Writing Free: English III Students Exhibit Exceptional Poetry

Recently, in Mrs. Cook’s English III class, the students were assigned a free verse poem about alienation. The poem must include someone or something who feels alienated, 20-30 lines, a rhymed couplet, at least one stanza of stream of consciousness, experimentation in punctuation, capitalization, or spelling, and some other poetic attributes. The class has recently been going over the theme of alienation, and this assignment was to help them understand a little bit more.

This type of assignment, in my opinion, is the best kind to get in class. It allows students to freely express themselves through their writing, and it strays from typical classwork by allowing more liberated writing. There are no right or wrong answers.