Why Poetry?
Anyone can have something to say about the Daily Poem. Poetry is the workhorse of Nancie's curriculum for its brevity and generosity and she counts on the opportunities it affords to explore the writer's craft with kids.

Nancie believes there is no genre that can match Poetry in terms of teaching about diction—about precise, vivid words. In fact, she begins every lesson about good writing with the daily poem. What students learn about diction, specificity, intentionality, theme, voice, audience, organization, and punctuation shows up in students' writing across the genres.

Poetry is an extremely effective, versatile genre to teach writing craft. Poetry appeals and matters to kids because they can find or write a poem about any subject that appeals and matters to them: growing up, every sport, childhood, siblings, gender stereotypes, American history, comic book heroes, friendship, war, peace, toys, nature, God, parents, chocolate, identity, dogs, death, computer games, school, prejudice, even poetry itself. Naming the World brings this power directly from Nancie's classroom to yours.

View Nancie's introduction from the DVD.

Finding Poems
To find poems that middle school kids are eager to talk about, Atwell read her way through collections, anthologies, and poetry journals. The poetry presented in this resource had to meet her four important criteria.

• The poems must be likable, by both Nancie and her students
• The writing is memorable and leaves an impression in the mind
• Adolescents will be intrigued by the poem; it demonstrates some of the range of what poetry can do, so students will begin to understand what their own poetic capabilities
• Also included is poetry by her students-brave poems, sensory ones, first attempts, interesting experiments, prize-winners, gifts for loved ones, and noble failures.