The Cure for IDK by Deep Center, Inc.

36 writing lessons to make your students LOL (grades 6-8)

by Catherine Killingsworth and the Deep Staff

by Catherine Killingsworth and the Deep Staff The publication of this book was generously sponsored by the Hodge Foundation

Copyright 2011 by Deep Center, Inc. PO Box 5582 Savannah, GA 31414 (912) 233-5244 www.deepkids.com All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without prior written permission from the publisher. Design by Stephanie Usery Illustrations by Mel Rouse Printed in the United States of America

For our students.

Table of Contents Introduction...............................................................7 The Big Secret............................................................. 8 What Is Deep?.............................................................9 About This Book...........................................................10 The Structure: How to Use These Lessons ....................................11 The Structure..............................................................13 The Free Write.............................................................14 The Activity................................................................15 The Reading ...............................................................16 Writing and Sharing.......................................................17 Lesson Plans ..................................................................19 Basic Skills .................................................................20 Why We Write.............................................................21 Dead Words ...............................................................32 ClichĂŠ .....................................................................38 Details and Specificity.....................................................42 Figurative Language I: Describing Concrete Sensations....................46 Figurative Language II: Describing Abstract Ideas ......................... 52 Detective Work: Mood and Tone ..........................................56 Personification.............................................................62 Symbols ...................................................................66 Persuasive Writing I: Reasons ..............................................70 Persuasive Writing II: Examples ........................................... 74 Persuasive Writing III: Finesse .............................................82 Expository Writing........................................................ 86 Exploring Form........................................................... 88 Revision ...................................................................92 Poetry.........................................................................97 What is Poetry?............................................................99

Line Breaks................................................................104

Sound....................................................................108 Juxtaposition.............................................................112 Love Poems ..............................................................116 Point of View ............................................................ 120 Fiction ..................................................................... 125 Why We Tell Stories: Story Circles.......................................127 Truth, Lies, and Fiction ..................................................132 Character: Introducing and Describing Characters.......................138 Setting...................................................................146 Plot: “?!.” .................................................................150 Origin Myths............................................................154 Autobiography and Character Education ................................159 Your Name...............................................................161 Your Thoughts...........................................................166 Bullies ...................................................................170 Friendship ...............................................................176 Competition .............................................................182 Family....................................................................188 Death ....................................................................194 Perseverance..............................................................200 I Am Not What I Seem ..................................................204 Additional Resources........................................................209 But My Kids Are Crazy! .................................................211 Assessment: Making Grading Easier!.....................................212 Links.....................................................................216 Additional Resources .................................................... 218 Thank You ....................................................................220

Introduction

The Big Secret Deepâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s main goal is to uncover a well-kept secret: most students love to write. It may not always seem like it, but itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s true: they love passing notes, sending text messages, writing journal entries, and scribbling raps on the backs of worksheets. Even the most reluctant English students usually enjoy telling the same story, over and over, until they get it just right. The problem is, many students have a hard time connecting the writing they do naturally with the writing we assign them in class. One kind of writing comes easily, is not judged for grammar, and allows students to express ideas they are interested in. The other kind of writing is much more difficult, gets graded, and often restricts students to topics they find boring. The Cure for IDK helps students see the connection between these two kinds of writing. The curriculum is designed as a weekly supplement that reminds students why writing is fun and important. We hope that seeing the connection between life and literature gives students more confidence and motivation in their regular lessons.

Introduction

What Is Deep? The Deep Center is a literacy education nonprofit based in Savannah, Georgia. Deep isn’t an acronym; it stands for depth in education. The Deep Center’s workshops are designed to teach more than surface content; these lessons teach students to think deeply, make connections, and embrace their curiosity. The method is simple: we connect dedicated volunteers with Savannah’s youth and provide them with private administrative and curricular support as they teach, inspire, and challenge our young people. This book is a collection of lesson plans developed by Deep administrators and volunteers. They have been tested in a wide variety of classroom settings and come chock full of options and variations for different classroom needs.

Introduction About This Book This book is a collection of writing lessons designed to get students excited about reading and writing. To do this, each lesson offers a fun group activity, a selection of engaging readings, and a writing prompt that will really get your students going. There are thirty-six lessons in this book: enough to teach one Deep lesson every single week of the school year, potentially cutting down your lesson planning time by twenty percent! The lessons in this book are broken into four units: 1. Basic Skills: These lessons focus on the essential reading and writing skills that appear on most standardized testsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;everything from penning persuasive essays to identifying mood and toneâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;but they also offer a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. In this section, you will find scavenger hunts, mock trials, chili pepper taste tests, origami projects, and many other activities that will actually get your students looking forward to sharpening their critical skills. 2. Poetry: These lessons reinforce Basic Skills, with a focus on teaching students how to prioritize information. Students love writing poetry because it is a short, flexible form (and very forgiving, grammar-wise), and I love teaching poetry because it shows students how to make every word count. Through lessons on juxtaposition, sound, line breaks, and other basic elements of poetry, this section teaches students to think carefully about their words and choose just the right details for making their point. 3. Fiction: This unit reinforces the skills from earlier sections and also teaches literary structure and organization. It does this by letting students do one of the things they love most: tell stories. Though having students invent characters, settings, and plots, this unit brings literature to life. 4. Autobiography: This section lets students do one of the other things they love most: talk about themselves. This last unit asks students to practice their literary skills as they write pieces about their own lives. Additionally, these lessons teach compassion and introspection through having students think critically about their lives and the lives of the people around them.

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Structure

The Structure: How to Use These Lessons The Structure One thing we have learned while putting this course together is that, as much as kids love surprises, what really helps them to thrive is a clear, reliable structure. When kids know what to expect next, it is easier for them to relax and be creative. The following structure is the most effective and reliable method of teaching this writing course. Though a few of the workshops stray slightly from this formatâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;particularly the first workshopâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; here is the general structure:

1. Free Write (5 minutes)

2. Activity (5-10 minutes)

4. Prompted Writing (15-20 minutes)

5. Sharing (5-10 minutes)

3. Reading (10-20 minutes)

Every lesson in this book includes an optional free write prompt, an activity, a variety of related readings to choose from, and a writing prompt. On the following pages, you will find detailed explanations of each part of the Deep workshop.

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Structure

The Free Write The first part of any Deep writing workshop is a free write. Students spend five minutes writing about whatever they want. The only rule of the free write is that you cannot stop writing, even for one second. Not all Deep teachers use free writes. Experience has proven, however, that it can be an extremely useful routine in classes with disciplinary problems. Though it can be hard to get students rolling on the free write, the five minutes of silence help overactive students to calm down and focus. Not only does it offer students a safe opportunity to express whatever is frustrating or exciting them, but it also serves as a powerful muscle-memory trigger, reminding students that they are in a safe, supportive, and engaging classroom. Some students require total freedom to enjoy the free write, but other students prefer the guidance of a prompt. Try different tactics and see what works best. If students get stuck, tell them to keep writing the same word over and over until they think of something else to say. Tell students that if they don’t want you to read their writing afterwards, all they have to do is fold the page over. If you have students who are slow writers and get easily frustrated with free writes, you can offer the following alternatives: Clustering Have students take out a big sheet of paper and write a word like “afraid” or “morning” in a circle about a third of the way down. Then ask them to draw arrows and add other words to the page— whatever their mind comes up with. Give them about two minutes to add as much as they can, drawing arrows towards other words wherever and however they like. Word Collage Hand students a pile of cut-up words from a magazine and a few markers and let them create a piece of writing by drawing pictures and gluing down magazine words.

Structure

The Activity This part of the class is designed to get students physically and mentally engaged, help them start thinking about the topic of the day, prepare them for the reading discussion, and build trust and community. Each lesson comes with a suggested activity and clear steps for running it. While some of these activities require a little time to prepare, they are worth it! Students remember this part of class the best, and you can refer to the activities whenever you want to remind students of the concept they learned: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Remember the day with the lemons, guys? Of course you do! So donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t forget to use figurative language like that in your work today!â&#x20AC;?

CAUTION

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Structure

The Reading This is arguably the most important and most difficult section of a Deep workshop. Expect to spend the bulk of your time discussing the reading of the day. Every good writer reads. Reading inspires you, challenges you, and helps you grow. The idea behind this section of class is both to give the students examples for their own writing and to help them to see that reading can be enjoyable. During this part of class, the teacher’s main task is to walk students through the text in a way that makes it easy for them to see the beauty and meaning of the literature. Every lesson in the Deep curriculum comes with a variety of possible readings, from which you can pick as many or as few as you like. These readings are generally quite short—often less than 200 words. This is for a few reasons: first, to give you time to read several different passages with your students each day, allowing them to compare and contrast authors; second, to encourage close readings and attention to detail; and third, to accommodate the fruit-fly attention span of modern Americans. By always leaving students wanting more, we hope that we will encourage them to seek out the complete works of these authors on their own time. The best rule of thumb is to pick readings that you are passionate about and that you believe your students will be passionate about. If you are reading a long novel or play with your students, consider drawing passages from that work to illustrate the concept of the day. A note on adult content in this book’s reading selections: Several of the readings in this book contain profanity, which we have generally replaced with asterisks except where poetry and meaning make it impossible to do so. A number of the passages mention sex and/or homosexuality (though there are no sex scenes). Some pieces also make reference to domestic violence, gang violence, and offensive slurs.

CAUTION

We have selected these passages because profanity, sex, violence, and racism exist, and ignoring them does not make them go away. Adolescents are at a crucial time in their lives in which they are beginning to form their opinions on these topics. If we ignore controversial topics, then students’ opinions will be formed by what they see on the street or pick up from music videos. If we acknowledge and discuss these topics, however, we can encourage critical analysis, responsible thinking, and healthy choices. As an added benefit, choosing pieces that embrace everyday life and speech helps students to connect literature to their own experience and feel more motivated to study their readings. That said, if you feel uncomfortable teaching any of these selections then, of course, don’t! For each passage here with controversial content, there is another without it that you may choose to teach instead.

Structure

Prompted Writing and Sharing During writing time, your students have a chance to practice the skill that you have been focusing on that day. It is also an opportunity for you to test comprehension and correct misunderstandings. Some of the writing prompts are difficult, but all of them result in a rewarding final product. Test out a few different writing tactics and see what works for your students. Some students want to write for forty minutes with no interruptions, while others get bored after ten, constantly seeking new prompts to keep at it. Here are a few suggestions for making your classroom the perfect literary salon: No Interruptions If you work in a school where people are often coming in or out of classrooms, try posting a sign on your door that says, “Writing Time: Do Not Interrupt!” It is important to set aside time and privacy for writing. Music Try playing music while students write (preferably music without words, but something that the students will like—I go for Miles Davis). This often helps them to focus and suppresses their desire to chat. Writing Spots Try assigning students their own private “writing spot.” Scatter students around the room and face them away from each other. This lets you isolate students who might otherwise try to distract their peers, and also helps clarify that students should be working on their own. Little Freedoms Once, I had a student who absolutely refused to write. She was stubborn as a mule until another teacher gave her a marker instead of a pencil. She was suddenly prolific! Try giving your students special paper or letting them write their poems on the chalkboard—who knows what will get them going. Call and Response When students read their work to the group, consider instituting a reading ritual to help students maintain respect. Sometimes a call and response works well—each reader saying something like “Ready to read!” to which the whole group responds, “Ready to hear you!” Try letting your students invent their own call and response. Walking and Sharing For shorter writing exercises, instead of making all the students read aloud, you might consider telling the students to put their papers face up on their desks and walk around the room, reading everyone else’s work. This wakes up their bodies and gives them a much-needed break. Cheer Practice Before students read their work out loud, try having them practice cheering for each other loudly and crazily. Say something like, “Okay, guys, we’re going to hear some really amazing stuff, so let’s practice giving it some really loud, crazy, amazing applause!” This helps create energy in a sleepy, early morning class.

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Why We Write

Why We Write Contributors: Rebecca Holohan and Adeeba Rana To help students feel comfortable with and excited about writing; to set the tone in a new classroom. Optional Free Write Topic: No free write on the first day; free writes will be explained at the end of this class.

Name Game and Discussions

CAUTION

If it’s the beginning of the school year, play the Name Game: Get everyone in a circle. Say your name and do a funny gesture with it—e.g., a jumping jack or a disco move. Ask the person to your right to say your name and do your gesture, and then add their own name and gesture. Continue all the way around this circle. For instance, let’s say I yell ‘Catherine!’ and do a jumping jack. The next person would then have to yell ‘Catherine,’ do my jumping jack, and then add a move of their own. So we’ll assume Stephen does a fist pump. Then Person 3 would have to yell ‘Catherine!’ while doing a jumping jack, yell ‘Stephen!’ while doing a fist pump, and then add a new move to the mix. And so on and so forth until we make it around the circle. Note: If you think the students might find the name game lame (older kids often do), then just have them introduce themselves and answer a funny question or two like, “If you could be any age, how old would you be and why?” (I love that question. Answers range from the hilarious—“I’d be 97, so I could say anything I wanted!”—to the very sad—“I wish I were still in the womb.”) Clearing the Air: An Honest Discussion After playing the name game with your students, lead a discussion about the experiences students have had with writing.

