January 31, 2013

1.  Retrieve your notebook from the crate.

2.  Hand in your disclosure signatures and VIP form if you haven't already. 

3.  Prepare to take notes on the me-bags. 
4.  Me-Bag Presentations

5.  We're going to computer lab 211 to finish writing and revising the short story -- fantasy that begins in the real world. 
Prompt and Instructions:     A Fantastic Day.doc

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

1.  Retrieve your notebook from the crate.

2.  Hand in your disclosure signatures and VIP form if you haven't already. 

3.  Prepare to take notes on the me-bags. 
4.  Me-Bag Presentations

5.  We're going to computer lab 211 to write a short story -- fantasy that begins in the real world. 
Prompt and Instructions:    A Fantastic Day.doc

Celebrate! Pride and Prejudice Turns 200 this Week!

http://www.npr.org/2013/01/27/170253360/pride-and-prejudice-turns-200?utm_source=NPR&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=20130127

A Head's Up!

Use this link:  Poetry and Chocolate

Browsing through Poetry on the Internet

Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket) on poetry:  http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/article/246328

Poetry and the Bard:
http://ed.ted.com/lessons/why-shakespeare-loved-iambic-pentameter-david-t-freeman-and-gregory-taylor


Look on the internet for poems to present.  Use the links below, or look up favorite poets.
http://www.webenglishteacher.com/poetrycollections.html


Poetry Resources for Teens  
http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/394

http://www.poetrysociety.org.uk/content/youngpeople/

Funny Poetry for Kids
http://www.gigglepoetry.com/

http://www.emule.com/poetry/?page=top_poems

Scroll down for poems to recite:

http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/86

Poetry Links for Middle School Students:  (Notice that some of these are intended for teachers and others for students.)

http://www.vrml.k12.la.us/cc/poetry/poetryms.htm


Middle School Poetry
http://middleschoolpoetry180.wordpress.com/the-poems/

Poetry 180 -- aimed at high school students
http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/

Poetry from Scholastic: 

http://teacher.scholastic.com/poetry/

Look at Shel Silverstein's official site.

http://www.poetry-archive.com/collections/

More:
Selections from a book of poetry about middle school: 
http://www.kristinegeorge.com/swimming_upstream.html
http://www.kristinegeorge.com/poetry_aloud.html


Gary Soto (Look for a book of poems by Gary Soto in our classroom:  A Fire in My Hands
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/230

A poem about poetry:
http://www.educationalrap.com/song/poetry-for-life.html

And more --
http://poetry.eserver.org/
http://www.poemhunter.com/

http://brodbagert.com/pages/view/303/Unpublished-poems-Brod-wants-you-to-have

Story Based on Me-Bag Notes

In pairs or on your own, begin a story or script including as many of the students in our class as you can.  Bring out the things that make each person unique using your notes from the Me-Bags. 
 
For example, from last semester's class if one of those students were being chased by a bad guy, Raelyn could hit him by sliding out the slide of her trombone -- not that she would do that, really since it might hurt the trombone!  Chandler could hit him with a ping-pong paddle, and  Kalie could pelt him with handfuls of pennies pulled from her very girly purse. 

Use one of these conflicts, or another of your own: 
-- You and your classmates are working together as a Mission Impossible team to . . . 
or
-- You and your classmates are saving the world from an alien invasion.
or
-- You and your classmates are stranded together on an island.  

Log into your blog  and turn it in there. 

This is the link to our 

Kidblog.

Friday, January 25, 2013

1.  Retrieve your notebook from the crate.
2. Hand in your disclosure signatures and VIP form if you have them ready. 

3.  Today is a "You Choose" writing time.  You may either write about anything you'd like to work on, or select one of these prompts.  It's up to you.  Give it a title and today's date.

If you don't have something else you'd like to write about, either 
a.  Pick a prompt from the list titled "Creative Writing Prompts About Me," and write at least a half-page response in your notebook.  Give it a title and today's date.
or 
b.  Write a response to this picture projected on the screen.  You could write a description, a commentary, a poem, a brief story, or whatever you're moved to write based on that picture.  Your response should be about a half-page or so long.  Give it a title and today's date.

4. Me-Bags

5.  Finding Fabulous Firsts
Take your composition book. You will find and copy first sentences that grab your attention, or that are just especially well-written.  

Create a chart for 
Book Title            Author                          First Sentence
One Hundred Years of Solitude  Gabriel Garcia Marquez 
"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."

Pride and Prejudice   Jane Austen  
 "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader    C. S. Lewis
"There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it." 

The Crow Road    Iain M. Banks
"It was the day my grandmother exploded." 

http://americanbookreview.org/100BestLines.asp

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

1.  Retrieve your notebook from the crate.
2. Hand in your disclosure signatures and VIP form if you have them ready. 

3.  Complete these writing prompts 

a.  Pick a prompt from the list titled "Creative Writing Prompts About Me," and write at least a half-page response in your notebook.  Give it a title and today's date.

b.  Write a response to the picture projected on the screen.  You could write a description, a commentary, a poem, a brief story, or whatever you're moved to write based on that picture.  Your response should be about a half-page or so long.  Give it a title and today's date.

