Creative People

http://fellowshipoftheminds.com/2014/05/24/a-dragon-in-his-garden/

Poem: Let Evening Come

Let Evening Come
BY JANE KENYON

Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don’t
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.

End of Year Survey Results 2014

Thanks!  You've been a great (and very talented) class!

Favorite Activities

Least Favorite

Being creative and lost in thought Child’s book Concrete poetry II Looking at Different styles of writing Free write Got to do our own things – be creative Headline poems  II Hormone Jungle II Individual Writing (time to work on their own books/novels/stories) II Sharing and Listening to prompts (answers) read aloud Me-bags Monologue – from the villain’s point of view Outdoor activities IIIIII Pick our own prompts Prompts II Quiet Not super stressful Sharing ideas for stories and/or other things to write Stories Writing to Music IIII

Deadlines Inspired-By poems Love That Dog Me-Bag Stories II Music Prompts I couldn’t relate to Prompts that didn’t lead to an interesting story  (not exciting)  II More time reading than writing Sharing and Listening to prompts (answers) read aloud Short time to look at the prompt Tall tales III Too much poetry Too much time to write to a prompt (When I had writer’s block) Worksheets

Suggestions for Writing Prompts: The opening line of a book, then after students have written about it, tell them about the book About sports If you could become any object, what would it be? A time you never gave up “This was the only way to save my family.  I had to. . . .” You wake up in a new environment or biome and have to survive. Give them a list of objects and have them write a story using those objects. Best family vacation The smooth criminal – Have you ever done something bad and gotten away with it? Write about the day you were born.  What happened? Write a story about your favorite cartoon character. One day you wake up as a cow. If you could have one super power (no loophole powers like power to have whatever powers), what would it be and why? Do a project on your favorite animal, subject, or anything else you really like. Do you like animals?  Why or why not? Look around the room for pictures and whether that be The Outsiders poster or the calendar or. . . . write a story or poem about it. Look at a picture and write a story about how it ended up being that way – cause and effect. (Think hard before you write about something.  You don’t always have to do the first thing you think of.) (collect words all semester)

Visual Illusions

http://illusionoftheyear.com/2014/a-turn-in-the-road/

http://illusionoftheyear.com/cat/top-10-finalists/2014/

Tuesday, May 27, 2014

1. Fill out End-of-the-Year Survey.

Some of the things we did this semester:
Used KidBlog!
gift of writing
writing outdoors
writing to music
tall tales
monologue from the "villain"
concrete poetry
headline poetry
other poems
me-bag sharing
me-bag stories
child's book
headline about you
READING-
Love That Dog
Hormone Jungle


2. Play games.

Bring treats if you wish!

Thanks for being such a great and talented class!

Thursday, May 22, 2014

Announcements and Reminders:  All late and revised work (and extra credit) is due by Friday, May 23. Return all books you have checked out from Ms. Dorsey's room.  Plan to party on May 27.   Bring treats. Have you met the 40 book challenge?  Turn in your chart to your English teacher right away for a special treat next week. Today:  Bring favorite music (without lyrics).

Today’s Agenda: 1. Write to this prompt:  "What I'm Doing This Summer."  This can be wishful thinking, what you really plan to do, or a total fantasy!  and Initial your student checkout statement -- fines or refunds.

If you were absent:

http://thepianoguys.com/portfolio/arwens-vigil/

http://thepianoguys.com/portfolio/live-at-red-butte-garden-beethovens-5-secrets/

http://thepianoguys.com/portfolio/rockelbels-canon-pachelbels-canon-in-d/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kU9WgD3jZIc
Soundtracks

The Fountain
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYhg5IOkar8

Lincoln --

Sacred Heart --

Jungle Book

Band of Brothers:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Od5saV1Gs8U

Disney: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5xAJGlOOe8 to Atlantis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5gQSaT11K4   guess at 9:15, 21:03, 22:22

Friday, May 16, 2014

Announcements and Reminders:  All late and revised work (and extra credit) is due by Friday, May 23. Return all books you have checked out from Ms. Dorsey's room by Friday, May 16.  Plan to party on May 27.   Bring treats.

