Assessing Students with Poetry Writing Across Content Areas: Humanizing Formative Assessment for Grades 6-12

Assessing Students with Poetry Writing Across Content Areas reimagines formative assessment by advocating for a dynamic, poetic approach that delves into students’ meaning-making processes. It is a guide for teachers seeking innovative approaches to formative assessment, promoting a holistic, creative, reflective, and collaborative learning environment. It challenges the limitations of traditional worksheets and quizzes, urging educators to move beyond seeking restrictive answers and embrace students’ texts as pathways to understanding.

The authors put forward poetry as a vigorous tool and writing poetry as an act to foster deep learning across content areas. Practical examples of acrostic poems, haiku, and pantoum demonstrate the adaptability of poetic forms to diverse subjects. Through adaptable lesson plans that can be used across history, math, world languages, ELA, and science, the book encourages intentional poetic writing-to-learn activities and explores how poetry might present itself as a short, creative assessment tool that helps teachers see what their students know and can do while also offering them the space to make new meaning in their original poetry.

This book is a key resource for in-service educators teaching grades 6-12.

Sarah J. Donovan has over 20 years of teaching experience in grades 6-20 and is an Associate Professor of Secondary Education English at Oklahoma State University. She teaches pre-service and in-service teacher courses and leads professional development across the country in humanizing English language arts pedagogy. Her research focuses on the lifespan of teachers.

Kim Johnson has taught for over three decades in public and private schools at all grades from preschool through secondary grades and currently serves as the District Literacy Specialist for Pike County School System in Zebulon, Georgia.

Anna J. Small Roseboro is a National Board Certified Teacher and National Writing Project Fellow with 40 years of experience, living and working in five states, teaching English Language Arts and Public Speaking to middle school, high school and college students in public and private schools.

Barbara Edler is a Composition Instructor and Writer and taught high school English, Speech and Drama, and Talented and Gifted students for over 42 years.

Gayle Sands is currently a Professional Development School Liaison at McDaniel College. She previously served 27 years as a Middle School ELA teacher and Reading Specialist in Carroll County, MD.