Use this link to go to the picture prompt: CRYSTAL CAVE – SKAFTAFELL, ICELAND

4. Me-Bags

5.  Writing Advice:  Spilling Ink 

A writer's blog:  http://gailcarsonlevine.blogspot.com/

Incredible Photos of Incredible Places on Earth

http://myscienceacademy.org/2013/01/14/25-places-that-look-not-normal-but-are-actually-real/

Friday, January 18, 2013

1.  Retrieve your notebook from the crate.
2. Hand in your disclosure signatures and VIP form if you have them ready. 

3.  Complete these writing prompts 

a.  Pick a prompt from the list titled "Creative Writing Prompts About Me," and write at least a half-page response in your notebook.  Give it a title and today's date.

b.  Write a response to the picture projected on the screen.  You could write a description, a commentary, a poem, a brief story, or whatever you're moved to write based on that picture.  Your response should be about a half-page or so long.  Give it a title and today's date.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2390/2108633520_054e4d7eaf_o.jpg

4. Sharing -- clock appointments -- used 7 o'clock

5. Read to Write:  
a. Read:  Listen while Ms. Dorsey reads from Spilling Ink, "Section 2: Ugly First Drafts"
b. Write: 
I DARE YOU: Rewrite a scene from your life.  Think of something that happened today or yesterday, something that wasn't perfect -- maybe even something that was downright mortifying -- and rewrite it as you would have wanted it to happen.     [Spilling Ink by Anne Mazer and Ellen Potter, p. 11]

6.  Me-Bags  today:  In your composition book, take notes as your classmates present.  After each one, you will have the opportunity to ask questions. 

Morgan W.

Raelyn W.

Madelyn W.

Chandler T.

Kalie T.

Jessica S.

Emma R. 


7.  Read to Write:  Snoopy's Guide to the Writing Life 
We read Jack Canfield's advise to Snoopy about dealing with rejection and difficulties from page 153 - 154.  

8.  My Writing Process -- Write this in your notebook. 
When you write, what works best for you?
 place, time, music or no music, people around or solitary, what materials (computer?  pen and paper?  a particular type of pen or pencil?  a particular journal or notebook or. . .?)  Do you need any props like snacks or . . . . ?

2012/2013 School Year -- Supplies

How Parents Can Help Students Improve Their Writing

The Trouble with Poetry

Here's a poem by U.S. Poet laureate, Billy Collins from  http://www.edutopia.org/trouble-poetry

The Trouble with Poetry: A Poem of Explanation

A U.S. poet laureate shares.

by Billy Collins

Billy Collins

Credit: Corbis Images

The trouble with poetry, I realized
as I walked along a beach one night --
cold Florida sand under my bare feet,
a show of stars in the sky --

the trouble with poetry is
that it encourages the writing of more poetry,
more guppies crowding the fish tank,
more baby rabbits
hopping out of their mothers into the dewy grass.


And how will it ever end?
unless the day finally arrives
when we have compared everything in the world
to everything else in the world,


and there is nothing left to do
but quietly close our notebooks
and sit with our hands folded on our desks.

Poetry fills me with joy
and I rise like a feather in the wind.
Poetry fills me with sorrow
and I sink like a chain flung from a bridge.


But mostly poetry fills me
with the urge to write poetry,
to sit in the dark and wait for a little flame
to appear at the tip of my pencil.

And along with that, the longing to steal,
to break into the poems of others
with a flashlight and a ski mask.

And what an unmerry band of thieves we are,
cut-purses, common shoplifters,
I thought to myself
as a cold wave swirled around my feet
and the lighthouse moved its megaphone over the sea,
which is an image I stole directly
from Lawrence Ferlinghetti --
to be perfectly honest for a moment --

the bicycling poet of San Francisco
whose little amusement park of a book
I carried in a side pocket of my uniform
up and down the treacherous halls of high school.

Billy Collins, the U.S. poet laureate from 2001 to 2003, is the author of seven collections of poetry and is a distinguished professor of English at Lehman College of the City University of New York. He serves as the poet laureate of New York State.

This article originally published on 10/18/2006

A Poem About Poetry

Ars Poetica

BY ARCHIBALD MACLEISH

A poem should be palpable and mute   

As a globed fruit,

Dumb

As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone

Of casement ledges where the moss has grown—

A poem should be wordless   

As the flight of birds.

                         *               

A poem should be motionless in time   

As the moon climbs,

Leaving, as the moon releases

Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,   

Memory by memory the mind—

A poem should be motionless in time   

As the moon climbs.

                         *               

A poem should be equal to:

Not true.

For all the history of grief

An empty doorway and a maple leaf.

For love

The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea—

A poem should not mean   

But be.