Writing II, Daily Prompts

1. Writing II, Daily Prompts Aug 11, 2010

2. QuickWrite and Daily Grammar: • Describe the classroom in 3-4 continuous sentences using • Your perspective as a student. • The perspective of an ant on the floor.

3. Identify the italic parts of speechPage 48 “Elements of Lang 5th Ed.” • For each sentence in the following paragraphs, write each italicized word or word group, and ell how it is used - as a noun, pronoun, adjective, verb, adverb, preposition, conjunction, or interjection. • After months [1] of drought, the [2] storm clouds build up in the [3] sky and the torrential deluge [4] begins. [5] Well, it is April in India, the [6]monsoon season. In India [7] and neighboring Bangladesh, the monsoon [8] usually continues from [9] late spring to early fall. [10] During that time, [11] it brings heavy rains [12] that are beneficial to the crops, but [13] some monsoons [14] can be deadly if their [15] rains are abnormally heavy. • Monsoons are created [16]when there is a great difference [17] between the temperatures of hot air over the sea and cold air over the land. [18] Southwesterly winds carry warm, moist air up from the Indian Ocean and [19] collide with cooler air over the landmass. [20] The result is a downpour that can last for weeks.

4. “What is Art?” “Is poetry an art form? Why or Why Not?” “How can I learn to appreciate poetry, to be a good “receiver”? Why do people write and read poetry? Unit Overview:

5. Unit Section 1: Building your Repertoire • Five Key Reading Skills: • Interacting with the text • Making connections • Exploring multiple perspectives • Focusing on language and craft • Studying an author

6. Conversations with Poetry

7. “Introduction to Poetry” By Billy Collins I ask them to take a poemand hold it up to the lightlike a color slideor press an ear against its hive. I say drop a mouse into a poemand watch him probe his way out,or walk inside the poem's roomand feel the walls for a light switch.I want them to waterskiacross the surface of a poemwaving at the author's name on the shore.But all they want to dois tie the poem to a chair with ropeand torture a confession out of it.They begin beating it with a hoseto find out what it really means. • Respond to the Text: • How does the poem make you feel? How do you think Collins generates these feelings in you? Identify words that trigger this emotion. • Collins demonstrates several ways to interact with a poem. List them. What does each new method add that’s different than the others?

8. “What is Art?” “Is poetry an art form? Why or Why Not?” “How can I learn to appreciate poetry, to be a good “receiver”? Why do people write and read poetry? Unit Overview:

9. QuickWrite and Daily Grammar: • Quickwrite: Describe what ‘hope’ is by using a metaphor (compare hope-which is an abstract nount- to a concrete noun without using “like” or “as”). **BONUS: “extend” your metaphor by showing how the properties of the concrete noun can reflect the properties of the abstract. For example: Racism is a poisonous snake. **Beware it’s first bite. • Grammar: Read pp 55-56 (up to “adjective or pronoun?”) then 57 (beginning with “adjective or noun?”) through 58, and complete exercise 3, #1-5

10. LuckLangston Hughes I don’t really believe in luck, but I’ll hear what he says. I think Hughes was an African American poet in NYC in the 1920s. Research him a bit. What did luck have to do with his life? Sometimes a crumb falls From the tables of joy, Sometimes a bone Is flung To some people Love is given, To others Only heaven. So... Who is it that’s sitting at the table of joy? A crumb of what? Luck? Is that a metaphor? God? Affluent people? Maybe this has to do with the time period (before the civil rights movement, which gave rights to minorities like African Americans...maybe he was saying that “white people” sometime left crumbs or threw bones to minorities. ... This is definitely a metaphor... is this positive or negative? This makes it feel like we’re animals begging at the dinner table... I am not sure I like this image. “flung” seems to be specially chosen here. It has an air of disdain, I think. This reminds me of the phrase “throw me a bone” which means “give me a break.” Love? Where does this come in... I thought we were talking about luck. Are they related? Does this theory help me understand the second stanza? I don’t understand this part... “Only?”

11. Emulating... • What are some words or phrases that describe luck to me? • What are some colors, animals, objects, or other concrete nouns I can compare luck to? • How does my understanding of luck compare to Hughes’? “tables of joy” Lightening Flash luck is like love Drought vs. Rainstorm Pillows Whiteness

12. Responding in Poem form • Short lines with strong images • Two short stanzas • Start with “Sometimes” and “To some people”

13. Luck Mr. Moore • Sometimes luck rolls in in billowing thunder cloudsLightning streaks the skyas big drops of fortune hurl down • To some people, playing in the rain is for fools. They prefer to stay dry under their fancy umbrellas.

