During the week of June 8th - 12th students continued their study of poetry.
Extended Metaphors and Rhyme Scheme
The term metaphor is a familiar one for most 7th grade students; however, the term extended metaphor may be new to many of them. On Monday, students defined the term extended metaphor, identified extended metaphors in poems like "Fog" by Carl Sandburg, "Life" by Naomi Long Madgett, and "Hope is the thing with feathers" by Emily Dickinson. They tried their hand at writing an extended metaphor by comparing a family member to a type of music. By the way, if my sister were music, she would be salsa music. :)
On Tuesday, students discussed why some poets use rhyme in their poems, defined the term rhyme scheme, and analyzed the rhyme schemes in poems like "Casey at the Bat" by Ernest Lawrence Thayer and "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost.
Marking-Up a Poem
Sometimes readers read poetry just to enjoy the sound of the language and the author's writing style. Other times readers read a poem to uncover its meaning. On Wednesday, I showed my students how to literally "mark-up" a poem with questions, connections, comments, observations, and conclusions they drew in order to give themselves a better shot at finding meaning in a poem.
I modeled the process by marking up "Harlem" by Langston Hughes and explained my thinking as I completed my mark-up. Students then practiced the process on their own by marking up "My Papa's Waltz" by Theodore Roethke. I selected this poem because I think it is a description of a wonderful ritual performed between a father and his child after he returns home from work. I was amazed at the different interpretations of this poem some students had! This difference of opinion led to a good discussion about how words can be interpreted in different ways. Check out "My Papa's Waltz" and see what your interpretation of the poem is.
On Friday, students completed an in-class assessment. They selected one out of a possible three poems and answered analysis questions that were based on the poetic terms we have studied during this poetry unit.
Returned Assignments
No graded assignments were returned this week.
During the week of 6/15 - 6/19, students spent three days in the school's Mac computer lab learning and using the Mac program Garageband. If you haven't heard of Garageband before, it's a music-making computer program made by Apple that allows the user to choose from hundreds of different instrument loops to create original compositions. The beauty of the program is that no musical experience or knowledge is necessary in order to have fun with Garageband.
The bulk of the week of June 1st-5th was devoted to Person of the Year presentations. Each student's job was to present a two-minute speech that showed the audience that the subject of his/her biography was deserving of the title, Person of the Year.