1 2 3 4

Step One: Go around the room and ask students to list bad experiences they have had with writing. Allow them to vent about how frustrating it can be when teachers use writing as punishment, for example.

Step Two: Encourage students to think of times they have enjoyed writing—maybe writing a note to a

friend or coming up with a unique MySpace profile—and discuss those experiences. What makes these things fun? What makes us like writing?

Step Three: Explain that these workshops are designed to be fun writing they want to do. Be sure to

mention that you won’t be grading these particular assignments based on grammar or spelling; this helps them participate more freely.

Step Four: Make a list of topics together that the students are interested in writing about, and use this to guide you as you select lessons and readings later on.

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Why We Write

Setting Rules in a New Classroom This activity is crucial if you are in a new classroom, and still very helpful even if you have been teaching your students for several weeks or months already. By having students create the rules themselves, you get them invested in enforcing classroom policies.

1 2 3 4

Step One: Draw a circle on a large piece of paper. Explain that the circle is our writing workshop. Behaviors that we want will go inside the circle, and behaviors that we don’t want will go outside the circle.

Step Two: Ask students to shout out things that they don’t want to put up with in the classroom, like “People not listening to each other” or “People starting drama!” Be sure to include your own pet peeves here—you’re a part of the classroom, and you have a right.

Step Three: Ask students to list what they do want to have in the classroom. Prompt them with phrases like “respect” and “people listening when I read my work.” They may also shout out things like “games!” and “snacks!” Listen to them and write it down if it’s reasonable. If it isn’t reasonable (like, “pizza parties every day”), then acknowledge what they have said and explain briefly why you can’t include it (“I’m on a teacher salary! I can’t afford that. But if you want to buy your own pizza and give me some…”)

Step Four: Keep this sheet of paper and display it prominently. If you want, assign students to police

each other: “Remember, guys, these are the rules that you wanted, so you’re in charge of enforcing them. Who wants to be the sheriff today?” If it’s not the first day with your students: Even if you are a schoolteacher who has already been working with your students for several weeks or months, still consider running the “Clearing the Air” discussion so that students approach these workshops with a fresh, positive attitude. Talking about grades: If you run a traditional classroom, odds are you are required to grade your students. However, grading these assignments can seriously undermine their effectiveness. I suggest running a discussion on the first day of creative writing lessons in which you and the students decide together how you want to grade these assignments, keeping in mind that the more the grades rely on you, the less ownership the students will take of their work, and the more likely they will be to do the bare minimum. Consider the following options: •Grades will be based on self-assessments completed by the students throughout the course, or on a combination of self-assessments, peer-assessments, and teacher grades. •Grades will be based on participation and effort •Grades will be based on improvement over the course of the semester •Grades will be based on a series of homework essay assignments that incorporate the skills taught in class See the essay on assessment at the end of this book for a more detailed discussion of grading options, as well as sample self-assessments and peer assessments for your students.

Why We Write Readings: “Building Nicole’s Mama” by Patricia Smith; “Bol” by Faiz; “I Wanna Hear a Poem” by Steve Colman; “How Do We Spell Freedom: The Weusi Alphabeti Method” by Roger Bonair-Agard; “My Alphabet” by Zaviay Bell

1. Free Write: After finishing the readings, tell students that they are going to do a free write. A free write is simply time in which you can write anything you want—anything at all. If you don’t want anyone to read it when you’re done, just fold it over. The only rule is that you are not allowed to stop writing until the teacher calls time. If you can’t think of anything to say, keep writing the same word over and over until you do think of something.

2. Alphabet (paired with the “How Do We Spell Freedom” reading): Have students make their own alphabet, choosing words that have importance to them. Stress to the students that this is their chance to decide what writing means to them, personally. Remind them that “A” probably doesn’t stand for “apple,” unless they really spend all day every day thinking about apples. For Bonair-Agard, it stands for “Africa.” What does “A” mean to them?

3. Last words (paired with “Bol”): Ask students to write what they would say if they knew they were about to lose the power of speech forever. What is most important to them? 4. “I Wanna Hear A Poem” Poem: Ask students to write one of the poems that Coleman asks for in the second stanza of his piece.

Related Quote: “The writer writes in order to teach himself, to understand himself, to satisfy himself.” -Alfred Kazin

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Why We Write

Building Nicole’s Mama CAUTION

CAUTION

(For the 6th grade class of Lillie C. Evans School, Liberty City, Miami) by Patricia Smith, reprinted with permission, courtesy of the author

LINK 1 Before beginning, I tell students that this is about a woman who teaches poetry

classes to children and play a video of Smith reading her poem out loud. After watching the video, discuss with students: Why do these students love poetry so much? In particular, who is Nicole and what does she think poetry can do for her? Is she right? Does poetry have the power to help us confront something as big as death? How? I am astounded at their mouthful names— Lakinishia, Fumilayo, Chevellanie, Delayo— their ragged rebellions and lipglossed pouts, and all those pants drooped as drapery. I rejoice when they kiss my face, whisper wet and urgent in my ear, make me their obsession because I have brought them poetry. They shout raw, bruise my wrists with pulling and brashly claim me as mama as they rip me from the cross and cradle my head in their little laps waiting for new words to grow in my mouth. You. You. You. Angry, jubilant, weeping writers—we are all saviors, reluctant Jesuses in the limelight, but you knew that, didn’t you? Then let us bless this sixth grade class, 40 nappy heads, 40 cracking voices, and all of them raise their hands when I ask. They have all seen the Reaper, grim in his heavy robe, pushing the button for the dead project elevator, begging for a break at the corner pawn shop, cackling wildly in the back pew of the Baptist church. I ask the death question and forty brown fists punch the air, me!, me!, and O’Neal, matchstick crack child, watched his mother’s body become a claw and 9-year-old Tiko Jefferson, barely big enough to lift the gun, fired a bullet into his own throat after mama bended his back with a lead pipe. Tamika cried into a sofa pillow when daddy blasted mama into the north wall of their cluttered one-room apartment, >>

Why We Write

Donya’s cousin gone in a driveby. Dark window, click, click, gone, says Donya, her tiny finger a barrel, the thumb a hammer. I am astonished at their losses—and yet when I read a poem about my own hard-eyed teenager, Jeffery asks He is dead yet? It cannot be comprehended, my 18-year-old still pushing and pulling his own breath. And 40 faces pity me, knowing that I will soon be as they are, numb to our bloodied histories, favoring the Reaper with a thumbs up and a wink, hearing the question and screeching me, me, Miss Smith, I know somebody dead! Can poetry hurt us? They ask me before snuggling inside my words to sleep. I love you, Nicole says, Nicole wearing my face, pimples peppering her nose, and she is as black as angels are. Nicole’s braids clipped, their ends kissed with match flame to seal them, and can you teach me to write a poem about my mother? I mean, you write about your daddy and he dead, can you teach me to remember my mama? A teacher tells me this is the first time Nicole has admitted that her mother is gone, murdered by slim silver needles and a stranger rifling through her blood, the virus pushing her skeleton through for Nicole to see. And now this child with rusty knees and mismatched shoes sees poetry as her scream and asks me for the words to build her mother again, replacing the voice, stitching on the lost flesh. So writers, as we pick up our pens, as we flirt and sin and rejoice behind microphones— remember Nicole. She knows that we are here now, and she is an empty vessel waiting to be filled. And she is waiting. And she is waiting. And she waits.

CAUTION

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Why We Write

Bol (Speak) by Faiz After discussing this poem, explain that the poet is a revolutionary Pakistani who wrote this poem to inspire people to speak for freedom and to oppose violence. CAUTION During discussion, talk to students about what the poem says belongs to them. What do students want to do with their voices, given that it will remain when nothing else will? What would they say if they were about to lose the power of speech forever? Speak, for your lips are yet free; Speak, for your tongue is still your own; Your body yours alone; Speak, your life is still your own. Look into the blacksmith’s forge: The flame blazes, the iron’s red; Locks unfasten open-mouthed, Every chain’s link springing wide. Speak, a little time suffices Before the tongue, the body die. Speak, the truth is still alive; Speak: say what you have to say. Here is the poem in the original Urdu: bol ki lab aazaad hai.n tere bol zabaa.N ab tak terii hai teraa sutawaa.N jism hai teraa bol ki jaa.N ab tak terii hai dekh ke aaha.ngar kii dukaa.N me.n tu.nd hai.n shole surKh hai aahan khulane lage quffalo.n ke dahaane phailaa har ek zanjiir kaa daaman bol ye tho.Daa waqt bahot hai jism-o-zabaa.N kii maut se pahale bol ki sach zi.ndaa hai ab tak bol jo kuchh kahane hai kah le

Why We Write

CAUTION

How Do We Spell Freedom: The Weusi Alphabeti Method by Roger Bonair-Agard, reprinted with permission, courtesy of the author

LINK 2

You can find a recording of Bonair-Agard reading this poem online; I suggest listening to it (the author has a beautiful speaking voice). While this poem has strong, complex, and interesting political opinions, I suggest mainly focusing on discussing his use of the alphabet. Ask students: What does the alphabet mean to this author? Why doesn’t “A” stand for apple or “X” stand for xylophone for him? How would you rewrite your own alphabet books to show us what is important to you?

CAUTION

In 1970 I learned my alphabet for the very first time knew it by heart by 1971 A is for Africa B is for Black C is for Culture and that’s where it’s at Mother taught me that from the Weusi Alphabeti at a time when A was for apples in a country that grew mangoes and X was for xylophone when I was learning how to play the steel pan black wasn’t popular then but I wore dashikis sent me from Nigeria sky blue super-fly suits sent me from America and sandals made by original rastafari before weed and revolution needed fertilizer to grow My mother rocked bright safron saris… We wuz phat 20 years too early & too far away My mother preached knowledge hard work and how not to take shit D is for Defense E is for Economics I wrote my first protest letter at the age of three to my grandfather for calling me in out the front yard Spelling it with an FORK-U Put it under his pillow in the hope it would blow his ear off at night Wanted to get started on this revolution thing F is for Freedom G is for Guns—we gotta get some, Weusi said Evolved into 1979 with a changing face Bang bang boogie to the boogie Say up jump the boogie Let’s rock yuh don’t stop Black folk and brand names became entwined We re-invented dance and made wheels roll with a limp Cuba had just told America he was Africa in Angola >> | 27

Why We Write How Do We Spell Freedom: The Weusi Alphabeti Method CAUTION CONTINUED K is for Kings L is for our land We’ve gotta get it back so we lost Jamaica to the IMF Grenada to the Marines and Panama to Nancy Regan Jheri curls became high top fades became caesars as Michael Jackson moonwalked his way Into a lighter shade of pale My mother sent me to america She said “go fix that!” Cool became buttah became phat We lost our focus and our way just as black folk discovered the dangers of pork so fat backs became phat blacks pigtails became dreadlocks and fades faded to bald as Michael Jordan discovered the magic of a fadeaway jumper and endorsements X is for the niggah who’s blind deaf and dumb, Weusi said. My mother said I should re-write that that X is for the niggah who needs to be re-educated that a corporate job does not spell freedom marry white don’t mean racist flight A democratic vote is not a revolutionary act and as long as there’s a sweatshop in Jakarta there’s no difference between Patrick Ewing and OJ Simpson H is for Huey N is for Nat Turner T is for Tubman >>

Why We Write

How Do We Spell Freedom: The Weusi Alphabeti Method CONTINUED CAUTION

M is for Marcus, Mandela and Martin got shot two weeks after he told black folk to boycott Coca-Cola My mother taught me to respect men who stood by their responsibilities and their convictions Men willing enough to join the fight and smart enough to survive it and see the signals God gave Noah the rainbow sign said No more water—the fire next time J is for James Baldwin The next time is now And someone must learn the signs with me A is for Africa B is for Black C is for Culture And that’s where I’m at…

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Why We Write CAUTION

My Alphabet by Zaviay Bell, grade 6 A is for America, that is where I live. B is for Black because that’s what I am. C is for the cats surrounding our nation D is for dumb people with the wrong decisions. E is for elegant things people made F is for fame, having what you have always dreamed of G is for God, who created us H is for not home, so you’re not coming back I is for Israel, our history J is for justice and failure for all criminals K is for kindness in our hearts, but we don’t want to show it L is for listen or suffer consequence M is for middle school, to learn while in the middle ages of our life N is for national or social for our city O is for opinions to say stuff that come to your mind P is for personal thing to do, going home to take care of your family. Q is for quietly to do your work. R is for rich, to have everything you want. Sort of. S is for sadly, a family member going away. Dying. T is for tiring in practice of our game. W is for water around our country. Well, almost. Y is for young people who want to be older and older people who want to be younger. Z is for Zaviay because that’s my name.

Why We Write

I Wanna Hear a Poem By Steve Colman CAUTION CAUTION

LINK 3

Let students watch a video of Colman reading this poem live. As it is a spoken word piece, it is far better to hear it aloud than to read it on the paper. While this poem has rich (and controversial!) political significance, I suggest focusing mainly on the first two stanzas, which will help open students’ minds to many possible reasons for writing. Ask students what kinds of poems Colman wants to hear, and then ask what kinds of poems might they want to hear. What kinds of poems might they want to write? Why would they write a poem? What’s the point of writing? Use this piece as an opportunity to have students explore the meaning of the toooften cliché phrase “express yourself.”