14. Becoming an Active Reader (interlude) • Read together pages 225 - 228. • How does “responding to the text” help demonstrate the qualities of an active reader? • In this next section, we will explore a second tool for active reading, called: “Making Connections”

15. Unit Section 1: Building your Repertoire • Five Key Reading Skills: • Interacting with the text • Making connections • Exploring multiple perspectives • Focusing on language and craft • Studying an author

16. How to Become and Active Reader

17. First Reading...Read it, drink it, explore it.

18. Let them be flowers,always watered, fed, guarded, admired,but harnessed to a pot of dirt.I'd rather be a tall, ugly weed,clinging on cliffs, like an eaglewind-wavering above high, jagged rocks.To have broken through the surface of stoneto live, to feel exposed to the madnessof the vast, eternal sky.To be swayed by the breezes of an ancient sea,carrying my soul, my seed, beyond the mountains of timeor into the abyss of the bizarre.I'd rather be unseen, and if,then shunned by everyonethan to be a pleasant-smelling flower,growing in clusters in the fertile valleywhere they're praised, handled, and pluckedby greedy human hands.I'd rather smell of musty, green stenchthan of sweet, fragrant lilac.If I could stand alone, strong and freeI'd rather be a tall, ugly weed. “Identity” Julio Noboa Polanco

19. Write down your initial response to the poem.

20. Second Reading... Have a Conversation w/ the poem. (This uses LESSON 1: Interacting with the text!)

21. On your own... • Underline any words with which you are unfamiliar. • Look them up. Note multiple definitions... which one or ones are being used in this poem (note that a poem can select a word with more than one meaning on purpose!) • Underline, highlight, or put a star by lines that you think are important, intriguing, or moving to you. • Make notes in the margins or on the lines about why you are marking this line, word, etc. What makes it stand out? Feel free to write out QUESTIONS for the poem (e.g. “why would you want that?”) and if questions are answered later, draw a line connecting the question to the answer.

22. On your own... • Generate questions to ask throughout the poem • Go beyond “huh” or “I don’t understand this” Frame GOOD questions. E.g., (notice how these questions are BRINING something to the text as well as asking something of it) • “Why does the author use this word? Does it have special significance to the meaning of the poem” • “The other seems to be implying that .... why does he feel that way?” • “Why does the author repeat this line here? What effect does it have on my understanding of the poem? Does it connect any ideas to elsewhere in the poem? • Write down what you think the poem is about / what the poem is trying to say (try to go beyond the immediately obvious)

23. Sharing... Please share what you have underlined with the person sitting beside you. What words or phrases have you underlined? Why?

24. Third Reading... Connecting to the Poem (This uses LESSON 2: Making Connections!)

25. Three Methods: • Mark the text and annotate • Mind Map • Chart Blah blah blah

26. Annotate! • Use the margins and the lines to make notes about how you can relate to aspects of the poem. Use phrases like: “This is like...” or “This reminds me of...”

27. Mindmap! Uniquenesses I like about myself Uniquenesses I like about myself Important people who have been unique Importance of Uniqueness in my life Ways I am Unique Identity means accepting the ways in which I am unique

28. Chart!

29. Which method? • Which of the three methods did you like best? Why? • Would different methods work better in different situations? Explain.

30. Homework: • Complete the exercises in your daybook from page 13-15. For the page 15 exercise, think of someone who has impacted you in a similar way to the way which Aunt Sue impacts the child in the poem (this requires some analysis!). Write a short paragraph about this person, explaining the connection you feel and how it affects the way you live your life. • In your paragraph: Highlight all adjectives used, including at least 2 STRONG adjectives. Use and underline at least one metaphor (which utilizes a concrete and abstract noun), circle all adverbs you use. • After you do this, reread the poem. Do you understand it on a deeper level now?

31. Bellwork: Listen to the music • What do you notice about the beat, the emotions evoked, how it makes you move? What kind of music is it? • As we’ve seen, there is connection between music and poetry... if you were to try to write a poem in the “style” of blues, what kinds of devices do you think you would want to use? Why?

32. What is an aspect? • When exploring a poem, we are “unpacking.” What exactly is it that we unpack? • Aspects! As we look through poetry for theme(s), devices, sound effects, imagery, use of color, personification, mood, musical quality, form, etc... we are looking at many different aspects! • As we read poems, one reading = one aspect. If you are focused on one aspect, but notice another ... make a note and come back to that in another reading. The first and last readings take the poem as a whole. The more aspects a poem has, the more readings it will need to be thoroughly unpacked!

