Why Not Make It an Evening of Beautiful (and Ugly)(and Fun) and Interesting Words When Discussing Young Adult Verse Novels

I haven't done the class this way before, although I've done variations with middle and high school students. Here, I simply fused purposes and spent 50% of class pushing students to analyze text and 50% having students produce script for themselves with combining a few writing workshops into the books they chose to write. 

Ta-da...by the end of the night everyone had produced one poem for the open Mic.

But first they stole lines they liked from what they read...shared them on white boards...then we analyzed an article and applied it to the text we read (critical thinking), then we circled around the room and responded to the poems on the boards, then I announced all the language we wrote is fair game for stealing, and we jumped into the magic box poem, where more and more words were added.

Of course, we then looked at model poems we might choose to write if we were given 10 minutes.

Wusah! It worked and I'm exhausted. I also have to teach again on campus so need to hit the road. I don't think my Refugee Literature class will be as productive, but we'll see. 

Running on empty and seeing all the miles ahead. 

On the crossroad of the veined leaf, I feel the caterpillar is swallowing me whole.