Today’s Agenda: 1. Prompt:  Have you ever had an encounter of the close kind with a wild animal?  Describe it, write a poem, create a brief story, etc.  This could be nonfiction or fictional. 2.  Writing about nature Examples Outdoor activities: 1. Camera 2. Sound Map 3. Within a Circle (Take your handout, a pen or pencil, and your composition book or something else for a surface to write on.) Camera Angles: close up, wide-angle, panorama, try panning http://www.mediacollege.com/video/shots/ Some student samples: "I saw sap that looked like frozen rain drops, glistened (or blistered)." Ethan C. "There is gray cement.  There is the rugged dirt with green straws of grass. A divit divides the two, but ants crawl on either side with no problem. Some leaves sit above the divit, dry but green.  A single ant crawls on it.  This is what is in the circle."  Keltyn H.

If you were absent:  Complete the handout on your own.  The circle is about 10-15 inches in diameter. Writing Outdoors.doc

From Annie Dillard's "Living Like Weasels":

     A weasel is wild. Who knows what he thinks? He sleeps in his underground den, his tail draped over his nose. Sometimes he lives in his den for two days without leaving. Outside, he stalks rabbits, mice, muskrats, and birds, killing more bodies than he can eat warm, and often dragging the carcasses home. Obedient to instinct, he bites his prey at the neck, either splitting the jugular vein at the throat or crunching the brain at the base of the skull, and he does not let go. One naturalist refused to kill a weasel who was socketed into his hand deeply as a rattlesnake. The man could in no way pry the tiny weasel off, and he had to walk half a mile to water, the weasel dangling from his palm, and soak him off like a stubborn label.
     I have been reading about weasels because I saw one last week. I startled a weasel who startled me, and we exchanged a long glance.

     Twenty minutes from my house, through the woods by the quarry and across the highway, is Hollins Pond, a remarkable piece of shallowness, where I like to go at sunset and sit on a tree trunk. Hollins Pond is also called Murray's Pond; it covers two acres of bottomland near Tinker Creek with six inches of water and six thousand lily pads. In winter, brown-and-white steers stand in the middle of it, merely dampening their hooves; from the distant shore they look like miracle itself, complete with miracle's nonchalance. Now, in summer, the steers are gone. The water lilies have blossomed and spread to a green horizontal plane that is terra firma to plodding blackbirds, and tremulous ceiling to black leeches, crayfish, and carp.

     This is, mind you, suburbia. It is a five-minute walk in three directions to rows of houses, though none is visible here. There's a 55-mph highway at one end of the pond, and a nesting pair of wood ducks at the other. Under every bush is a muskrat hole or a beer can. The far end is an alternating series of fields and woods, fields and woods, threaded everywhere with motorcycle tracks--in whose bare clay wild turtles lay eggs.

     So, I had crossed the highway, stepped over two low barbed-wire fences, and traced the motorcycle path in all gratitude through the wild rose and poison ivy of the pond's shoreline up into high grassy fields. Then I cut down through the woods to the mossy fallen tree where I sit. This tree is excellent. It makes a dry, upholstered bench at the upper, marshy end of the pond, a plush jetty raised from the thorny shore between a shallow blue body of water and a deep blue body of sky.

The sun had just set. I was relaxed on the tree trunk, ensconced in the lap of lichen, watching the lily pads at my feet tremble and part dreamily over the thrusting path of a carp. A yellow bird appeared to my right and flew behind me. It caught my eye; I swiveled around—and the next instant, inexplicably, I was looking down at a weasel, who was looking up at me.

     Weasel! I'd never seen one wild before. He was ten inches long, thin as a curve, a muscled ribbon, brown as fruitwood, soft-furred, alert. His face was fierce, small and pointed as a lizard's; he would have made a good arrowhead. There was just a dot of chin, maybe two brown hairs' worth, and then the pure white fur began that spread down his underside. He had two black eyes I didn't see, any more than you see a window.

     The weasel was stunned into stillness as he was emerging from beneath an enormous shaggy wild rose bush four feet away. I was stunned into stillness twisted backward on the tree trunk. Our eyes locked, and someone threw away the key.

     Our look was as if two lovers, or deadly enemies, met unexpectedly on an overgrown path when each had been thinking of something else: a clearing blow to the gut. It was also a bright blow to the brain, or a sudden beating of brains, with all the charge and intimate grate of rubbed balloons. It emptied our lungs. It felled the forest, moved the fields, and drained the pond; the world dismantled and tumbled into that black hole of eyes. If you and I looked at each other that way, our skulls would split and drop to our shoulders. But we don't. We keep our skulls. So.

