Monday, April 27 - Friday, May 1

Friday
I was at a district workshop again today. Here are the notes I left for the TOC.

• Silent read for the first 10-15 minutes of the class

• Work on their annotation for 20-30 minutes if they need to.

• Individual poetry treasure hunt.

Students will be searching for their own striking lines and phrases from famous poems. Send students to the Poetry In Voice online anthology in search of memorable passages: http://www.poetryinvoice.com/poems/poem-finder

They should gather three passages from different poems. The meaning of the passage in its original context is less important than the power each student finds in it and the student’s ability to imagine each passage being put to use in a specific situation.

If you wish, you can make this a “treasure hunt” assignment. Use the list of situations on the strips of paper; give each student a situation, and ask him or her to find three appropriate lines or phrases from the online anthology that could be of use in the context they ended-up getting.

To keep students from grabbing lines of poetry at random, tell them that on Monday, when they share their movie clip that features a poem, they will also share their poem passages and they will have to justify the choice of lines aloud (why did they choose them? Why do the lines “speak” to them) by briefly imagining a moment when that line or phrase would be relevant and applicable. If you went the treasure hunt route they would mention the situation they were given and why the lines work for that situation.

Thursday
I was at a district workshop today. Here are the notes I left for the TOC.

Silent reading for first 10-15 minutes

Students have an article that they are working on annotating/writing all over as a final assessment to the most recent unit we did on non-fiction. Please give them time to work on the annotation. They should also work on the poetry assignment below.

Introduce students to the idea that reciting part or all of a poem can be useful in a variety of real-life situations. Brainstorm with them what some of those situations might be, for example:

·       When faced with bad news or difficult times

·       At a wedding, birth, funeral, or other important life-cycle event

·       As a toast or grace before meals

·       In a romantic relationship or during a marriage proposal

·       To pay tribute to someone or something

·       During a speech to move an audience, whether it be voters, colleagues, teammates, or others you wish to lead

Students are to find a film that features the reading of a famous poem or lines from a famous poem. Here is a web site that might be a place to start:

Poetry in Film, Radio, and TV” (see: www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/195).

Please go around and ensure that everyone does a different film! They are going to work in pairs on this. They must share their findings with the class on Monday, May 4

For this brief little presentation they will:

-        Show the class the video clip from the movie

-        Name the poem and the poet – MUST be a famous poet/poem.

-        Answer the questions below in their short presentation to the class

·       Why might the screenplay writer want to include poetry within the film?

·       What does the audience learn about the character reciting the poem by its inclusion in the film?

·       What impact does the use of poetry have on the viewing audience

Wednesday

We took a bit of a break from the annotation of the text about second chances to talk a bit about poetry. I am away for the next two days and I wanted to set things up for what everyone will be doing for the next few classes. We took a look at a poem by one of my favourite poets, Sylvia Plath's Metaphor. It is a great way to look at poems because the language is easy, but poetic. It has a bit of a puzzle to figure out - which most of you did in record time! Tomorrow you will have time to work on your annotation and continue doing some work on a pair activity related to poetry.



Tuesday

Today everyone wrote the editing quiz and then we went over it. For the remainder of the class we worked on annotating the article about second chances. Make sure you show me your work in progress tomorrow if I didn't see you today so that I can give you some feedback.


Monday

Today we did an edit practice based on a variety of writing errors I was finding in the recent novel autographs that were submitted. The quiz for these editing errors will be tomorrow. Following the editing practice, time was given for the text annotation assignment.