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Dead Words

Dead Words Contributors: Tandy Versyp To identify lazy and vague language; to replace lazy language with specific, original thought.

LINK 4 Optional Free Write: Play the video provided at the link of comedian Eddie Izzard

talking about the word “awesome.” After it is over, have students write about what has happened to the word awesome. What is it supposed to mean, and what does it actually mean?

Story Time and the Dead Word Wall To begin today, tell your students some version of the following story (and don’t be afraid to be goofy and overdramatic with it—the more the students sympathize with the poor dead words, the more likely they will be to remember the lesson). CAUTION

Step One: The Origin of Dead Words Once upon a time, there was a race of beautiful words, as beautiful as fairy tale princesses in golden ball gowns. These words—words like love and amazing and awesome—were so gorgeous and important that people brought them out on only very special occasions. Because they were used only every once in a while, they were able to stay shining and new year-round. Whenever they appeared, everyone was so moved that they stopped and stared. But then, some people got lazy and said to themselves, “Well, if these words are so gorgeous and important, why don’t we use them all the time? Then everything will be more beautiful!” And so, rather than saving these words for special days, they started asking these words to come out every day. First, they asked the words to give political speeches all the time, and later they started asking them to answer phones at receptionist desks, and before you know it, they were making these words take out the garbage and pick up dog poop. The words, who were once so beautiful, became tired and old, and their clothes turned to rags. But still, the people weren’t satisfied. They kept demanding that the words be beautiful all the time, and when they couldn’t be, the people punched them in the face and told them to work harder. The more people used them, the more these words got beaten up and exhausted, until they finally just dropped dead. All their meaning was gone. But still, even after they died, people kept propping them up and trying to make them do work, hoping that they would be meaningful once more. Instead of doing any good, though, their corpses just flopped around and stunk up the place. To this day, when you use these words, it has the same effect on your writing as shoving a putrid, rotting body between your punctuation marks.

Dead Words

Step Two: Dead Words List

Step Three: Replacing Dead Words

After telling this story, have the students help you make a big list of dead words on the blackboard. Start them off with words like good, nice, hope, faith, and freedom, but then encourage them to think of negative words that are also abused and overused: awful, bad, sad, and stupid are also good examples of words that can be boring and vague. Be sure to keep the students on task: words that simply appear a lot (the or yesterday for example) are not necessarily dead words. Dead words are words that would contain a lot of meaning except for the fact that they are overused in inappropriate contexts—a sign of lazy thinking and writing.

To further illustrate this concept, choose one of the dead words and demonstrate its vagueness by asking students to define exactly what it means. For example: “When I say I love something, what exactly am I saying? Do you know? When I say I love chocolate and when I say I love my mother, am I talking about the same feeling? No? Then how do you know what I am trying to say when I say the word love? You can’t, right? So I’m going to have to describe it a different way. Would it tell you more if I said I crave chocolate so often that I keep a whole case of Hershey’s bars in my freezer? Or if I said I care about my mother so much I babysit her cats every weekend, even though I’m so allergic to them I can’t breathe through my nose for a week afterwards? What are some other kinds of love you can describe? How can you tell me what you really mean?” Readings: selection from “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again” by David Foster Wallace; “Crazy” by Chris Draucker

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Dead Words

Dead Word Epitaphs Students will create gravestones for dead words that both glorify the wordâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s original meaning, much as David Foster Wallace illuminates the original meaning of the word despair in the reading for the day, and also describe how the word was killed.

Step One Have students cut tombstones out of gray construction paper and choose a dead word to memorialize. Step Two Have students write down what they believe is the essential, beautiful, important, original meaning of the word.

Step Three Have students list the abuses that the word was forced to suffer and what happened to the word as a result.

Step Four Turn a wall of your classroom into a graveyard of dead words, taping up all of the studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; work so that they can remember to let those words rest in peace.

Dead Words

Example: Good (1000-1550 A.D.) R.I.P Here lies Good, who was once the rare, wholesome purity of an honest soul — the deepest, truest, strongest, and most vulnerable part of a faithful man’s heart. God rest Good, who was made, in the harsh course of time, to describe not men’s hearts but, rather, pizzas and movies, arithmetic papers and lies, field trips, snickers bars, synthesized dance beats, sitcoms, coffee, gel pens, chairs, table service, haircuts, watches, and all other things approximately above mediocre, and, being so overburdened with inanities, collapsed from exhaustion and now lies meaningless below.

Alternate Prompt: Have students redefine a dead word by talking about what it really means, like in the David Foster Wallace reading. See “Crazy” by Chris Draucker for another example.

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Dead Words CAUTION

A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again

selection from By David Foster Wallace

Here, David Foster Wallace does what you just did with your class: he takes a dead word—despair—and honors it by explaining what he really means when he uses it. Discuss his meaning of the word despair and how it differs from a more cliché use of that word. How does Wallace breathe life into a word that had become essentially meaningless? How can we do this in our own writing? The vocabulary here is incredibly challenging—take time to walk through it with your students, defining words as you go.

There is something about a mass-market Luxury Cruise that’s unbearably sad. Like most unbearably sad things, it seems incredibly elusive and complex in its causes and simple in its effect: on board the Nadir—especially at night, when all the ship’s structured fun and reassurances and gaiety-noise ceased—I felt despair. The word’s overused and banalified now, despair, but it’s a serious word, and I’m using it seriously. For me it denotes a simple admixture—a weird yearning for death combined with a crushing sense of my own smallness and futility that presents as a fear of death. It’s maybe close to what people call dread or angst. But it’s not these things, quite. It’s more like wanting to die in order to escape the unbearable feeling of becoming aware that I’m small and weak and selfish and going without any doubt at all to die. It’s wanting to jump overboard.

Dead Words

Crazy by Chris Draucker, grade 7

CAUTION

Crazy is such a simple word that can be expanded to mean something totally different. Crazy can be a man with angel wings that you get from the dollar store who is jumping off a cliff trying to fly. It can be an insane ride at an amusement part that makes all of the tough biker guys throw up. It can also be a rabid clown with a chainsaw chasing you through an abandoned carnival until you pee in your pants. Crazy can be described as a certain rush you get when you stay up all night â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;cause you get jacked up on Mountain Dew. Crazy is a woman that has horrible perfume on that smells like, well, I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t say! It is a jerk with crooked, yellow teeth pushing some poor, defenseless girl off a swing down at the community park. All of these things may sound horrible, hilarious, or even terrifying, for they probably are. But every one of these has its own meaning, good or bad, just like the word crazy.

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Cliché

Cliché Contributors: Tandy Versyp, Sarah Bates, Gino Orlandi To help students recognize and avoid cliché; to show students how to create new ways to express old ideas; to encourage inventive, original thought; to discourage lazy and unclear thinking. Optional Free Write Topic: Describe something by looking at it from behind or underneath. The Origin of Cliché Explain to students that cliché is French for click. Back in the day, when newspaper type still had to be set by hand, some clever printers got in the habit of pre-setting commonly used phrases. That way, they could easily drop those phrases into stories, rather than assembling them from scratch every time they appeared. These big groups of letters settled into the press with a heavy click. That is to say, instead of rewriting the same tired phrases over and over again, printers took these pre-made sentences and simply clicked (or clichéd) them into place. So really, using a cliché means taking someone else’s words and just clicking them into place, rather than coming up with something for yourself. Pretty lazy and boring, right?

Recognizing and Revising Cliché

Step One: Write a few clichés on the board, but leave out a key word from each of them. Here are some examples:

CAUTION

2 3 4

Like trying to find a _______ in a haystack Money doesn’t grow on _________ I know it like the back of my _________

Step Two: Read the sentences out loud and ask the students to shout out the word

that goes in the blank when you get to that spot. When they shout it out, say “CLICK! Did you feel it? Did you feel that word just clicking into place? That’s a cliché.”

Step Three: Lead a short discussion about the clichés on the board. Are these phrases surprising to you? Interesting? Would you want to read a book full of these? Probably not—it’s not very exciting to read something when you already know exactly how it’s going to end.

Step Four: Pick a cliché on the board and ask students to figure out what it is trying

to express. Take, for example, “Jeff knew that road like the back of his hand”: that phrase is simply trying to say, “Jeff knows that road very well.”

Cliché

Step Five: Ask students to come up with another, more interesting way to express that idea. For example: Jeff knew that road like he knew the Sunday Times crossword clues. Jeff knew that road like he knew the worn leather seat of his 1976 Chevy. Jeff knew that road like he knew Hamlet. Jeff knew that road like he knew the lyrics to Baby Got Back. Ask: what different things do we know about Jeff, given these different comparisons? What do they tell us that the cliché wouldn’t? Are these more interesting to read than the cliché we started with?

Step Six:

Finally, have students try to rewrite the cliché in a way that tells the classroom something particular about themselves and their lives. Ask: What is something that you know very well? What does that tell us about you? Let them share their sentences and discuss them with the classroom.

Readings: “Sour Thunder” by Matthew Rudolph; “Booming Thunder” by Catherine Killingsworth

Cliché Remix Make a list of cliché or otherwise expected/slightly lame adjective-noun phrases like these: Sour lemon Sharp knife Puckered lips Blooming flower Sticky honey Buzzing bee Booming thunder Then, have your students each pick one adjective and pair it with an unexpected noun from the list, like this: Sticky thunder Buzzing lips Booming flower Discuss, briefly, what these might mean: What does a booming flower look like? Huge? Bright? Terrifying? Thinking about it gets your creative juices flowing, right? Ask students to pick one of these combinations and write a piece about it.

Related Quote: “It is a cliché that most clichés are true, but then like most clichés, that cliché is untrue”—Stephen Fry

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ClichĂŠ CAUTION

Sour Thunder by Matthew Rudolph, age 9 This piece is a fun example of the creativity that comes from mixing together unexpected words. While this tactic for sidestepping clichĂŠ was invented for younger kids, it works great for older ones, too.

Every time it thunders, it rains lemonade. The lemonade is sour. Then sugar rained in the lemonade. Then it hailed ice cubes to make the lemonade cold.

Cliché

CAUTION

Have students compare “Sour Thunder” to the cliché little ditty below, penned by yours truly (or something equally snore-worthy of your own invention): Booming thunder loud and scary Booming thunder made me wary Booming thunder crash and groan Booming thunder leave me alone. Ask students: Which poem is more surprising? More interesting? Which one will they remember better tomorrow, and why? Discuss how the first poem grabs your attention, and how the second poem sounds like something we have heard before.

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Details & Specificity

Details and Specificity To teach students to use specific details instead of the clichés and dead words that they have eliminated from their repertoires; to get students in the habit of looking at their world with an analytical eye; to encourage original thought and close observation. Optional Free Write Topic: List as many dead words as you can.

Growing a Sentence This activity demonstrates how details and description are necessary in good writing.

CAUTION

1 2 3

Step One: Write a simple sentence like “Her boyfriend gave her a kiss” on a series of

note cards, one word per note card. Stick the cards to a blackboard with magnets or lay them out on a table or floor where the students can gather around and see.

Step Two: Ask students what, exactly, they know about this couple from this sentence. How old is this couple? What do they act like? How was the kiss? Establish that we can’t tell any of this from the vague sentence. How boring.

Step Three: Tell students that we are going to revise this sentence through adding detail and being specific. (Define these terms, too—you’d be amazed how many kids have heard these words but have no idea what they actually mean!) Unveil a vast selection of prepared note cards with unusual modifiers on them, like these: • Sloppy • Motorcycle-riding • 8-foot-tall • Scratchy • Accordion-playing • Sweaty • Slow • Peckish • Sour • Flaming • Chocolate • Imaginary • Rotund • Smudgy • Fishy

Details & Specificity

Call students up one by one to select a modifier and then move the note cards around to add it to the sentence. Have the students create several different arrangements by sticking the cards to the board with magnets, and discuss how each one tells us more (and is way funnier and more interesting!) than the original sentence. Then discuss with students: How can we do this to our own writing? Can we find places where the reader needs to know more? Let’s practice that today! Make every sentence in your writing as exciting and specific as this crazy sentence!

Readings: Selection from Hatchet by Gary Paulson; selection from “The Great American Desert” by Edward Abbey; selection from “A Sound of Thunder” by Ray Bradbury; “My Street” by Andrea Walker

LINK 5

Play students a video clip of something simple but exciting, like a shark leaping out of the water. Ask them to describe in it writing, using as much detail as possible. If necessary, play the video on a loop while they write.

Related Quote: “Caress the detail, the divine detail.” - Vladimir Nabokov

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Details & Specificity

selection from Hatchet

by Gary Paulson

In this passage, a young boy must escape an airplane as it plummets into a lake. Discuss with

CAUTION students how a detailed passage like this makes them feel. How would it have been different if Paulson had simply written, “The plane crashed into the lake and Brian managed to get out”?

