Youth Poet Laureate Curriculum

Lesson One: Writing a Self-Portrait

Session Theme: Personal history, background, and/or origin story.

Student Outcome: To write well-crafted poems about the places, people, movements, hobbies, blocks,

neighborhoods, communities, backgrounds, and experiences from which students come.

Session Theme: Self-esteem, self-empowerment, imagery.

Student Outcome: To use writing and poetry as a tool for building self-esteem and empowerment and

celebrating one’s self. To use imagery as a way to elevate that celebration.

Session Theme: Students learn about point of view (first, second, third person; singular and plural) and perspectives when writing poetry and other kinds of creative writing.  Students will think about how changing from first person to second and third person affects the meaning of a poem.

Session Theme: Social and cultural identity, heritage, ancestry, intersectionality. Students will learn how words shape identities and learn about  Greek aeidein or ode. Students will practice close reading and annotation, discussion,  performance.

Session Theme: Social justice, social change, anti-oppression, liberation, equity. Students write poems that can be used as a form of activism towards social change.

Session Theme: Climate change, animal rights, nature, the environment. Students write poems and practice incorporating persona into their poetry.

Session Theme: Vulnerability, bravery, courage, taking risks, gratitude, appreciation, praise. Students write poems as letters that allow them to encounter personal challenges.

Session Theme: Poetic forms and devices, found poetry, erasure poetry. Students write "found" poems and practice anaphora and repetition as they write about what surprises them and brings them moments of awe.

Session Theme: Creative expression, taking artistic risks. Students will write poetry that experiments with linguistic and literary conventions. 

Session Theme: Revolutionary movements, futurism, equity, equality, creative expression. Students will write poetry that includes imagery.

Session Theme:   

Editing and revision. Students   

learn techniques for editing and revising student work.