Poetry forms/patterns

Students began working on the following assignment in class today:

Poetry
Form/Pattern
Group Assignment
20pts

Your assignment is to examine a specific form of poetry. You must provide a clear explanation for the rest of the class including examples. You have to teach this. You must decide on your approach (handouts, PowerPoint, poster, etc.). You must also turn in a completed lesson plan prior to your lesson, and write an original poem in the form you are teaching.


You must provide a poem for class discussion. Your group will lead the discussion of the poem. This includes asking questions that guide the class discussion. Be prepared with specific discussion questions. You are the expert on the poem, but you must teach it, not explain it. Your goal is to analyze the poem and how the form impacts the meaning of the poem. Your classmates will decide if you are effective. All students must participate in the discussion. It is your job to see to this.

Forms:
• English Sonnet
• Italian Sonnet
• Villanelle
• Ballad
• Ode
• Sestina

Happy Thanksgiving

Only period 3 met today, but we had a very interesting discussion on the poems from the essay prompt.

Have a great holiday!

Essay

Students completed the following essay in class today:

(Suggested time - 40 minutes)
The following two poems present views on euthanasia. Read the poems carefully. Then write an essay in which you compare and contrast the two poems, analyzing how each poet uses literary devices to make his point.

*Euthanasia-the act or practice of killing or permitting the death of hopelessly sick or injured individuals (as persons or domestic animals) in a relatively painless way for reasons of mercy.


To the Mercy Killers

If ever mercy move you murder me,

I pray you, kindly killers, let me live.

Never conspire with death to set me free,

but let me know such life as pain can give..

Even though I be a clot, an aching clench,

a stub, a stump, a butt, a scab, a knob,

a screaming pain, a putrefying stench,

still let me live, so long as life shall throb.

Even though I turn such traitor to myself

as beg to die, do not accomplice me.

Even though I seem no human, mute shelf

of glucose, bottled blood, machinery

to swell the lung and pump the heart–even so,

do not put out my life. Let me still glow.

Dudley Randall (b. 1914)



HOW ANNANDALE WENT OUT
"They called it Annandale--and I was there
To flourish, to find words, and to attend:
Liar, physician, hypocrite, and friend,
I watched him; and the sight was not so fair
As one or two that I have seen elsewhere:
An apparatus not for me to mend--
A wreck, with hell between him and the end,
Remained of Annandale; and I was there.

"I knew the ruin as I knew the man;
So put the two together, if you can,
Remembering the worst you know of me.
Now view yourself as I was, on the spot--
With a slight kind of engine. Do you see?
Like this. . . You wouldn't hang me? I thought not."
--E. A. Robinson

Today students completed the pre-writing stage for the 2005 poetry essay. Students then discussed their approach in groups and transitioned to a class discussion. The poems were Blake's "The Chimney Sweeper" and Blake's "The Chimney Sweeper".

Field Trip

Students were given permission slips for a field trip to Medieval Times. The trip is on 12/3, but the permission slip, with payment, must be returned by Monday 11/22.

The cost is $34. Checks should be made payable to High Point Regional High School.

All students should check their email. I have attached a copy of the permission slip if you were not in class or lost it.

Click the link provided to check out the experience of Medieval Times.

Today the students were given the following poems for analysis:

We Real Cool

THE POOL PLAYERS.
SEVEN AT THE GOLDEN SHOVEL.

We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.

Gwendolyn Brooks


Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Robert Frost

Had I the Choice

Had I the choice to tally greatest bards,
To limn their portraits, stately, beautiful, and emulate at will,
Homer with all his wars and warriors--Hector, Achilles, Ajax,
Or Shakespeare's woe-entangled Hamlet, Lear, Othello--Tennyson's fair ladies,
Meter or wit the best, or choice conceit to weild in perfect rhyme, delight of singers;
These, these, O sea, all these I'd gladly barter,
Would you the undulation of one wave, its trick to me transfer,
Or breathe one breath of yours upon my verse,
And leave its odor there.

Walt Whitman


I also returned their last essays, and we had a surprise visit from Mr. Klimas during period 6. Wait! There is 2 of them?

Today we discussed "The Oxen" and "Getting Out".

today students analyzed the 2 poems that they wrote their last essay on.

Today we compared "Design" to "To a Waterfowl". Students used the smartboard to break the poems down.

Poetry HW

Students are to read through chapter 14 of Sound and Sense.

Today students annotated "To a Waterfowl".

Poetry

Students are to annotate "To a Waterfowl" and be prepared to share their notes and analysis tomorrow. Also, we will discuss the poems from the essay prompt.

Poetry Essay

The students completed an essay from the 2007 exam. The task calls for analysis of "A Barred Owl" and "The History Teacher".


Essay

Poetry

Today students analyzed "in Just-". As a result of varying interpretations, I have asked students to find a critical interpretation of the poem that supports their own and bring it in for discussion.

HW

Students are to read through chapter 10 in Sound and Sense over the weekend. Today we analyzed "My last Duchess" and "Metaphors".

Poetry

Today students annotated and discussed "To his coy mistress"

Have fun blogging!