Then a wild crashing sound, ripping of metal, and the plane rolled to the right and blew through the trees, out over the water and down, down to slam into the lake, skip once on water as hard as concrete, water that tore the windshield out and shattered the side windows, water that drove him back into the seat. Somebody was screaming, screaming as the plane drove down into the water. Someone screamed tight animal screams of fear and pain and he did not know that it was his sound, that he roared against the water that took him and the plane still deeper, down into the water. He saw nothing but sensed blue, cold blue-green, and he raked at the seatbelt catch, tore his nails loose on one hand. He ripped at it until it released and somehow—the water trying to kill him, to end him—somehow he pulled himself out of the shattered front window and clawed up into the blue, felt something hold him back, felt his windbreaker tear and he was free. Tearing free. Ripping free.

selection from

The Great American Desert by Edward Abbey

For this selection, ask students: How does the author feel about this desert? How do we know? How is the passage different from him just saying “I don’t like the desert”? What do the details add? Anyway—why go into the desert? Really, why do it? That sun, roaring at you all day long. The fetid, tepid, vapid little water holes slowly evaporating under a scum of grease, full of cannibal beetles, spotted toads, horsehair worms, liver flukes, and down at the bottom, inevitably, the pale cadaver of a ten-inch centipede. Those pink rattlesnakes down in The Canyon, those diamondback monsters thick as a truck driver’s wrist that lurk in shady places along the trail, those unpleasant solpugids and unnecessary Jerusalem crickets that scurry on dirty claws across your face at night. Why?

Details & Specificity

selection from A By Ray Bradbury

Sound of Thunder

This selection is a description of a Tyrannosaurus Rex, which the narrator has traveled back in time to hunt. Ask students: How is the author trying to make us feel about this t-rex? What details are the most memorable?

CAUTION

It came on great oiled, resilient, striding legs. It towered thirty feet above half of the trees, a great evil god, folding its delicate watchmakerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s claws close to its oily reptilian chest. Each lower leg was a piston, a thousand pounds of white bone, sunk in thick ropes of muscle, sheathed over in a gleam of pebbled skin like the mail of a terrible warrior. Each thigh was a ton of meat, ivory, and steel mesh. And from the great breathing cage of the upper body those two delicate arms dangled out front, arms with hands which might pick up and examine men like toys, while the snake neck coiled. And the head itself, a ton of sculptured stone, lifted easily upon the sky. Its mouth gaped, exposing a fence of teeth like daggers. Its eyes rolled, ostrich eggs, empty of all expression save hunger. It closed its mouth in a death grin. It ran, its pelvic bones crushing aside trees and bushes, its taloned feet clawing damp earth, leaving prints six inches deep wherever it settled its weight.

My Street by Andrea Walker, grade 6 I suggest using this descriptive piece to emphasize the effectiveness of using all five senses in writing. Sticky like syrup is how the street is. Junky is what the grass that once was green But now is brown is. My house has bricks like Hubert Middle School. Smells like drunk peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s breath. Sounds like crying babies and old men talking about everybody in my neighborhood.

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Figurative Language I

Figurative Language I: Describing Concrete Sensations Contributors: Emma Lunbeck and Eleanor Liu To teach the difference between literal and figurative language; to demonstrate the value of comparisons in writing; to encourage creative thinking; to have students practice finding connections between disparate ideas. Optional Free Write Topic: Describe a night sky without using clichés or dead words.

Literal or Figurative? The Preparation

LINK 6 CAUTION

Show students the following clips from the video provided at the link: Spaceballs, “Comb the desert!” Men in Tights, “Lend me your ears!” Episode of Police Squad, “Cover me!”

Discuss each clip. Note: it’s important to create a pattern of questions that you can repeat for each clip. This helps prevent confusion. One possible pattern: 1. Okay, say we got out a dictionary and looked up the meaning of every word in the phrase. What would it be telling us to do?

2. Is this dictionary definition how we’re supposed to take the phrase? Or is there another meaning?

3. This other meaning depends on a comparison. (Define this term, if necessary.) What is being compared to what?

After going through the examples, discuss the idea of comparison. A literal phrase is one that we can understand by its dictionary definition, but a figurative phrase depends on a comparison. For example, when you say, “I have a ton of homework,” do you mean you have 2,000 pounds of homework? No; you’re comparing the feeling of having lots of homework to the feeling of being weighed down by something really heavy.

Figurative Language I

The Game Pass out two index cards, one purple and one orange (or whatever two colors you have on hand), to every student. Tell students to pick up the orange index card and write “Literal” on it. Spell this out for them on the board. Next, ask them to write “Figurative” on the purple index card. Note: It is important that students write the words themselves, even though it will take longer than preparing all the cards beforehand. Writing it down themselves will help them to remember the terms later. Next, give the students an example of a figurative phrase: “The policeman barked orders.” Ask the kids to hold up either the literal or figurative card. Everyone has to hold up a card, but it’s okay to guess. Call on one of the students who held up the right answer and ask him to explain his answer. Reinforce the idea of comparison—in this figurative description, the policeman is compared to a dog. Continue giving the students examples of literal and figurative phrases, calling on them to explain their answers:

“The policeman shouted orders.” (literal)

“She looks like a nice girl.” (literal)

“You’re bouncing off the walls.” (figurative: being compared to a bouncy ball, perhaps)

“I’m freezing.” (figurative: feeling cold is being compared to being turned into ice)

“He whispered.” (literal)

“He hissed.” (figurative: being compared to a snake, or perhaps a cat)

Readings: “My Chili” by Alberto Rios—bring chili peppers or jalapeños to class to enhance this reading experience!

Hand each student a slice of lemon. Ask students to bite into it and write ten figurative descriptions of the sensation, just like Rios writes figurative descriptions of the sensation of biting into a chili pepper.

Related Quote: “Metaphor is right at the bottom of being alive.” —Fritjof Capra

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Figurative Language I

My Chili By Alberto Rios

reprinted with permission, courtesy of Copper Canyon Press

Since this poem is so long, I suggest breaking it down into sections and assigning each section to a small group of students. Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t feel the need to hand out the whole poem; simply pick the stanzas CAUTION that you think the groups will like best or have the easiest time understanding. Allow each group to present their understanding of their section to the rest of the class. Extension: Before reading the poem, hand out small slices of jalapeno or chili peppers and ask brave students to bite right into it. Have some bread or milk handy to cut the spice. Tell students that this poem is the authorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s figurative interpretations of that spicy taste. Chili: First cousin to the ant bite, Who, when in the mouth, talks about

I cut my feet Walking on something, but so that

This very cousin, Talks slowly and spends a little time

I shook them first. That kind of cut, The kind that first seems like something else,

Telling stories. Chili, whose musical skin holds sound

Like something clinging to the foot: A nail once, and then

Inside, the echoes from gold miners In a heat, who used dynamite

Something in the sand of the seawater In Mexico that summer, that summer

To get at the veins of the gold, That sound and that feeling,

Filled with jellyfishes, too, That stung.

A mustard impatience spurred on by dream. Chili: All the times

Chili: Witchesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; tongues, Red and green and their darker

I have shouted at you, not so many, So that I remember them,

Familiars, tongues, where witches Carry the seed of their kind,

Something coming alive enough And moving in the mouth

Explaining their obsession for words In spells, those hard rhyming words

So that my body had no choice And like hair had to spit it out:

Wool coats to their children In those tongues.

This moment like the four times In my life

Chili taste: On a bar graph, distinctly Between a fingersnap and a pinprick >>

Figurative Language I

My Chili CONTINUED But holding hands with both of them. Walking calmly but realizing, in that same moment,

Chili has already begun. It has already gone very far

A bird dropping has fallen in your hair. Opening the mailbox

Inside itself. The moment you bits

To find the letter you have been waiting for Is not there, again.

You are saved from the walk, For plot purposes.

Chili taste: The feel of a counterfeit wound. The sound of a whistle.

Instead you are leapt To the place where chili is.

The sight of that other boy, When he was young and you were young

In a movie, you are a detective. You walk into a storefront

And she was young, and she was with him. It was a Thursday.

With a flashing red-and-green neon sign. But as you step in

Chili: The small letter z, Which sometimes masquerades as the capital X,

The floor suddenly gives out From under you:

Adding, thereby, to the other’s reputation Among the adults of the alphabet,

It is a trapdoor, and you fall Down a two-story chute

But chili content as z not to say anything, Only to get the chance to live

To an immediately more interesting Adventure in which you much remember

Part of two lives. Chili: Itself

To hope You are the hero.

And, at the crucial moment, Also you.

Chili is a rapist or a lover. What is important to recognize

I has taken you by the mouth With its single muscle

Is that when one bites a chili There is an unrecognized moisture

And hit you, but from the inside out— You can see the moment, which looks like

Suddenly in the mouth, And in the eyes, and sometimes on the skin.

A tongue extending the cheek out. Chili: The inside of a fist,

It seems to have come from nowhere, But that’s not true. >>

CAUTION

A fist’s dream and a fist’s intent. It is the inside of a fight, Where you cannot see But what is there. | 49

Figurative Language I

My Chili CONTINUED CAUTION

If there were a hypnotist for the body, And not just the mind, The body remembering, under oath On the stand, Would know where to point its finger— Over there: that’s the one who did it. Then the chili would later have its photograph taken At the police station Or in the bedroom, Left and right profiles and straight-on. In the bedroom poses, in that intimacy, Things would be just as we imagine With a camera: That fascination—chili With its legs just a little apart. When you bite the chili, You are not biting chili. With its own teeth and its own tongue For taste, The chili, after all, Is biting you.

Figurative Language I

A Lemon is…

CAUTION

by the 8th grade students of Hubert Middle School “Like your face being sucked into a vacuum.” – Malik Brown “The taste of a bad, burnt perm.” – Alexus Chisholm “Sour as a sailor’s mouth.” – Xavier Alston “It whistled in my mouth like a granny’s kettle.” – Brionna Scott “Like jellyfishes in your mouth.” – Jeffrey Jackson “It makes my lips fold up like a piece of paper.” – Ke’Von Futch “As refreshing as getting a gallon of Gatorade dumped on your back.” – Montel Stanley “It’s like a slap on the tongue.” – William Lawton “Bitter as an old person who never got married.” – Timothy Barney

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Figurative Language II

Figurative Language II: Describing Abstract Ideas To expand upon the previous lesson; to explore more varieties of figurative language; to practice abstraction; to demonstrate the connections between physical sensations and abstract ideas. Optional free write topic: Explain what kind of weather you are—snow? drought? misty mornings? —and why.

Metaphor Passing For today, I switch the order of the reading and the activity, starting the day by playing TLC’s “Waterfalls.” See next page for instructions.

CAUTION

Step One: After discussing the “Waterfalls,” hand each student a sheet of paper with an abstract word written in the center. Good words might be: Sadness Freedom Bliss Exhaustion Disappointment Laziness

Tell the students that they have thirty seconds to write something on the sheet that could be a figurative comparison for that word. Using “Waterfalls” as an example, explain that for a word like “fast” or “dangerous” they might write down “waterfalls,” and for “slow” or “safe” they might write down “lakes.” Give them a few more examples before they start: Loneliness could be a broken crayon with no crayon box, or a melted ice cream cone, or a tree in the desert…

2 3 4

Step Two: After thirty seconds, have them all pass the sheets to their left. Continue until each student has written something on several sheets of paper. Step Three: Check comprehension by having students read aloud some of the comparisons they have created. If you spot literal descriptions, ask the students to identify problems: “Is ‘freedom is beautiful’ using figurative language? Is freedom being compared to something? No? It just is beautiful. Then how do we make it figurative? What can we compare freedom to? What about ‘freedom is getting your driver’s license?’”

Step Four: Continue for a few more minutes and have students share their favorites at the end.

Figurative Language II

Readings: “Waterfalls” by TLC; “I am...” by Tommy Roberts. Other good readings for this lesson are “Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes and “Litany” by Billy Collins.

Have students write a poem describing themselves only in metaphors, with each line taking the form “I am…because…” Prompt students: what kind of weather are you? What kind of landscape? What animal? What element? What furniture? What household object? What food? What car? Be sure to specify that students are not to tell us what they like but, rather, what they are like. Ask: “Just because you like the smell of lilacs, does that mean that your personality is like the smell of lilacs? What kind of personality would that be?”

Related Quote: “Metaphor…seems a tool for creation which God forgot inside one of his creatures.” —Jose Ortega

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Figurative Language II

Waterfalls By TLC

CAUTION

LINK 7 If your students respond well to music, use this song as a low-key introduction to the activities. You can

find a recording online at the provided link (and, if you don’t mind some slightly racy content, you can show them the video, too). Before playing this song, ask students to take out a sheet of paper and a pencil. Tell them to listen to the song very carefully and try to figure out what the phrase “Don’t go chasing waterfalls” means. At the end of the song, ask students to write one sentence explaining what TLC means by that phrase. The best sentence (that is, the one that comes closest to saying “waterfalls stands for things that move too fast and are dangerous”) wins a small candy bar. When you are done, explain that this song uses a metaphor, which is a kind of figurative language. You make a metaphor when you compare a thing like a waterfall to something else, usually an idea (like living your life too fast), without using the words like or as.

Figurative Language II

I am... by Tommy Roberts, grade 6

CAUTION

I am a skating rink because I move fast. I am a monkey wrench because I undo people. I am a storm because I am angry. I am an apple because I am sour. I am a dog because I am loyal.

