Writing 1: Writing 1 Class Notes -- Week 13 (April 28)

Greetings!

Writing 1 Haiku

Two weeks to finish

Pencils, essays, books, stories

Coming to an end

With only two weeks left in the semester, I found myself at a loss today; I could not come up with a clever or thoughtful Quick Write idea. My solution? Let the students decide it for me. Our three options today were to write about 1) your favorite video game; 2) dinosaurs; or 3) a strange/weird/bad cooking experience. One student combined all three ideas and wrote about a video game that had dinosaurs that were bad cooks.

Our Words of the Day were words that spell another word when spelled backwards. This kind of word is called a Semordnilap, which is "palindrome" spelled backwards. (Remember, palindromes are words that are the same forward as they are backward, i.e. mom, dad, tot)

Desserts backwards is stressed. (In other words, when you get stressed, you should go back for desserts!)

Yob (a rowdy youth) backwards is boy

Avid (having great enthusiasm; greedy) backwards is diva.

Ogre (an ugly imaginitive creature) backwards is ergo (therefore).

Rebus (not a Semordnilap) is a representation of a word using pictures or symbols. Emojii might be good examples of these.

Students handed in the final drafts of their News Stories. I look forward to reading these. They've chosen such interesting topics. Our final essay is an Essay Re-Write. For this essay, they have the chance to improve one of their previously written essays. We listed the essays that they have written this year: Descriptive, Personal, Example/Illustration, History/Biography, Narrative, Theme/Character, and a News Story. They've been very hard workers! For this final essay, they should consider looking for ways to write better sentences, to add more information and details, and to strengthen their thesis statements. The final draft of the previous essay will be considered the rough draft and should be handed in next week with the re-write.

We read through some of the poetry that the students had chosen to read for this week. I had them choose poems that hadn't been assigned. A number of students selected two poems by Gelett Burgess:

"A Purple Cow"

I never saw a Purple Cow,

I never hope to see one,

But I can tell you, anyhow,

I'd rather see than be one.

"Cinq Ans Apres" ("Five Years Later")

Ah, yes! I wrote the "Purple Cow" --

I'm Sorry now I Wrote it!

But I can tell you, Anyhow,

I'll Kill you if you Quote it.

In addition to reading poems, the students will write 3 short poems for next week. I gave them a handout the explains the haiku, diamante, and cinquain. A haiku is a Japanese poem that is formatted according to a syllable structure. The other two poems are short, non-rhyming shape poems.

The next two weeks, in addition to Quick Writes and some final grammar work, will focus on our Poetry Jam. I divided the class into 3 "Teams" who will compete together. Each team member should have 3 poems that he/she has selected to present. The teams will present as a group, and the others will score them using a rubric. The categories are Level of Difficulty, Memorization, Physical Presence, and Dramatic Quality. An extra point is given if the poem is an original. Students can choose poems from their books, poems from other books, or poems they've written. Poems from other sources and original poems must be at least 8 lines long.

Note: Below I've listed some links to some good, Christian spoken word (a.k.a. poetry) artists

Assignments for Next Week:

-- Essay Re-Write

-- Choose 3 poems for the Poetry Jam

-- Write 3 poems: a haiku, a diamante, and a cinquain

Links for this week:

Class Notes

How to Write a Diamante