provoking topics; compelling real-world themes that lead to conversation and collaboration in middle school classrooms. And by showing you how the poems and activities address the common core standards for English Language Arts (complete with a sample chart linking the poems to the standards), Paul provides a clear understanding of how you can "get there" using poetry.

You can cultivate a passion for poetry in your classroom. Take the journey with Paul B. Janeczko and grow in confidence with your students, meeting some standards along the way.

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A Kick in the Head: An Everyday Guide to Poetic Forms

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From the simplest couplet to the mind-boggling pantoum, the award-winning team behind A POKE IN THE I shows us the many fascinating ways poetic forms take shape.


In this splendid and playful volume — second of a trilogy — an acclaimed creative team presents examples of twenty-nine poetic forms, demonstrating not only the (sometimes bendable) rules of poetry, but also the spirit that brings these forms to life. Featuring poems from the likes of Eleanor Farjeon (aubade), X. J. Kennedy (elegy), Ogden Nash (couplet), Liz Rosenberg (pantoum), and William Shakespeare, the sonnet king himself, A Kick in the Head perfectly illustrates Robert Frost’s maxim that poetry without rules is like a tennis match without a net.

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Requiem: Poems of the Terezin Ghetto

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Paul B. Janeczko’s stirring new collection of poems goes inside the walls of the notorious camp to portray the indomitable spirit of those incarcerated there.

Hitler hailed Terezín (Theresienstadt) as a haven for artistic Jews, when in reality the Czech concentration camp was little more than a way station to the gas chambers. In his second book inspired by devastating history, acclaimed poet Paul B. Janeczko gives voice to this heartrending creative community: its dignity, resilience, and commitment to art and music in the face of great brutality. The many memorable characters he conjures include a child who performs in the camp’s now famed production of Brundibár, a man who lectures on bedbugs, and a boy known as "Professor," who keeps a notebook hidden in his shoe. Accented with dramatic illustrations by prisoners, found after WW II, Janeczko’s spare and powerful poems convey Terezín’s tragic legacy on an intimate, profoundly moving scale.

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Seeing the Blue Between: Advice and Inspiration for Young Poets

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"For a class, or to work up enthusiasm about writing - and not just poetry - one could hardly do better for young people than this fresh and inviting collection." - KIRKUS REVIEWS

How do you write poetry? It's a question with as many answers as there are poets. Now, in this unprecedented volume, thirty-two internationally renowned poets provide words of wisdom and inspiring examples of their own work for new poets everywhere.

Compiled by anthologist extraordinaire Paul B. Janeczko, a talented poet in his own right, this outstanding resource offers a fascinating spectrum of advice from those who know best - ranging from "break a few rules" to "read Shakespeare's sonnets in the bathroom" to "revise each poem at least thirty-two times." Not surprisingly, the most frequently made suggestion from these seasoned poets is simply to "read, read, read!" This rich volume - an ideal resource for classroom teachers and a beautiful gift for budding writers of all ages - offers the perfect opportunity to do just that.

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Top Secret: A Handbook of Codes, Ciphers and Secret Writing

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"The author's upbeat, positive tone is refreshing and his enthusiasm about his topic is contagious." — SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL (starred review)

Pssst! Do you know the difference between a code and a cipher? Can you tell a St. Cyr slide from a Cardano grille? Did you know that the discovery of a substitution cipher caused Mary Queen of Scots to lose her head? Don't look now, but packed into this practical field guide is everything a young person needs to know about the art of concealment - making and breaking codes, mastering cipher systems, and experimenting with secret writing. Offering plenty of hands-on practice sessions, tips for creating a code-making kit, sidebars on secret codes in history, and an amusing pair of spies to illustrate techniques, Paul B. Janeczko's tantalizing TOP SECRET won't stay a secret for long.

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Poetry From A to Z: A Guide for Young Writers

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