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Detective Work

Detective Work: Mood and Tone Contributors: Emma Lunbeck and Eleanor Liu

To help students identify tone and mood through word choice “clues”; to have students look critically at authorial intent; to give students an easy, amusing strategy for analyzing literature. Optional Free Write: Write about a mystery.

Crime Scene Investigation This works well to get kids invested in picking apart a reading.

CAUTION

Step One: Explain that a piece of writing is like a crime scene. It’s filled with clues that

tell us what the author is trying to make us feel. Every piece of figurative language, in fact every descriptive word, is like a fingerprint that we can use to uncover the tone and the mood of the passage. Note: This is a good place in the lesson to define tone and mood with your students, but once you have defined them, I would suggest setting these terms aside until the end of class. Unfortunately, words like tone, mood, and theme often limit students. When you ask students what the tone of a piece is, they stop asking questions like “What is this about? How can I relate to it? What can I learn from it? What does it make me feel?” and start asking questions like, “Is this the right answer for ‘tone’? Am I done yet?” To discuss tone, mood, or theme using the official terminology, I suggest bringing it up at the very end of the discussion, after the answers have already been arrived at organically, if not yet officially named. For example: “So, guys, we’ve realized that Hamlet talks a lot about how he feels like a coward for not killing himself and for not killing Claudius. We’ve come up with a lot of ideas of what Shakespeare is trying to say about cowardice. Could we call cowardice a theme of the play? Is it something really important that Shakespeare is trying to tell us about?”

Step Two: Explain to students that they must take three steps to analyze the evidence: 1. Find an example of figurative language and decide: what is being compared to what? Be as explicit as you can. 2. Describe what you see or feel. Use sensory details to zoom in on images and comparisons. 3. Ask yourself: Why does the author include this detail here? Does it make us feel frightened? Happy? Disoriented? Tranquil? What is this clue trying to tell you?

Detective Work

Step Three: Do an example. Pick one of the sunset passages included in this lesson and go through it like this:

1. In this poem, Dickinson compares the setting sun to an old woman with a broom. 2. That clue reminds me of watching moms or maids clean up after little kids, taking care of them. 3. That makes me feel mothered and safe. When you add the clues together, it creates a mood that is comforting and sweet and a tone that makes the author sound like a child or a housewife ordering a maid around.

4 5 6

Step Four: Do a class example. Pick a use of figurative language in another passage and practice analyzing it together as a class using the questions in step two.

Step Five: Now tell your students that they are the Forensic Team. Divide the room into small

groups and hand each group a passage to investigate for clues. If your class is full of good listeners, hand out different passages to each group, according to what you think will interest them. If the class has a hard time listening to each other, hand every group the same passage. Tell each group to find a few “fingerprints” of figurative or descriptive language and start analyzing them using the three questions described in step two. If you want to go all out, list a lot of potential moods or tones (depending on which one you want students to learn to identify) on the board and ask students to finger a “culprit” for their textual evidence: “who is responsible for all of these comparisons to bunnies and rainbows? The author’s happy, optimistic tone! And who was responsible for all the comparisons to knives and blood in the other piece? The suspenseful mood.”

Step Six: Time for a Forensic Presentation! Ask for a volunteer to stand up and present his

evidence. If you gave everyone the same passage, then tell everyone else to listen closely and see if their evidence supports or conflicts with the presenter’s evidence. After he is done, ask for another volunteer whose evidence either works with or against the evidence of the first presenter. This works better than just going around the room because it encourages students to listen more closely to each other. If you gave everyone a different passage, have them present their evidence and compare it to other cases, finding the differences between different authors’ points of view. Note: Because this is such a time-intensive exercise, it is best used as a continuing game that you can repeat class after class.

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Detective Work

Readings: “219” by Emily Dickinson; selection from To a God Unknown by John Steinbeck; selection from “Church Not Made with Hands” by David Foster Wallace; selection from The Portent by George MacDonald

Have students write a poem describing themselves only in metaphors, with Tell students to write sunset description, dropping a lotwhat of kind each line taking the their form own “I am…because…” Prompt students: figurative and descriptive clues so that we know how they want us of weather are you? What kind of landscape? What animal? Whattoelement? feel about the sunset. If your students are stuck, giving a few What furniture? What household object? Whatconsider food? What car? Be sure to verbal prompts: specify that students are not to tell us what they like but, rather, what they are like. Ask: “Just because you like the smell of lilacs, does that mean that • your Whatpersonality if you wereisbeing turned a vampire it was the last would like the smellinto of lilacs? Whatand kind of personality sunset you would ever see? How would you feel about it then? What that be?” kinds of words would you use to describe it? • What if you were a little kid and this is the first sunset you ever saw? • What if a human sacrifice were set to happen at sunset? • What if a big party is starting after sundown?

Detective Work

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Detective Work CAUTION

219 by Emily Dickinson She sweeps with many-colored Brooms— And leaves the Shreds behind— Oh Housewife in the Evening West— Come back, and dust the Pond! You dropped a Purple Raveling in— You dropped an Amber thread— And now you’ve littered all the East With Duds of Emerald! And still, she plies her spotted Brooms, And still the Aprons fly, Till Brooms fade softly into stars, And then I come away—

selection from To By John Steinbeck

a God Unknown

“Every night I kill some little thing, a bird, a rabbit or a squirrel. Yes, every night some creature. Now, it’s nearly time.” The sun’s edge touched the fog. The sun changed its shape; it was an arrowhead, an hourglass, a top. The sea turned red, and the wave-tops became long blades of crimson light. The old man turned quickly to the table. “Now!” he said and cut the pig’s throat. The red light bathed the mountains and the house. “Don’t cry, little brother.” He held down the struggling body. “Don’t cry. If I have done it right, you will be dead when the sun is dead.” The struggling grew weaker. The sun was a flat cap of light on the fog wall, and then it disappeared, and the pig was dead.

Detective Work

selection from Church

Not Made

With Hands By David Foster Wallace

CAUTION

The sky is an eye. The dusk and the dawn are the blood that feeds that eye. The night is the eyeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s drawn lid. Each day the lid again comes open, disclosing blood, and the blue iris of a prone giant.

selection from The By George MacDonald

Portent

There I would often lie, as the sun went down, and watch the silent growth of another sea, which the stormy ocean of the wind could not disturbâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the sea of the darkness. First it would begin to gather in the bottom of hollow places. Deep valleys, and all little pits on the hillsides, were wellsprings where it gathered, and whence it seemed to overflow, till it had buried the earth beneath its mass, and, rising high into the heavens, swept over the faces of the stars, washed the blinding day from them, and let them shine, down through the waters of the dark, to the eyes of men below.

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Personification

Personification Contributor: Emma Lunbeck To introduce students to point of view; to practice personification; to deepen students’ understanding of metaphor. Optional Free Write Topic: Write about a gift you have received.

Object Questions Display an array of 15-25 objects of varying textures, shapes, and functions, some ordinary (salt-shaker, ribbon, marble, cheese-grater), some extraordinary (conch shell, compass, bungee cord). Avoid objects that look like people or animals, such as figurines, puppets, or anything that suggests arms and a head.

CAUTION

1 2

Step One: (just for fun) bring your students up to the table with the objects, which

at the beginning of class should be covered with a large sheet. Reveal the objects and tell the students to closely observe what they see—give them a minute or two. Cover the objects again and ask students to write down as many objects as they can remember from the table. Give a small prize to the student who remembers the most; ties can be broken by asking detailed questions about the objects. (What color was the marble? What suit was the playing card?)

Step Two: (the important part) ask students to come up to the table and pick an object.

Using timed writings, about two to three minutes each, give students the following brief writing assignments involving the objects: 1. Describe your object. Include as many of the five senses as possible. 2. What is your object normally used for? What other uses might it have? For example, a paper-clip can serve as a hair-curler, picklock, fingernail cleaner, necklace, toy, hole puncher, bookmark … 3. Your object saved somebody’s life. How? (Alternative prompt: Your object caused a tragedy. What happened?) 4. Your object can talk. What does it say?

Between assignments, ask students to exchange objects and, if you have time, you may ask for volunteers to read their responses.

Personification

Readings: “The Sigh” by Christian Morgenstern; “The Orange” by Troy Jones

Have every student pick a different object from the one they were using in the activity and write a poem or story personifying it.

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Personification CAUTION

The Sigh By Christian Morgenstern As you go through this poem, be sure to ask students what the poet is describing; the line breaks sometimes make it difficult for them to follow the action. It may even help to act out what the sigh is doing—and your students will be amused by watching you “skate” through the room!

A sigh went a-skating on ice in the night, of love and of joy he was dreaming. It was near the town wall, and snow white the town wall’s mansions were gleaming. The sigh, he thought of a maiden fair, And a-glowing he stopped on the scene. That melted the ice below him there And he sank—and was nevermore seen.

Personification

The Orange by Troy Jones, grade 8

CAUTION

Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s so peaceful, juicy, and lonely when no one touches its sweet juiciness. It stays in one position, as it is so small. When you look at it from your evil, fiery human eye, just wanting to eat it, it looks at you like a baby who doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know the difference between a stranger and a friend. But all the orange wants is to be left alone by itself, with no one bothering or disturbing its peace. It is so cold but looks so sweet, its color attracts my own eyes. As soon as I pick up the orange, its shell protects it like a mother trying to protect her young from danger. I have to crack her open to get at what all I have been thriving for this whole time. I was like a tiger going for its prey. Once I get to peeling the mother away from her young, she strikes with her last defense by shoving a very disturbing scent right up my nose that makes me want to change my mind about the whole thing. But no: I keep attacking. As the predator I have killed the mother. Now she hands me her young with one last defense, which is the skin, but I pay it no mind. Then I shove the orange into my mouth. All of the sweet juices run into my mouth like a track star that nourishes my body. Even though the orange was sweet and juicy, I remember that I was still the predator who killed the mother and took her child into my digestive system as a reward. Why does such beauty and goodness come with a horrible ordeal? I will never know the answer to that question, but what I do know is that the orange was so beautiful and peaceful, and I ruined it all.

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Symbols

Symbols Contributor: Tandy Versyp To expand on the previous lesson by having students use objects as symbols; to practice making abstract ideas concrete; to improve students’ ability to analyze symbols and metaphors in literature. Optional Free Write Topic: Write about your favorite possession and what it means to you.

Origami Symbol Purse

CAUTION

1 2

Step One: Bring a box full of objects that are loaded with symbolic meaning,

such as a wedding ring, a flag, a cross, a swastika, a rose, a pair of dice, and other similar items.

Step Two: Choose one of the objects for a class example. Hold it up and ask

students what the object makes them think of. Write their answers on the board. For example, a wedding ring might inspire you to write down words like love, eternity, marriage, faithfulness, family, and promise. If students are stuck or confused, a good way to illuminate the meaning of a symbol is to plug it into the sentence “He threw his _____ into the river.” Ask students: “If I say he threw his wedding ring into the river, what am I saying? What is he throwing away? Just a little piece of gold, or something more?”

Step Three: After your students have written down their own associations,

explain to them that this object is a symbol for all of the things that you wrote down. A symbol is an object that stands for something much bigger and more complicated than itself. For example, a wedding band isn’t just a ring—it means faithfulness, commitment, and family, among other things. Whenever you use a symbol in your writing, you are packing a ton of meaning into a very small amount of space. It’s quite a handy tool.

Symbols

LINK 8 Step Four: To demonstrate this concept, have each student choose a symbolic object and write all of their associations with it on one side of a sheet of paper. When they are finished, have them fold it over and staple it closed on two sides, like a little purse, and then ask them to draw a picture of their object on the front. Explain that this is what a symbol is: one object that carries a lot of hidden meanings around on the inside. (If you have lots of extra time, you can have your students fold their pieces of paper into an origami purse, rather than merely stapling it shut. You can find instructions for this at the provided link.) Segue into the readings by explaining that symbols like crosses and flags are ready-made, but you can also pack your own symbol-boxes with whatever you want. Sandra Cisneros, for example, packs a pair of shoes with a whole lot of meaning in her story, and Katie Cooper shows us how a loose baby tooth means more than just a gap in your gums. Readings: “Family of Little Feet” by Sandra Cisneros; “The Tooth” by Katie Cooper

Give each student a random object—one with no obvious meaning— and ask them to write a short poem or story that turns it into a symbol for something. This is challenging: be prepared to help them along and give examples.

