Ames Middle School Students Share Rhythm and Rhymes

Eighth grade students culminated a multi-week lyrical literacy lesson with a coffee house-style poetry reading session Tuesday.

Students in both Tonja Goodwin and Amber Upah's eighth grade classrooms spent 16 days learning the literary devices prescribed in the Iowa Core Curriculum like alliteration, allusion, tone, rhythm and rhyme by reading and writing poetry, something high school students don't focus on as much, said Goodwin a former high school teacher.

Eighth graders have just 46 minutes a day to focus on literacy skills.

“We are trying to balance reading and writing. We taught them different ways to read poetry but also how to write it,” Goodwin said.

Tuesday students pursued another Iowa Core curriculum goal speaking and listening by sharing one of the six poems they wrote in class or something else they'd written at home, while Goodwin and Upah relaxed in green arm chairs.

There were odes to farms and chap stick, verses that honored the lives of grandmothers and friends, list poems about volleyball and snowboards, a found poem about milk and nonsense poems inspired by the late Shel Silverstein.

Chauncey Murphy read an ode poem he wrote a year ago at home after reading an article about slavery. He called it “Tragedy Leads to Triumph” an interpretation of a slave.

“You say you are so much better than me because of the color of my skin

I breathe your air I too have a soul and a heart that beats thin

So why do you think so less of me I too have sacrificed

My wife and child were taken and killed now all I have is life

So you think you are stronger than I standing over me while I work

But it's not the whip that hurts it hurts to let you take so much when I really have nothing left.

Yet I stand tall and refuse to give up knowing I someday I will have my chance

In truth I'm stronger than you'll ever be because my whole life was constructed of dreams.

I have lived for so long with nothing at all that I do not need anymore but you still need me

When the days that I speak of come I will be the one standing down on you

And I will have more than ever before while you're still wishing for your dreams to come true.”

Another student read a poem that was much shorter and to the point. Kenny Mack stood in front of the class and bent over a file drawer to reach for a poem he'd written then spun around to recite a list poem from memory.

“I hate people who snowboard and ski because no matter how bad they are, they think they are really good,” he said and sat down.

Goodwin said “That's just Kenny he says it like it is.”

That was a lesson left out of the Iowa Core.

“Through these poems you get to know each other even if they are silly and goofy,” Goodwin told the class. “Being able to share them is really awesome. You did a great job.”