Topic: Poems Are Teachers

Beginning with poems, we can teach students to recognize craft and deepen their understanding of it across genres and beyond specific assignments.

In this video, Amy VanDerwater explains that if we are able to harness a love of poetry and use it as a way to demonstrate writing techniques across genres, students gain a better understanding of writing overall.

Poetry is something that is happening now, everywhere, and we need to bring it into the classroom. In Poems Are Teachers, Amy introduces the skills and techniques involved in writing a poem and how it connects to writing across all genres.

Today on the Heinemann Podcast, authors Mark Lubkowitz, Amy VanDerwater and Valerie Bang-Jensen. What are crosscutting concepts?

Once we can get past the idea that poems are in their own little word, they open up a world of possibilities in the classroom.

In her new book, VanDerwater argues that poems should be the backbone of writing instruction, instead of being swept under the carpet as an afterthought.

When we write, we nudge change. How can we be helping students bring beliefs into writing? Here are some resources to get you started.

As if the wealth of Amy’s own writing and teaching ideas were not enough by themselves, she gifts us with a trove of poems by our favorite children’s poets.