Related Quote: “Everything is either symbol or parable.”—Paul Claudel

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Symbols

The Family of Little Feet selection from The House on Mango Street By Sandra Cisneros CAUTION

LINK 9 This reading, which is about pre-teen girls putting on high heels for the first time, nails female

adolescence. While we are unable to print it in full here, you can find the complete text online at the provided link or, better yet, pick up a copy of The House on Mango Street at your local bookstore (I highly recommend it—the book is full of short stories that your students will love). Ask students: What do the fancy shoes come to represent? Why do the girls put them on? What does it make them feel? Why do they take them off and let them get thrown away at the end? Hurray! Today we are Cinderella because our feet fit exactly, and we laugh at Rachel’s one foot with a girl’s gray sock and a lady’s high heel. Do you like these shoes? But the truth is it is scary to look down at your foot that is no longer yours and see attached a long long leg. …Across the street in front of the tavern a bum man on the stoop. Do you like these shoes? Bum man says yes, little girl. Your little lemon shoes are so beautiful. But come closer. I can’t see very well. Come closer. Please. You are a pretty girl. What’s your name, pretty girl? And Rachel says Rachel, just like that. Now you know to talk to drunks is crazy and to tell them your name is worse, but who can blame her. She is young and dizzy to hear so many sweet things in one day, even if it is a bum man’s whiskey words saying them. Rachel, you are prettier than a yellow taxicab. You know that? But we don’t like it. We got to go, Lucy says. If I give you a dollar will you kiss me? How about a dollar? I give you a dollar, and he looks in his pocket for wrinkled money. We have to go right now, Lucy says taking Rachel’s hand because it looks like she’s thinking about that dollar. Bum man is yelling something to the air but by now we are running fast and far away, our high heel shoes taking us all the way down the avenue and around the block, past the ugly cousins, past Mr. Benny’s, up Mango Street, the back way, just in case. We are tired of being beautiful. Lucy hides the lemon shoes and the red shoes and the shoes that used to be white but are now pale blue under a powerful bushel basket on the back porch, until one Tuesday her mother, who is very clean, throws them away. But no one complains.

Symbols

The Tooth by Katie Cooper, grade 8 After reading this with students, ask them: What does the tooth mean to this little girl? What does it stand CAUTION for in terms of her relationship with her parents? When I was little, my friends told me the tooth fairy wasn’t real. My parents continued to convince me it was, though. I wanted to know for sure, so I made a plan. The next tooth I lost, I hid it under my pillow. I didn’t tell mom or dad about it so they wouldn’t know to put coins under my pillow. The rest of the day, I kept my mouth closed and didn’t talk. I felt anxious and hyper when I thought about my genius plan. Luckily, me and my mom didn’t talk while I sat on her soft, comfy bed. I couldn’t relax, though. I kept giggling and hiding my face in my dad’s hard, cologne-smelling pillow. Mom was curious but didn’t insist on me telling her what excited me. I refused to ask her if the tooth fairy was real because I knew that if she was lying, it was only for my fun. I wanted to be smart enough to figure it out myself. All throughout the day, I fidgeted and giggled. Even in my shorts, it was hot, so I kicked and jumped to take my mind off of it. That night, I slept with an evil grin on my face. I awoke with excitement to find a perfectly white tooth laughing at my parents’ unknowing minds.

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Persuasive Writing I

Persuasive Writing I: Reasons To teach students how to organize an effective argument; to introduce students to the idea of satire; to make persuasive writing fun. Optional Free Write Topic: Write about a time when someone convinced you to do something that you didn’t want to do.

Fair and Unfair Reasons

1 CAUTION

2 3

LINK 10 Step One: Watch the Monty Python “Argument Clinic” sketch provided in the link and ask students: What does the main character think an argument is? Is contradiction (i.e. merely saying “no, it’s not!”) a real argument? Why doesn’t the main character think so? What does he want from an argument? Do you like it when people argue with you by simply saying, “No, you’re wrong”? Step Two: Explain to students that a real argument has to have reasons. There are two

kinds of reasons: fair reasons and unfair reasons. Discuss with students what they think the difference between fair and unfair reasons is and try to steer them towards something like this: Fair reasons are ones that everyone has to agree are true, even if they don’t like the outcome, while unfair reasons are arbitrary and depend on opinions of the person making the argument—like the annoying guy in the Argument Clinic. Good arguments—the kind of arguments that really change people’s minds—never use unfair reasons. Unfair reasons just annoy people and make them not want to talk to you anymore. Note: If you think this might be unclear to your students, another good way to phrase it is saying fact versus opinion instead of fair versus unfair.

Step Three: Hand every student two index cards. Have them write “fair” on one and

“unfair” on the other. Tell students that you are going to give them sample reasons for an argument, and they’re going to have to decide whether that reason is fair or unfair. Everyone has to hold up a card, but it’s okay to guess.

Persuasive Writing I

Step Four: Give students the following premise: a mother says that her thirteen-year-old kid is not allowed to go dancing at clubs on the weekends. Ask students to decide whether the following reasons that the parent gives seem fair or unfair. Be careful to point out that just because they don’t like a reason doesn’t mean it is unfair; what makes a reason unfair is when the reason depends on the opinions of the person making the argument or relies on unproven assumptions. Because I don’t want you to (unfair)

That club is dangerous—people have gotten shot there (fair)

Because I’ll whoop you if I find out (unfair)

Because you’re failing math, and you need to spend that time working on your homework (mostly fair, though there are some unproven assumptions embedded in it—encourage debate on this one)

Because it’s illegal for you to be there as an underage person, and you could get sent to jail (fair)

Because it’s a bad thing to do (unfair—who decided it was bad? Is that a universal truth?)

You can then extend this activity to analyze another argument if you like—preferably one that the students often face, so that it is easier for them to recognize fair and unfair reasons. Consider, also, asking students to list and analyze reasons that a 13-year-old should be allowed to go clubbing on the weekends, helping them to identify their own unfair reasoning when it appears. Readings: Note: The readings for the next three lessons are all satires. Persuasive writing tends to be a bore, and funny essays spice up the lessons. Teaching with satire, in which the logic is so humorously displayed, also makes the structure of arguments more transparent. Explain to students that satire, in its simplest form, is the art of using clever, fair-seeming reasons to argue for ridiculous things. If you use unfair-sounding reasons, the joke doesn’t work at all—you’ve got to be really on top of your argumentative game to make this kind of joke work. - “Bullet Control” by Chris Rock - “The Lobster Rebellion” by Dave Barry

Have students draw a ridiculous argument from a hat (ideally, theses that are surprising but not impossible to argue, such as “Boys should wear as much makeup as girls do” or “The cafeteria ladies should be replaced with ex-Marines”) and have them start filling out an argument chart (see attached) for it, listing as many fair, if also funny, reasons as they can think of to support the argument. If they finish early, ask them to trade and check each other for unfair reasons, or to fill out more charts for other arguments. Tell them to do a good job, because they will be using this argument next week to write an essay.

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Persuasive Writing I

CAUTION

My Audience:

My Argument:

(the person youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re trying toconvince)

Reasons

Reason #1

Example 1a

Reason #2

Example 1b

Example 2a

Reason #3

Example 2b

Example 3a

Example 3b

Persuasive Writing I

Bullet Control by Chris Rock CAUTION

LINK 11You can find a video clip of Chris Rock satirizing gun control at the provided link. As with any Chris Rock video, there is inappropriate language, and I recommend it mostly for students aged 13 and above (he drops the f-bomb). Warn students of this language and explain that you don’t condone it, but we are going to look past it for the humor and content in this clip.

CAUTION

Watch it once for the humor, and then show students a copy of the blank argumentation chart included here. Ask students to watch the video again and try to fill in the reasons for Rock’s argument (you can leave the examples blank for now, if you like, explaining that you will get to them next week). After watching the video a second time, fill in the chart as a group. Ask students: What are Chris Rock’s reasons for having bullets cost $5,000 each?

The Lobster Rebellion By Dave Barry LINK 12 This piece is too long to reprint here, but you can find a full copy online at the provided link. This piece is not quite as clearly organized as Chris Rock’s bullet control argument, but it is equally funny. Warn students that the thesis statement, or argument, isn’t explicit until the end of the piece, but that Dave Barry does an excellent job of listing reasons for this argument (namely, that we shouldn’t eat bizarre sea creatures) throughout. Read this aloud with students and ask them to circle things that look like fair reasons to them as they go along. Discuss these reasons with students afterwards and begin to fill out an argument chart, emphasizing to students the way in which Barry avoids unfair reasons (i.e., instead of listing value judgments like “lobsters taste gross and are weird” he states scientifically proven facts such as “lobsters are descended from worms and have babypoopers in their mouths”).

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Persuasive Writing II

Persuasive Writing II: Proving Your Case To teach students how to use proof and examples in persuasive writing; to help students be rigorous in their arguments and to spot fallacies in others’ arguments; to help students distinguish between reasons and examples and to clarify the relationship between those two parts of an argument.

The Case of the Missing Pizza Note: This class is the perfect time to address common misunderstandings with regard to argumentative writing—be on the lookout for the following problems and call students out on it when you see them occurring: CAUTION

Problem One: Repetition. Students tend to repeat the same reason several times in different wording, rather than coming up with three independent reasons that support their argument. For example, for the argument “Being a woman is better than being a man,” I had one student list her reasons as “Women look better in dresses,” “Women can wear heels,” and “Women can wear lipstick.” She didn’t see how these are all iterations of (or examples for) only one reason: “Women have more fashion choices.” Push your students to come up with reasons that are radically different from each other, like “Without women, there would be no children” and “Women live longer than men.” Problem Two: Vague Examples. At first, many students don’t understand the difference between a reason and an example; students have a bad habit of merely rephrasing what they have already said, rather than illustrating their point with specific details. For example, for the argument “Being a woman is better than being a man,” a student might say “Women live longer” as their reason and “Men die first” as their example. To avoid vague repetitions like this, encourage students to give examples that you can really picture, like “Most nursing homes are more than 90% female because women live so much longer than men” or “On average, men in America die at the age of 75 and women die at the age of 82.” Note: Even if you are preparing students for a timed essay test in which they will not be able to research facts, point out that students can use personal anecdotes as well as hypothetical situations as evidence in persuasive essays. While factual evidence such as “Most nursing homes are more than 90% female” is preferable, it is also acceptable to use personal evidence like this: “Every time I visit my grandparents at their nursing home, almost everyone I meet is a widow. All the ladies flock around my grandfather because he’s the only man in sight.”

Persuasive Writing II

The goal of this “Missing Pizza” activity is to compare persuasive writing to a court case and to use that comparison to rid students of these bad habits. Use this activity to make it clear to students that each reason supporting their argument has to be different from the other reasons and that each point they make needs to be proven with specific examples. Just like a criminal case, a persuasive argument needs clear evidence to convince the jury.

Step One: The Crime Explain to students that a crime has occurred, and they must solve it. Here is the scenario I give my kids, but you can adjust it for your classroom: At 2pm last Wednesday, the Deep teachers, led by Catherine Killingsworth, stopped by Hubert Middle School to bring a surprise pizza party for the most polite, hardest working students in their class. There was a special assembly for student council elections going on in the gym, and Catherine’s plan was to set up the party in the library and then go to the assembly to find the students that she wanted to invite. She set up the party and went to get the students around 2:15, but as soon as she got back, she saw that the pizza was gone! In her search to find the thief, she has narrowed it down to two suspects, the only two students who weren’t in the assembly at the time of the theft: Student A and Student B.

Step Two: The Charts Ask the class, “Do we have any actors in here?” Choose two students and assign one the role of Student A and one the role of Student B. Let them pick funny names for their characters, if they like. Ask each of them to draw their own argument chart up on the board, complete with space for their argument, room for three reasons to support that argument, and a place for one piece of evidence supporting each reason. While this is going on, explain to the class that we will be putting together a case for each of the suspects using the argument charts and several different kinds of evidence, just like we do with a persuasive essay.

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Persuasive Writing II

Step Three: Suspect Statements At this point, I give the suspects a chance to make their case. I have each of them read a prepared statement: Student A I didn’t do it! You people are always blaming me for everything, just ‘cause you don’t like me. Well, let me tell you: there is no way I could have stolen that pizza. I wasn’t anywhere near it, I couldn’t have hidden it anywhere if I did take it, and I can’t even eat pizza anyway. It makes me sick. Man, forget this. Student B Of course I didn’t steal the pizza! Do I look like a thief to you? I am a straight-A student with no discipline record. Why would I risk losing that? Student A, on the other hand—do you know how many times he’s been suspended for petty crimes like this? It makes more sense that he would do it. Besides, I couldn’t have done it. I was putting the last touches on my speech for the student council elections when the pizza was taken. I was in the hallway right outside of the assembly, waiting for them to call my name for my speech. You could have just looked out the window and seen me. I was right there. Besides, I don’t even like pizza. I prefer apples and other healthy snacks.

After each argument, I ask the class to identify the argument that both suspects are making (“I didn’t do it!”) and the reasons that they are listing for why they couldn’t have done it (for example, “Pizza makes me sick!” or “I’m a straight A student, so it’s more likely the other guy did it.”). Have the suspects write their reasons in their argument charts. Now: ask students whether they know who did it yet, or take a quick poll of who they think the culprit is. It should be clear that we can’t tell yet. Ask: What do we need before we know who did it? That’s right: Proof! Evidence!

Persuasive Writing II

Step Four: The Evidence I usually give two pieces of physical evidence and two witness statements. After each piece of evidence, ask the class: What have we learned? Whose argument does it support? Where does it go on the argument chart? Make sure that students organize the information themselves, with little to no help from you. Here is what I use for this case:

Prudence Fa, M.D., 1168 Abercorn St. To Whom It May Concern: This note is to inform you that Student A suffers from lactose intolerance. This means that he has a severe allergic reaction to dairy products, including milk, cheese, butter, and ice cream. Please provide this student with school lunch options that do not contain any of these items.

DISCIPLINARY WRITE -UP Date: Monday, October 1, 2010 Teacher Name: Ms. Allie Buye Student Name: Student A Cause for Referral: Student was caught bullying another student, being

verbally abusive, and stealing that studentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lunch out of her backpack. In-School Suspension recommended.