     He disappeared. This was only last week, and already I don't remember what shattered the enchantment. I think I blinked, I think I retrieved my brain from the weasel's brain, and tried to memorize what I was seeing, and the weasel felt the yank of separation, the careening splash-down into real life and the urgent current of instinct. He vanished under the wild rose. I waited motionless, my mind suddenly full of data and my spirit with pleadings, but he didn't return.

http://www.courses.vcu.edu/ENG200-lad/dillard.htm

Another quote from Annie Dillard:

“I used to have a cat, an old fighting tom, who would jump through the open window by my bed in the middle of the night and land on my chest. I'd half-awaken. He'd stick his skull under my nose and purr, stinking of urine and blood. Some nights he kneaded my bare chest with his front paws, powerfully, arching his back, as if sharpening his claws, or pummeling a mother for milk. And some mornings I'd wake in daylight to find my body covered with paw prints in blood; I looked as though I'd been painted with roses."

― Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek  found on Goodreads

similes:

To illustrate, in Nature Emerson writes,

I see the spectacle of morning from the hill-top over against my house, from day-break to sunrise, with emotions which an angel might share. The long slender bars of cloud float like fishes in the sea of crimson light. (234)

Annie Dillard uses the following simile in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek:

In flat country I watch every sunset in hopes of seeing the green ray. The green ray is a seldom-seen streak of light that rises from the sun like a spurting fountain at the moment of sunset; it throbs into the sky for two seconds and disappears. One more reason to keep my eyes open (17).

found at http://www.writinginstructor.com/johnson-sheehan

Onomatopoeia

An onomatopoeia is a word whose sound imitates the thing it is trying to describe. For instance, the sounds of a “crackling fire” or a “murmuring river” are echoed in the words themselves. Here is Thoreau’s description of the pond in Walden:

The bullfrogs trump to the usher in the night, and the note of the whippoorwill is borne on the rippling wind from over the water. Sympathy with the fluttering alder and poplar leaves almost takes away my breath; yet, like the lake, my serenity is rippled but not ruffled (153).

Words like trump, usher, rippling, fluttering, and ruffled all create a tone for this description that goes beyond seeing. We can actually hear the lake in this description.

Abbey’s Desert Solitaire is another text that heavily uses onomatopoeia. Here is a short list of words drawn from the pages of Desert Solitaire:

crackle, rustle, scuffle, brittle, whispers, slithers, hisses, mutter, thunder, crawled, sliding, roar, whistling, ticking, cough, babble, mumble, rattle, sizzle, bawling, yawning, gasp, splash, scratching, clattered, buzzing, humble.

http://www.writinginstructor.com/johnson-sheehan 

This illustrates both assonance and alliteration: 

Here is an example of assonance, also from Dillard:

A male English sparrow, his mouth stuffed, was hopping in and out of an old nest in a bare tree, and sloshing around in its bottom. A robin on red alert in the grass, trailing half a worm from its bill, bobbed three steps and straightened up, performing unawares the universal robin trick. (113)

http://www.writinginstructor.com/johnson-sheehan 

Children's Books 2014

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Prompt:

Notice the bicycle:  What is going on?  Why is it left there? 

Today: Trip to Legacy to deliver children's books.


Before we go --
Share the books with each other
more Hormone Jungle

Monday, May 12, 2014

Announcements and Reminders:  We will go to Legacy this Wednesday, May 14. If the weather is nice, we will be working outside on Friday.  Please turn in any books you've checked out from Ms. Dorsey by this  Friday, May 16.

Prompt:  Freaky Friday -- Oops! Freaky Monday!
Write about trading places (totally trading places, with you in his or her body and he or she in yours)  with your mom or dad or another adult for a day. 

2. Hand in your Tall Tales -- a pretty good draft, and your monologue.

3. If time, Let's try some Dear Blank, Please Blank. . letters

Thursday, May 8, 2014

Announcements and Reminders:  We will go to Legacy next Wednesday, May 14.

