Chapter 510 launched our pilot poetry program in partnership with Ousd!
This fall, Chapter 510 launched our pilot poetry program, “The Young Poets Expedition,” in partnership with Oakland Unified School District!
This initiative is a part of our three-year strategic plan goals to deepen our impact in OUSD schools and include more literacy-based curriculums across the district, focusing on creative writing and poetry.
Our pilot year consisted of eight 4th-grade classes in six different schools, with a total of 200 students reading and writing poetry – Burckhalter Elementary, Sequoia Elementary School, Redwood Heights, Acorn Woodland, Chabot Elementary, and Allendale Elementary. We worked in close collaboration with each classroom’s English Language Arts teacher to ensure they had the support and resources needed to optimize the experience for their classes.
The impact of this approach is echoed at a district level. OUSD’s Elementary Literacy Coordinator, Hanna Sufrin, has confirmed these findings. “For over 10 years, Chapter 510 has made writing exciting and meaningful for our students,” Sufrin shared. ”The new Young Poets Expedition program is our opportunity to scale this work across the District.”
The unit was a total of five weeks, with a deep dive into themes such as the fall equinox, night/day, and light/dark. They were challenged with writing about how each of these themes reflects their own lives and the significance of transitions and change. Students had the opportunity to explore different poetic forms and were introduced to contemporary poems they could draw from for inspiration in their own writing.
The curriculum also included reading other elementary school poetry. Students read and analyzed poems from Chapter 510’s Light Made the Storm Blind, sharing many thoughtful and engaging reflections about the material. It was really powerful for students to see and learn from other young writers; one student from Redwood Heights noted, “I want to write my own book of poetry and call it three days of darkness and three days of light!"
A central question that was posed to students was, “Why do fourth graders write poems?” – their responses were hung up in a temporary mural of sticky notes. Their words speak for themselves:
“To inspire people and let out your inner child.”
“4th graders write poetry because it can be a new era of poets.”
“Because you can express yourself, and fourth grade is a big grade and good for expressing. Also, you can think of crazy, amazing ideas.”
In week three of the unit, students read “Trying to Name What Doesn’t Change” by Naomi Shihab Nye. The themes they explored consisted of food, elements, seasons, and holidays, which gave students structure while also allowing the freedom to write from so many different perspectives. Monica May, a 4th-grade teacher at Sequoia Elementary, shared, “This is the best writing I’ve ever seen my kids do.”
At the end of the program, students learned how to revise their writing through peer editing and submitted their favorite poem to be included in an anthology of work produced throughout the eight different classes.
Chapter 510 celebrated the conclusion of the unit by hosting a poetry reading at our space in Swan’s Market, where students expressed excitement and pride to share the pieces they had been working on. The anthology will be published at The OUSD Elementary Lit Fest.
Chapter 510’s teaching artist, Anjali Emsellem’s, shared in the introduction to the forthcoming anthology: “But what stood out to me the most over our time together, was the way poetry brought a powerful life force to the classroom.”
Thank you, OUSD, for your partnership! We are excited to continue and evolve these collaborations in the future and to help even more young people write skillfully and with joy.