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Persuasive Writing II

Witness Statement: Ms. Allie Buye, Science Teacher I don’t think Student B would steal anything. He’s very quiet and he always finishes his homework. But Student A—oh, that child drives me crazy. I just don’t know what to do with him. He’s always talking in class and starting fights. He has no idea how hard we teachers work to help these students pass their tests. He thinks we’re out to get him when all we want to do is help him. In fact, he was so rude to me the other day that I had to give him detention on Wednesday. Instead of letting him go to the assembly, I kept him here with me and made him fill out worksheets. He was here from 1:45-2:30. I watched him like a hawk to make sure that he finished all his work. Witness Statement: Ms. Connie Firm, Librarian I was here when Catherine dropped off her pizzas, but I stepped out for a moment when she went to the auditorium to pick up the students. You see, I had taken Student A’s backpack away from him earlier in the day because I caught him trying to sneak into the Parent Center to steal the candy bars we keep there. I told him I wanted to look through it to make sure there wasn’t any candy in there, and that I would bring it back to him later on. Of course, I should have known that he couldn’t have actually taken anything: the only non-staff person with a key to the Parent Center is Student B’s mother, who does a lot of volunteer work there. Student A would have had no way to get in there. Anyway, I left the library to go give Student A back his backpack. I couldn’t find him in the auditorium (though I did wave at that sweet kid Student B, who was in the hall and who saw me leaving for the 8th grade wing) but I eventually found Student A in Allie Buye’s room doing worksheets. The pizzas were stolen while I was in the 8th grade wing looking for Student A.

At this point, it should be clear who did it. Ask students: Hvow do we know who the culprit is? Would we have believed Student A if he couldn’t have proved it with all of this evidence? Why don’t we believe Student B, even though he has a spotless record? That’s right! We need proof! In our persuasive essays, we need to prove our points in the same way that Student A proved his here: with clear, specific evidence—information that adds to our reasons, rather than just repeating those reasons in different words.

Persuasive Writing II

Readings: Evidence for the mock trial. If time allows, also read the chart and excerpt from Jonathan Swiftâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s â&#x20AC;&#x153;A Modest Proposalâ&#x20AC;? to demonstrate how he uses evidence to support his rather surprising case.

Have students come up with two to three vivid examples or pieces of evidence for each reason they listed for their argument from the last lesson. Encourage them to expand these examples into witty or interesting stories. Alternate prompt: If students have been lacking in motivation or having a lot of difficulty brainstorming arguments, then a good way to light a fire under them is to run a competition. Once, I made four different classes compete for a pizza party: I gave them half an hour and a bucket of possible arguments, and I told them that whichever class of students produced the highest number of complete, accurate argument charts would win. That certainly got them brainstorming quickly, and it gave me an opportunity to check their arguments and give them instant feedback on their logic.

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Persuasive Writing II

selection from

A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift

This piece is sophisticated and students will require a great deal of assistance to walk through it, but the payoff is worthwhile. The first paragraph here lists Swift’s third reason for having Irish people eat their babies: namely, it will increase poor people’s income by decreasing the money spent on kids and increasing the money gained from selling CAUTION their meat. Thirdly, Whereas the maintenance of an hundred thousand children, from two years old and upward, cannot be computed at less than ten shillings a-piece per annum, the nation’s stock will be thereby increased fifty thousand pounds per annum, beside the profit of a new dish introduced to the tables of all gentlemen of fortune in the kingdom who have any refinement in taste. And the money will circulate among ourselves, the goods being entirely of our own growth and manufacture. …It is true, a child just dropped from its dam may be supported by her milk for a solar year, with little other nourishment; at most not above the value of 2s., which the mother may certainly get, or the value in scraps, by her lawful occupation of begging; and it is exactly at one year old that I propose to provide for them in such a manner as instead of being a charge upon their parents or the parish, or wanting food and raiment for the rest of their lives, they shall on the contrary contribute to the feeding, and partly to the clothing, of many thousands. …The number of souls in this kingdom being usually reckoned one million and a half, of these I calculate there may be about two hundred thousand couple whose wives are breeders; from which number I subtract thirty thousand couples who are able to maintain their own children, although I apprehend there cannot be so many, under the present distresses of the kingdom; but this being granted, there will remain an hundred and seventy thousand breeders. I again subtract fifty thousand for those women who miscarry, or whose children die by accident or disease within the year. There only remains one hundred and twenty thousand children of poor parents annually born. The question therefore is, how this number shall be reared and provided for, which, as I have already said, under the present situation of affairs, is utterly impossible by all the methods hitherto proposed. For we can neither employ them in handicraft or agriculture; we neither build houses (I mean in the country) nor cultivate land: they can very seldom pick up a livelihood by stealing, till they arrive at six years old, except where they are of towardly parts, although I confess they learn the rudiments much earlier, during which time, they can however be properly looked upon only as probationers, as I have been informed by a principal gentleman in the county of Cavan, who protested to me that he never knew above one or two instances under the age of six, even in a part of the kingdom so renowned for the quickest proficiency in that art. I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout. I do therefore humbly offer it to public consideration that of the hundred and twenty thousand children already computed, twenty thousand may be reserved for breed, whereof only one-fourth part to be males; which is more than we allow to sheep, black cattle or swine; and my reason is, that these children are seldom the fruits of marriage, a circumstance not much regarded by our savages, therefore one male will be sufficient to serve four females. That the remaining hundred thousand may, at a year old, be offered in the sale to the persons of quality and fortune through the kingdom; always advising the mother to let them suck plentifully in the last month, so as to render them plump

Persuasive Writing II Irish People Should Kill Their Babies and Sell Them For Meat Reasons

Gets rid of extra Catholics, which is good for the country

More people will get married and be happier

Helps poor people become less poor

The nation will get richer

CAUTION

Examples/Proof Too many Catholics means riots against our Protestant king

Catholic children turn into beggars and thieves, hurting the economy

Raising a kid for a year costs 2 shillings, but you could sell the body for 10: a profit of 8!

You can also sell the skin to make nice boots and gloves

Poor people won’t have to pay to raise their kids

120,000 born every year to parents who can’t afford to feed them

Men will marry the women they sleep with so they can claim the profits from the babies

Breast milk is free; if you kill and sell babies before they start to need solid food, you save money!

Men won’t abuse pregnant wives anymore for fear of hurting valuable infants

Baby meat will be a new crop: we won’t need to import food!

We can export baby meat and make money off of it!

and fat for a good table. A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends; and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter. I have reckoned upon a medium that a child just born will weigh 12 pounds, and in a solar year, if tolerably nursed, increaseth to 28 pounds. I grant this food will be somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title to the children. I have already computed the charge of nursing a beggar’s child (in which list I reckon all cottagers, laborers, and four-fifths of the farmers) to be about two shillings per annum, rags included; and I believe no gentleman would repine to give ten shillings for the carcass of a good fat child, which, as I have said, will make four dishes of excellent nutritive meat, when he hath only some particular friend or his own family to dine with him. Thus the squire will learn to be a good landlord, and grow popular among his tenants; the mother will have eight shillings net profit, and be fit for work till she produces another child. Those who are more thrifty (as I must confess the times require) may flay the carcass; the skin of which artificially dressed will make admirable gloves for ladies, and summer boots for fine gentlemen. | 81

Persuasive Writing III

Persuasive Writing III: Finesse To help students turn their argument charts into full essays; to discuss the art of introductions and conclusions; to introduce smooth transitions into student writing; to show students how to structure paragraphs clearly.

Tape it Together! This activity is designed to give a physical representation of the importance of transitions, introductions, and conclusions in an essay. The reading for the day—an example argument from your own classroom—is mixed in with this activity.

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Step One: Blow up all the examples and reasons from a funny persuasive essay—ideally one that one of your students already invented from last week, or one of your own invention. Cut them apart from each other and place them on a table, completely mixed up.

Step Four: Once they have organized the argument on the table, ask students if they think it

CAUTION

Step Two: Ask students to come up and look at the table. Does this argument make sense right away, in this mixed-up form? Probably not. Explain that you can’t just hand someone a jumble of ideas and examples; they won’t be able to understand it.

Step Three: Announce that it is the students’ job to organize the mess on the table into a

clear argument. If they get really stuck, show them an argument chart and ask them to try to find the argument first and then the reasons. Finally, have students group reasons with the examples that support them. If it is a big group, consider splitting students into teams of four and having the smaller groups compete for who can organize the argument the fastest.

looks like an essay yet: could they read it out loud as it is? The answer is still no—you might not know what order to say things in. Ask students to rearrange the argument from the argument chart format to a linear format: one long, straight line that shows the order in which you would write everything down in an essay (see the illustration on the next page).

Step Five: Ask students again if they think it is an essay yet. Could they pick it up and hand

it to you like it is? The answer is still no! All the pieces would scatter if they tried to pick it up; there is nothing holding it together. Hand each group a roll of masking tape and a pen. Tell them that it is their job to connect all of these pieces together in a long vertical chain. They will do this by writing a transition on a piece of tape—that is, a sentence that shows what is in common between the two pieces of paper—and use that to stick the two ideas together.

Persuasive Writing III

Do two examples like this one, which is drawn from the student essay shown in the photo: “Ok, so what do ‘people cheat on each other and get violent’ and ‘you should wear a helmet in the hood’ have to do with each other? Well, ‘people cheat on each other and get violent’ is the first reason that proves that ‘you should wear a helmet in the hood.’ So let’s write that down: “The first reason that you should wear a helmet in the hood is that people cheat on each other and throw frying pans at each other’s heads.’ That is what connects these two ideas to each other, so we’ll write that on this piece of tape and use that phrase to connect them. Now, we have to connect the examples to this reason…” Note: Encourage students to rearrange the order of the reasons based on what makes for the easiest/ clearest transitions.

Step Six: Hold up the strung-together argument and say something like “Cool, now the whole

Step Seven: At this point, have pre-prepared large pieces of tape (or pieces of paper with tape on the borders) with an introduction and conclusion that go with the example. Have students read them out loud and discuss what makes them anchor the essay: interesting stories and clear summaries. Allow students to tape this argument, using the intro and conclusion, to your back (or to another student’s back). Explain to them: “See, sticks pretty well now, doesn’t it?”

argument sticks together. But there’s one more problem: How are you going to hang it up? If you hand me this argument like it is, I could just drop it. What you really want to do is be able to make the argument so memorable that it sticks to me on its own. Here’s how you do that: you have to write something on some tape at the top and something on some tape at the bottom that anchor it by summarizing your findings and explaining again why they are important. It’s even better if you can tell a story that will make me remember it and really stick it in my memory. These pieces of tape are called your introduction and your conclusion.”

Step Eight: If you have time, allow students to collectively brainstorm other possible introductions and conclusions for the example essay. Introductions and conclusions sound simple but are deceptively difficult. The best way to help students understand them is to offer lots and lots of examples.

Have students cut apart and then tape together their own arguments from the past two weeks by adding transitions, introductions, and conclusions. When they are finished, have them copy the complete argument—transitions and all—onto a clean sheet of paper to turn in as their final piece for this unit.

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Persuasive Writing III

CAUTION CAUTION

It Is Good to Wear a Helmet in the Hood by Alexis Wescott, Grade 8

I really suggest that you will wear a helmet in the hood. A lot of stuff might throw down, around there. It is very important that you will be prepared. So, I know you’re probably thinking how is a helmet going to help out. Well, hold onto your seat. While I’ll give you some unexpected, but true stories. The first reason why you should wear a helmet is because someone’s husband might be a cheater. A frying pan might accidentally go out the window, with his head attached to it. So, watch out it might come your way. Also, the wife might bring out her shotgun and miss the shot for her husband. Wow!!! Now, I suggest you run, be remember if the cops come, you didn’t seen or heard anything. My second reason for wearing a helmet in the hood is, “Bad Kids Alert!” For an example, you’re walking down the street, and water balloons are thrown at you. What do you do? Dodge, and use your helmet. If they run after you, and trip you up don’t worry, because your helmet will break the fall for you. My last reason is that there are a lot of crooked, drunk, crazy cops. Example one, if a cop pull your over for nothing, then he’s drunk. So what you do is use your helmet to cover your nose. Example two, if he push you against a wall, because your shoes are fly, don’t worry, your helmet will cover your head. Example three, the cop might want to braid your hair with donut glaze on his fingers. Yucky! So if you ever go to the hood, you will know what to do. Wear your helmet!! The helmet does all the work for you.

Persuasive Writing III

Have you ever been in the hood, late at night, when you realized that a crazy bum was following you? Or that a crooked cop was on the corner, waiting to mess with you? Have you ever wondered what you can do to protect you? Well here’s a solution:

CAUTION

It is good to wear a helmet in the hood The first reason that it is good to wear a helmet in the hood is that... someone’s husband might be a cheater.

This is dangerous because... A frying pan might go out the window with a cheating husband’s head attached to it! Wearing a helmet would protect your head! Also, a wife might bring out a shotgun to shoot her cheating husband but miss!

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Expository Writing

Expository Writing To introduce students to expository writing; to emphasize the importance of details and specificity; to expose the missing links in students’ writing and have students create a plan for preventing such gaps in the future. Optional Free Write: Write about a time when someone misunderstood you.

