Ellington

Young poets presented their work to a standing-room-only crowd last night, lit by soft lights and supported by ambient jazz. The poets were fourth-graders from Davis Magnet School, sharing what they had learned this semester about metaphors, Jackson and expressing themselves.

"Give 'em a soul snap as we welcome them to the stage," said Michelle Turner, a teacher for the school's gifted program, as the first students made their way to the front of the room at the Commons at Eudora Welty's Birthplace.

Students in two fourth-grade classes wrote the poems after taking a field trip to historic civil right sites around the city. Each student chose an object they saw and wrote a poem about how he or she is like that object.

"I am a bird," Eric Green Jr. wrote. "I fly with happiness when I succeed and when I'm with my family."

Other students wrote about such diverse objects as flat tires, broken windows and the bloodstains on Medgar Evers' driveway.

Through the assignment, students learned about civil-rights history, expressing themselves creatively and literary metaphors.

"It is not easy for a fourth-grader to think metaphorically," Turner said. "It's not easy for an adult to think metaphorically."

The fourth-graders typed their poems to hang around the room, experimenting with fonts and colorful backgrounds to further express the words' emotions.

Their hard work paid off. In addition to reading their poems to a packed house, the students went to a recording studio to read their poems for a CD, and the school collected the poems into a book for parents to purchase.

Other talented performers from the Davis Strings Ensemble and the school's drumline added a musical touch to an evening of mostly spoken-word entertainment.

Check out JFP's video of the Davis Magnet School Drumline.

Previous Comments

ID

165433

Comment

Love, love, love this!

Author

ScoutandBoo

Date

2011-11-19T20:43:11-06:00