Today’s Agenda: Write about Mother's Day or mothers or secrets or a project that you did in elementary school. Mother's Day Gifts of Poetry or Prose for mother or for someone else. Your project: If it is below average, you will receive nothing, nada, zilch.  If it is average, you will receive 75%. If it is above average, you will receive 85%. If it is absolutely outstanding, you will receive 100%. Schedule:  Today, plan, write,  and revise. Next time, finish up so it is ready to give. Resources:  Forms of Poetry:  Write Source 2000, page 202 - 207 http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/lesson_images/lesson391/I-am-poem.pdf I Am Poem or http://ettcweb.lr.k12.nj.us/forms/iampoem.htm Poems for Two Voices  http://browseinside.harpercollinschildrens.com/index.aspx?isbn13=9780064460934 Your project could be a long poem a collection of short poems a memoir a short story a story or poem with photos "newspaper" article What else?

If you were absent:

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Prompt:

You've heard the saying "raining cats and dogs."
What is it raining (make up your own type of "rain"), and why?  

Important Note:  If you need to finish your child's book, work on that!

Mother's Day Gifts of Poetry or Prose
for mother or for someone else.
Your project:
If it is below average, you will receive nothing, nada, zilch.
If it is average, you will receive 75%.
If it is above average, you will receive 85%.
If it is absolutely outstanding, you will receive 100%.
Schedule:
Today, plan, write,  and revise.
Next time, finish up so it is ready to give.

Resources:
 Forms of Poetry:  Write Source 2000, page 202 - 207
http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/lesson_images/lesson391/I-am-poem.pdf I Am Poem
or http://ettcweb.lr.k12.nj.us/forms/iampoem.htm

Poems for Two Voices 
http://browseinside.harpercollinschildrens.com/index.aspx?isbn13=9780064460934

Your project could be

• a long poem
• a collection of short poems
• a memoir
• a short story
• a story or poem with photos
• "newspaper" article
• What else?

http://blog.theconnectionweshare.com/craft-activities-ideas-for-kids/mothers-day-gifts-from-kids/

Why Gifts of Writing? They last. They’re personalized and more personal than most other gifts. They show more thought:  the writer spent a special kind of time and made a special kind of effort. They show a writer’s love better than anything. You can make your mother, father, or granny cry.

Some Samples: 

Walk to the Mail    -- Siobhan Anderson You say I have to come with you,   to journey across many fences and lawns, to go and retrieve the mail. With a sign I step outside, only to find myself in knee-high snow. You take my mittened hand in yours as we enter the small forest and lightly jump the fence. We pass a garden covered with snow twinkling in the sun. You tell me all the things that could grow here: forget-me-nots, baby's breath, sweet peas. I pray that spring will come soon. We reach the mailbox and unload the bills, letters, and postcards. Then, slowly, we trudge back home. But before we reach our door, I glance back. Leaning across the horizon, I see us, shadow by shadow, footprint by footprint in the blank snow, father by daughter.

Dinnertime Adagio  by Anne Atwell-McLeod Three people encircle a warm oak table. All day their thoughts dance to different tunes until a mask of India ink spreads over the white house. Then they congregate to eat the meal that brings them together. Their voices rise up and dance to one tune in the candlelight. Their conversation surrounds them. Voices bounce back and forth. And the tune becomes a symphony. When the music dies the warm oak table is cleared. The three people go their separate ways, and the shards of tonight's talk rise to take their places in the musical mosaic of our dinnertime conversations.

A Sort of Almost Tritina for Nat by Hallie Herz When you came home from school, all we wanted to do was wrestle, Like little animals, we nipped and clawed. . . and animals we were. When Mom sent us downstairs, you pinched me until I cried Uncle! (with my fingers crossed) then jumped up again to  wrestle. Bruised and battered, we eventually tired of wrestling. Panting like wild animals, you sported toothmarks, I a giant bruise. This line is supposed to be the enjoy, but instead I'm going to use it to tell you I miss you so much when you're gone and you're the best brother in the entire world and I love you a lot.

If you have extra time, and need to wait, quietly read or work on writing something else.

Mother's Day jokes:  http://boyslife.org/features/29557/20-funny-mothers-day-jokes/

If time, more Hormone Jungle.

Friday, May 2, 2015

1. Opening Prompt:  Write about a prompt you choose from your list of "Creative Writing Prompts about Me." 

 Share/read aloud what you wrote.

2.Get into groups of three or four, receive a picture book to each group.   In your group,  either take turns reading or have one student read the book.  Everyone listens within their group.   These are all tall tales.  Tall tales of various kinds have always been popular.  

Watch short videos about Paul Bunyan and  Pecos Bill.

Receive the  handout for Tall Tales. Write your own original tall tale.