Margin Notes

The New York Times Magazine used the poem Small Kindnesses by Danusha Laméris as an invitation for teen readers to submit their personal responses to the question “What small kindnesses do you appreciate?” Danusha Laméris compiled some of the over 1300 responses into Small Kindnesses: A Collaborative Poem by Teenagers From Around the World.

Collaborative poems are a novel and creative way to curate students’ ideas and make their thinking visible. You might try compiling collaborative poems by:

• inviting students to read Small Kindnesses and respond with their own small kindness or to the first line of the poem, “I’ve been thinking about…”
• using another short text as an invitation to share thinking after a quickwrite
• asking students to each share the line they are most proud of from their writing at the end of a craft or form study
• collecting students’ favorite sentences from their independent reading

We’d love to hear your suggestions for collaborative poems in the comments!