Mrs. Wasserman’s and Mrs. Blum’s eighth grade English classes have been busy with their own “Sweet 16.” Both classes began with 16 poems set up in brackets. Each student then made their own prediction as to which poems would progress through the rounds, and ultimately take the crown as the winning poem.

Each day the students analyze and discuss two poems, focusing on structure, poetic devices, theme and relatability. They then use a rubric to rate the poems and determine a winner. The class winner advances in the brackets.

The poems chosen include ones written by both contemporary and more classic poets, such as Robert Frost, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, William Carlos Williams, Portia Nelson, Billy Collins and Carol Ann Duffy. Mrs. Wasserman and Mrs. Blum created this unit in order to expose students to a variety of poets and their styles, to familiarize students with poetic language, to demystify poetry and show its accessibility and to encourage an appreciation of this genre of literature.

The students are pleasantly surprised by how competitive and attached they have become to their poems and to the “madness” of it all!