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Book
Getting the Knack: 20 Poetry Writing Exercises
by Stephen Dunning and William Stafford
Grades | 6 – 12 |
Type | Book |
Pages | 203 |
Published | November 1992 |
Publisher | ![]() |
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Description |
Dunning and Stafford, both widely known poets and educators, offer this delightful manual of exercises for beginning poets.
Dunning, Stephen, and William Stafford. 1992. "Found and Headline Poems." Getting the Knack: 20 Poetry Writing Exercises. Urbana, IL: NCTE.
Grades 6 – 8 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson
Students compose found and parallel poems based on a descriptive passage they have chosen from a piece of literature they are reading.
Grades 6 – 8 | Lesson Plan | Minilesson
Alliteration in Headline Poems
Students will be introduced to the term alliteration and create a headline poem consisting of 25 words that contain at least three examples of alliteration.
Grades 9 – 12 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson
Finding Poetry in Prose: Reading and Writing Love Poems
After reading several poems that expand the definition of love poetry, students compose found poems based on a personal memoireither their own or a love story of another writer.
Grades 3 – 5 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson
Letter Poems Deliver: Experimenting with Line Breaks in Poetry Writing
Students explore letter poems and experiment with writing letters as poems, using the placement of line breaks to enhance rhythm, sound, meaning, and appearance.
Grades 3 – 5 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson
Color PoemsUsing the Five Senses to Guide Prewriting
Students use their five senses as a prewriting tool to guide their poetry writing as they compose free-form poems using imagery to describe a color.
Grades 3 – 5 | Lesson Plan | Unit
Creating Classroom Community by Crafting Themed Poetry Collections
Students create poetry collections with the theme of "getting to know each other." They study and then write a variety of forms of poetry to include in their collections.
Grades 6 – 8 | Lesson Plan | Unit
Introducing Each Other: Interviews, Memoirs, Photos, and Internet Research
Students use their communication and writing skills as they interview a partner, write an article about them, and create a multimodal presentation to introduce their partner to the class.
Grades 6 – 8 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson
Investigating Names to Explore Personal History and Cultural Traditions
Students investigate the meanings and origins of their names in order to establish their own personal histories and to explore the cultural significance of naming traditions.
Grades 3 – 5 | Lesson Plan | Standard Lesson
Working in small groups, students compose found and parallel poems based on a descriptive passage they have chosen from a piece of literature they are reading.