This wonderfully descriptive poem was crafted by a Grade 8 student at Eston Composite School.  

Homebound-A Reading and Conversation with Cree poet Francine Merasty on the healing power of poetry. With grace and wit, Francine discusses how has helped her deal with the trauma of residential schools and celebrate the strength of her family.

The following resources are for assessments on:
1. A good poster
2. An informative brochure
3. Poem
4. A personal narrative essay

Lila Gray instills her own love of poetry in her students by encouraging them to write original works and finding poems that express who they are. Her weekly open mic sessions create a perfect venue for building confidence and helping students find their voice while still hitting core standards and learning lifelong skills.

Overview: Youth literacy can be promoted by leveraging youth culture, such as rap/music videos. By merging sound and visual imagery with text, a poetry writing task can be transformed into a multi-media video assignment. English teachers with access to a computer lab equipped with video editing software (e.g. i-Movie) can carry this out with their classes. Alternatively, English and computer lab teachers can collaborate to have their students produce thematic poetry videos as the culminating activity of an English poetry unit. It assumes that students have been taught the basic forms of poetry. Furthermore, by having students discuss the process of producing their poetry videos with peers in face-to-face or on-line workgroups, they develop the literate and social skills necessary for functioning effectively in the project-based team culture of today's workplace. Students will use the resources of takingitglobal.org to become informed about a theme of their choice. They will then compose a poem that expresses their thoughts and feelings about that topic. This poem will then form the basis for a video.