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Fun in Fours

Results For "Month: October 2013"

Letter from a Former Student

I simply adore my school and the people in it, especially the teachers. I haven’t had any English teacher as great as you though. I still value and appreciate your teachings. You greatly influenced my writing by inspiring and cheering me on. Every time we receive a writing assignment, you appear in my mind.

Enough to make you puff your chest out a little more…

Crawl Space

Sometimes, rooting about in the crawl space, taking care of mold in anticipation of new insulation being put in, you find something you just wish you hadn’t found. Like a dead bird. Or something worse.

Early Morning with the Boy

The Boy’s sleeping schedule is somewhat more flexible than we’d probably really like it to be. It probably has to do with that stubborn illness that’s been lingering.

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Some days, he sleeps until eight; other mornings, he’s up at half-past five. It would be infinitely convenient if the former days tended to fall on the weekends and the latter during the work week, but infinity and convenience are rare companions. And in the end, isn’t convenience overrated?

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Besides, when we’re the only two up — K already out of the house and L asleep — it’s reminiscent of the early weeks. Tiring weeks, but always magical in the morning.

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“Magical morning my foot,” K might say. “I remember how you complained!”

Bell Ringer

The idea is to get students working immediately. They walk into the classroom and find work projected on the Promethean board and are to get started.

From today.

GATHER ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he ‘s a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he ‘s to setting.That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,And while ye may, go marry:
For having lost but once your prime,
You may for ever tarry.

Robert Herrick. 1591—1674

AND AFTER YOU’RE DONE GATHERINGYE ROSEBUDS, GATHER YE STARTERS WHILE YE MAY. OLD MR. SCOTT’S A-CHECKING THEM TODAY

Because They Asked

Simple instructions — the starter — great them when they enter the classroom.

Complete: “Poetry is…”. Write at least five facts about poetry. Then complete “Poetry isn’t…” and write five more things poetry isn’t.

They get started scribbling a list, a list we will share and debrief once I’m done checking roll and making sure I have all my materials for the day’s work in order.

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Then the poem: “Because You Asked about the Line Between Prose and Poetry” by Howard Nemerov.

Sparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzle
That while you watched turned to pieces of snow
Riding a gradient invisible
From silver aslant to random, white, and slow.

There came a moment that you couldn’t tell.
And then they clearly flew instead of fell.

After reading a couple of informational texts about how to read a poem, students try their hand at Nemerov’s analogy:

prose : poetry :: sleet : snow

It’s slow going at first, for it’s such a strange poem for eighth graders. “It claims it’s going to be talking about poetry and prose in the title,” one student complains, “and then it’s all this stuff about birds and rain and snow.”

Tomorrow I will model the steps of interpretation, relying heavily on the questions and steps in the two texts about reading poetry they went over today, with the hope that they’ll be able to do it for themselves, at some point.