Greetings!
Today is our penultimate class–the one before the last one! We started the class period with a Quick Write, and today's prompt was connected with the fact that it is National Poem in Your Pocket Day. I gave the students a sheet of paper with an extra large pocket outline. They were to write a poem within the lines of that pocket. After reading William Carlos William’s famous short poem, “This is Just to Say,” students composed their own “This is Just to Say '' poem. Perhaps we will get to hear one or two of these for our Poetry Event?
After the Test, they had the opportunity to begin their very last Essay assignment which was a Reflection Paper. For this paper, they are to write about what they learned this year, what they learned about themselves this year, and what did and didn't work well this year. If they didn’t finish in class, they can finish it at home and turn it in next week. (At the bottom of this email is a link to an article about the value of reflection as a part of learning.) As a reminder, the Essay Re-Write was due this.
As they finished their essays, students were invited to compose a “Blackout Poem.” In this last poetry writing opportunity, students choose a page of text, in this case a page taken from a classic novel, and they skimmed it to find interesting words, phrases, ideas/ themes. After lightly circling those words with pencil, they attempted to arrange them on a separate piece of paper into a poem. They could find any filler words like “a”, “the", "it” from the text page as well as needed. After that, it was time to get blacking out. Using their Sharpie, they could draw a few images that represented the poem and then they blacked out everything except their boxed words and images. Since most of the hard work from our semester is finished, we relaxed a bit during this stage and played some music while they blacked out their poems. The ones who finished displayed their poems for the class to see. They are due next class period.
The rest of the class time was used to prepare for the Poetry Event to be held next week. We will be meeting in the Student Lounge downstairs and each student will be performing two pieces of poetry. The committees are working well together to pull this event off!
Next week is the final week, and I will accept homework until Saturday, May 6 at 7:00 AM. Once the CHAT classes are done, students really lose momentum for completing late homework. My plan is to get final grades out within the week.
Assignments for Next Week:
-- Any old homework
-- Poetry Event Preparation!
Links for this Week:
“This is Just to Say” by William Carlos Williams
Writing 2 Class Notes -- Week 14 (April 27)
See you next week!
Blessings,
Mrs. G
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