This past Saturday, Breakthrough hosted its fourth writing workshop of the year for its ninth grade students. The workshop was far from the ordinary writing session and featured fun activities for the students to enhance their writing skills, including the third annual Breakthrough Poetry Slam.
The day started off with varying degrees of excitement from the students. One aspiring poet was especially enthusiastic about the day’s activities while others were a bit more cautious about what the day entailed.
Professional Slam Poets provided the students with some inspiration as they 
shared their own poetry. After seeing the professionals perform, students were more excited and some even volunteered to share their work.
The professional poets led a discussion on the different aspects of poetry, engaging the students and helping them identify some key details of the poems.
In addition, with help from Austin Bat Cave volunteers, these students learned key components to improve their writing skills, including the importance of strong word choice, tone and active voice. The activities included a hilarious session of Mad Libs, writing poetry in different tones using one line of a published poem, and the much anticipated poetry slam.
All in all, the students enjoyed the day’s activities and learned some very essential writing skills that will equip them to be more effective writers in the future.