33. Readings: • Holistic impression • *****BEGIN UNPACKING******* • Interaction + Understanding (ideally: find a theme) • + Aspects (one each reading)******PUT IT BACK TOGETHER******* • Holistic impression

34. The Weary Blues - 7 Readings! Langston Hughes • Read it! • Read it and interact with it! • Read it and focus on the aspect of word choice. • Read it again, focusing on sound effects + their impact • Alliteration • Assonance • Read it again, focusing on repetition • Listen to it, focusing on connection to blues music • Read it all as a whole

35. Aspects and “The Weary Blues” • How many aspects did we examine? • How many aspects per reading? • Are there any other aspects you can think of for examining this poem with?

36. Task: Writing a Paragraph Response • Decide on an aspect of the poem you wish to write about. It cannot be the same aspect as anyone else in your table group. • Your homework: • Fill out the chart on page 20. • Write a paragraph which focuses on the aspect you chose, giving information about the aspect in the poem, and explaining what this aspect adds to the poem as a whole. (Does it help us understand theme? Develop the mood? Help establish a connection to something?)

37. Bellwork: • SILENTLY • Take out a piece of paper (or use your notebook) and write down what you think a paragraph needs to be considered “excellent.” Go beyond just listing one-word ideas - develop these. We’re looking for not just “good” but “excellent” work. What would it include?

38. What makes a good paragraph?

39. Bellwork: • Silently - • Identify what you think the “theme” of the following poem (Grass - by Carl Sandburg) is:

40. Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo*. *battlefields in the Napoleon Wars • Shovel them under and let me work— •                 I am the grass; I cover all. • And pile them high at Gettysburg* *battlefield in the American Civil War • And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun*. *major battlefields of WWI • Shovel them under and let me work. • Two years, ten years, and the passengers ask the conductor: •                 What place is this? •                 Where are we now? •                 I am the grass. •                 Let me work. Grass By Carl Sandburg

41. Today’s Objectives: • Practice finding theme • Introduce/Review onomatopoeia + rhyme • Review sound effects + paragraphing in preparation for the test

42. Onomatopoeia • A sound effect used in poetry in which a spoken word makes the sound of the thing to which it refers. • E.g. “Sizzle” or “swish” or “thump” or “clang” or... • When used in poetry, it helps intensify the atmosphere by appealing to your sense of hearing in bringing you into the world of the poem.

43. Rhyme • Rhyme occurs when the final syllable of a word matches the final syllable of another word. E.g. “Night + Light” “Steal + Automobile” • “Almost Rhyme” occurs when two words are very close to rhyming, but do not make a perfect connection. E.g. • My father worked with a horse plough,                            His shoulders globed like a full sail strungBetween the shafts and the furrow.The horses strained at his clicking tongue. • Rhymes usually occur at the end of lines, but “Midline” rhyme occurs with words in the middle of a poetic line. E.g. • Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

44. Rhyme • A “rhyme scheme” occurs in a poem in which a pattern of end-line rhyme is repeated. • My father worked with a horse plough,       A                      His shoulders globed like a full sail strungBBetween the shafts and the furrow. AThe horses strained at his clicking tongue. B • If the pattern is consistent, it can give the feeling of one or more of the following: control, order, cheerfulness, consistency, etc. • If the pattern is erratic, it can give the feeling of one or more of the following: lack of control, disorder/chaos, depression, confusion, hyperactivity, etc. • When a rhyme is brought back at some point in a poem, it sometimes serves to connect ideas from one part of the poem to another.

45. The Sound Collector • First, attempt to find a theme... what is the poem trying to SAY? • What examples of Onomatopoeia do you see? • What effect do they have on the theme/mood/ tone of the poem? • What examples of Rhyme? In what scheme? • What effect does it have on the theme/mood/tone of the poem?

46. Finding Theme • Read a poem as many times as you need to to extract a theme. Treat your theme as a “theory” to be tested in subsequent readings. Know that some poems have multiple themes! • “Grass” • “Sound Collector” • “Follower”

47. Sound Effect Repertoire • Alliteration • Assonance • Consonance • Onomatopoeia • Rhyme

48. What makes a good paragraph? • Content: • Focused, thorough, deep (analysis, not summary) • Organization: • Connects well to the theme, includes core features of a good paragraph • Topic Sentence • Support (use examples!) • Transition • Language: • Good use of vocabulary, idiom, grammar, and punctuation

49. WARNING:Test on Wednesday! • You will be given a poem COLD and will be asked to find a theme, and sound effects in the poem that help support/develop the said theme. You will write a response paragraph in which you explore the aspect of sound effects in the poem using examples and analysis.