April is National Poetry month and the middle level has been preparing since the beginning of March for this special genre of literature.  

The middle school curriculum has a strong focus on poetry, a skill introduced in elementary school and then really honed in on by sixth grade.  They learn about poetic devices like metaphors, similes, hyperboles, and personification that make poetry different from short stories and novels.  They also look at sound devices like alliteration, rhythm, rhyme, and onomatopoeia (sound effects) that give poems a musical quality.  We looked and listened to the poetry that is around us every day, like the music that we hear on the way to school.  We read poems from classic poets like Edgar Allan Poe and Shakespeare to modern ones like Shel Silverstein and Gary Soto. 

The students also wrote their own poetry: haikus, cinquains, diamontes, shape poems, ballads, sonnets, narrative poems, and black-out (or found) poems, along with many others. The sixth and seventh grade students created their own poetry books, consisting of twelve original, illustrated poems.  The seventh grade had an additional assignment to research a poet and create a trifold showcasing the poet along with his or her work.  The trifolds were the background for the poetry café.  The Poetry Café is a culminating activity at the end of eighth grade and a highlight of the English department.