The Blind Build The goal of this activity is to give students a hands-on demonstration of the importance of explicit details in expository writing. You will need lots of pipe cleaners and popsicle sticks, and a screen to divide the room in half (I suggest hanging sheets from the ceiling; wire hangers, a long string, and some clothes pins usually do the trick).

CAUTION

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Step One: Have every student pick a partner—ideally someone they trust. Once they have chosen a partner, split the teams apart from each other and place them on opposite sides of a screen. (A quick way to do this is to say, “Ok: now that you have your teams, one of you is Person A and one of you is Person B. Decide now who is A and who is B. Great—now all the As come on this side of the screen and all the Bs go on the other side of the screen.”) Step Two: Hand each student a simple but abstract object made of pipe cleaners and

popsicle sticks. I typically build these myself because I think it’s fun. Be sure to take no more than a minute or two for each one to make sure that they aren’t too difficult to replicate. If you don’t have the time to do this yourself, can also hand students supplies and have them build one and then trade with a neighbor.

Step Three: Tell students to write down directions that explain how to build the pipe

cleaner object on their desk. Tell them that they are not allowed to draw any pictures; they can use only words. When they are finished, their partner will have to build that object using only their written directions. If some students finish earlier than others, encourage them to trade with other students on their side of the screen to look for confusing steps in each other’s directions.

Step Four: When students are finished writing their directions, gather up the directions

from each side and switch them with their partners’ directions. Hand out pipe cleaners and popsicle sticks and have students follow their partners’ building directions.

Step Five: When students are finished building, take down the blind and have the partners compare models. Ask students: What differences are there between the original model and the one that your partner built from your directions? Where did your directions fail to be clear?

Expository Writing

Readings: I usually skip the reading section of this lesson in order to give the students more time on the activity.

Have students fill out a self-assessment for the activity. I ask them to write a paragraph for each of the following questions: 1. What differences were there between your model and the model that your partner built using your directions? Why were they different? How could you have written your directions more clearly? 2. What differences were there between your partnerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s model and the one that you built using his or her directions? Why were they different? How could your partner have written his or her directions more clearly? 3. What have you learned from this project?

While this isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t an especially thrilling writing prompt, it is important for students to think about these questions; the goal of the activity isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t for students to write perfect directions but, rather, for them to see the consequences of unclear writing and to think about how to prevent those problems in the future.

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Exploring Form

Contributors: The Coastal Team (Sophia Basaldua, Kimberly Davies, Tandy Versyp, Mojo Roberts, TiEsha Cobin, Dabarie Satterfield), Gino Orlandi, & Sarah Bates Note: I have always felt like this should be the first lesson in the book—thematically speaking, it is a perfect introduction to writing. However, it is extremely challenging conceptually, and I have found that it only works later on in the course. Students need to be comfortable with writing before this lesson clicks into place. To show students that writing comes in many shapes and sizes; to help students learn to choose forms that fit their message; to have students take ownership of their work. Optional Free Write Topic: Finish the sentence “I am…” in as many different ways as you can.

Personifying Forms

1 CAUTION

Step One: Begin this lesson with a big, blank white board. Tell students that there are more kinds of writing that you can possibly count, but today you’re going to list as many as you can. Write a few obvious examples on the board: “We can write poems, right? And short stories?” After getting the basics down, start tossing out unexpected forms to get students thinking outside the box: - Facebook wall post - Rap lyrics - Greeting card - Twitter tweets - Scientific essay - Craigslist wanted ad - Recipe - TV script Once you get the kids rolling, hand out several markers and have students write their own ideas on the board. Tell them to hand their marker to another student once they’re done. Keep going until every student has added at least one form of writing to the list.

Exploring Form

Step Two: When your board is covered in all sorts of forms, tell students that every one of those forms is like

a person. It has a style and an attitude. It has a personality. Pick one form as an example and personify it as a group: “Ok guys, if a dictionary definition were a person, who would it be? Me, you say? Fair enough: I use big words, I dress a little stuffy, and I can be kind of boring sometimes, but I also come in handy more often than you’d think. Good job. Now: who in here would be a text message?” Spend some time on this; it’s fun for kids, and it’s a good way to build classroom awareness. They will enjoy trying to figure out who is the encyclopedia entry (the brainy-seeming kid) and who is the love letter (the person always talking about their crushes). Have them explain why they think so-and-so seems like an encyclopedia entry. The more you get them to identify each other in these terms, the better they’re going to grasp the concept when it comes time to write. Extensions: For visual learners, have students pick a form and draw a picture of it as a person. Tell students to think carefully about what kind of clothes the form would wear, and how it would stand. What would it say? For active, kinesthetic learners: have students act out different forms: “Chantelle, come up here and be a recipe for me. Is a recipe old or young? Friendly or mean? How would a recipe walk?” Readings: “Gino Orlandi” by Gino Orlandi, Deep teacher; “Wanted: Sarah Bates” by Sarah Bates, Deep teacher

Tell students to pick a form from the board that has a personality like their own. Give a few examples: “If you’re bookish, maybe choose an encyclopedia entry. If you’re impatient, maybe a telegram.” Ask them to write a short bio of themselves in that form, following the examples in the reading.

Related Quote: “God has given you one face, and you make yourself another.” - William Shakespeare

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Exploring Form

Gino Orlandi by Gino Orlandi

CAUTION

This is an example bio by Gino Orlandi, one of Deep’s teachers. Ask students to guess what kind of guy would choose a dictionary definition for his bio. What does it tell us about him? How would we feel differently about him if he had chosen a rap or a recipe? Gi∙no Or∙lan∙di (jee’noh or·lan’dee) n. 1 [Formal] a teacher, particularly that of creative writing, esp. with the Deep program at Southwest Middle School and the Boys & Girls Club (see BRILLIANT MINDS) 2 a lover of words and dictionaries 3 [Informal] one who finds pleasure in winding sentences, unfolding roads, skies wide enough to rent space in, new places, old places, places that make you forget that you’re anyplace at all, fiction, poetry, empty pages, and long, multi-claused lexicon definitions 4 an Italian male, perceived gen. as obsessively neat, categorical, organized, etc. 5 [Slang] the shiz. —vi. 1 to dance while making coffee in the morning, often in sporadic, inexplicable ways 2 to forget what you were about to say, even though it was just on your 3 [Informal] to love literature, God, and life —gi’·no or·lan’·di·ness, gi’·no or·lan’·di·o’·ci·ty adj.

Exploring Form

CAUTION

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Revision

Revision Contributors: The Coastal Team To show that revision is more complicated (and more fun) than mere proofreading; to acknowledge that writing, though enjoyable, is a lot of hard work; to encourage students to pursue that hard work even when it is intimidating. Optional Free Write: Write about a time when you said something you wish you hadn’t.

Scavenger Hunt

CAUTION

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Step One: Have students take out their writing portfolios or folders with all of their old writing assignments.

Step Two: Tell students that they are going to do a scavenger hunt through their own

work. The team with the most points at the end of twenty minutes wins a prize (I usually offer candy, but use whatever you know your students will like).

Step Three: Give students the following list of scavenger hunt items and tell them to

get to work. They should look through their own work first, but once they are finished, they should trade with their team members and look through each other’s work as well: Dead words: 2 points each Clichés: 4 points each Confusing transitions: 3 points each Places where the author could add figurative language: 1 point each Places where the author could describe something with more detail: 1 point each Missing introductions or conclusions: 3 points each Note: this activity is useful to repeat throughout the school year, adjusting the scavenger hunt items to include more concepts as the students learn more skills.

Revision

Readings: selection from Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott; Truman Capote quote

Have students revise their writing by revising every single scavenger hunt item in their work, adding details and using better, clearer, and more specific writing wherever possible. If you want, you can make this a competition, too—whatever team successfully revises the most items wins another prize.

Related Quote: “Only a mediocre writer is always at his best.”—William Somerset Maugham

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Revision CAUTION

selection from By Anne Lamott

Bird by Bird

LINK 13 Before reading this quote to students, play a video of a squirmy octopus so that students know what Lamott is comparing writing to—you can find a great video at the provided link. After reading the passage, discuss with students how writing and revising can feel like putting a slippery octopus to bed. Why is it so hard? Why do we do it anyway? What makes this impossible work worth the effort? There’s an image I’ve heard people in recovery use—that getting all of one’s addictions under control is a little like putting an octopus to bed. I think this perfectly describes the process of solving various problems in your final draft. You get a bunch of the octopus’s arms neatly tucked under the covers—that is, you’ve come up with a plot, resolved the conflict between the two main characters, gotten the tone down pat—but two arms are still flailing around. Maybe the dialogue in the first half and the second half don’t match, or there is that one character who still seems onedimensional. But you finally get those arms under the sheets, too, and are about to turn off the lights when another long sucking arm breaks free.

Revision

Truman Capote on Learning to WriteCAUTION Before reading this quote, consider playing a short clip of a truly virtuoso dancer or violinist. Ask students: Do you think that artist was born knowing how to do that? How much do you think they had to practice? Can you ever get really good at something without practicing it? I wrote adventure stories, murder mysteries, comedy skits, tales that had been told me by former slaves and Civil War Veterans. It was a lot of funâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;at first. It stopped being fun when I discovered the difference between good writing and bad, and then made an even more alarming discovery: the difference between very good writing and true art; it is subtle, but savage. And after that, the whip came down! As certain young people practice the piano or the violin four and five hours a day, so I played with my papers and pens.

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What is Poetry? What is Poetry? To define poetry; to get students excited about writing poetry; to break the habit of rhyme; to practice specificity. Optional Free Write Topic: Write about a photograph you have taken.

Frame-Up

Step One: Show students a photo of Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain” and explain that Duchamp is a wacky French artist who took this urinal and put it in a museum:

CAUTION

Step Two: Encourage a lively debate on whether or not Duchamp’s urinal is art. Play

devil’s advocate to the prevailing opinion; if they say, “No, it’s not art!” then counter with questions like “How do you know? Do you have to make it for it to be art? What if he took a picture of the urinal instead? Could that photograph be called art? Putting a urinal in a museum makes you think, doesn’t it? Isn’t that the point of art? And why can’t we call this a sculpture? It’s made out of porcelain, isn’t it? Someone designed it, didn’t they? Doesn’t that make it a sculpture?”

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What is Poetry?

Step Three: When you are finished, and everyone is thoroughly perplexed about the nature of art, ask students what a poem is. Write all the answers up on the board. Encourage contradictions and surprises. Make sure to ask them if poetry has to rhyme. If they say it does, then give examples proving it doesn’t.

Offer strange ideas: if a urinal can be art, then can a newspaper article be a poem? How? Could an instruction manual be one? Why? What about the note that you wrote to your friend last week? What about journal entries? How could we turn these things into poems? Do we know what a poem is any more than we know what art is?

Step Four: Once everyone is as perplexed about poetry as they are about urinal art, pull out an empty picture frame and say something like this:

“Though they both take a lot of different forms, art and poetry do pretty much the same thing: they take something specific—a urinal, a pencil eraser, a bird, a sunset, a tree, a staircase, a feeling, a moment—and they put a frame around it so that you know to look at it and think about it. Anything in the world can be important, anything can mean something—you just have to put a frame around it so that people will look at it and try to find that meaning, like Duchamp did with the urinal.”

Step Five: Hand each student a small picture frame (or a piece of construction

paper with a square cut out of the middle). Announce that you are going to turn the classroom into a museum. Tell every student to find something in that room that is small but somehow important, and to frame it. When they are done, allow students to look around the room at what has been framed. Tell them to think about why someone might have chosen this object to frame. What is important about it? What could it mean?

What is Poetry?

Readings: “The Glass” by Sharon Olds, “The Marble” by Nisa Thorpe, “Lint” by Jonell Joshua

Tell students to write a poem about something that they or one of their classmates framed that day. They can write about it in whatever way they want; the only rule is that they are not allowed to rhyme. While some students have a facility with rhyme, and many are drawn to it from the examples of rap and other poems, it mostly limits creativity at this age; rather than choosing a word because it is relevant and beautiful, students might choose it simply because it rhymes with “red,” regardless of its meaning.

Related Quote: “Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.” –Gilbert K. Chesterton

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What is Poetry? CAUTION

The Glass By Sharon Olds LINK 14 While the poem is too long to print here, you can find a copy online at the link we’ve provided. “The Glass” does exactly what you are about to ask your students to do: it takes a seemingly meaningless object—a water glass—and makes that object intensely meaningful. By the end of the poem, the whole world revolves around one plain piece of dishware. Before reading the poem, show students an empty glass. Ask students: if you found this glass in a museum, what would you think it means? What kinds of poems could you write about it? Ask students to pay attention to what they think Olds is trying to make the glass mean. After reading, discuss with students why Olds would choose to frame that glass. What does the glass mean? How does she give it that meaning? Why pay so much attention to that glass, rather than trying to frame her whole father, or the whole disease? What will you remember tomorrow about this poem?

What is Poetry?

The Marble By Nisa Thorpe, grade 5 When I look in my momma’s eyes I see the color of this marble. The green and blue just flowing like water through her eyes.

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Sometimes I wish my eyes was like that.

Lint by Jonell Joshua, grade 7 The pockets of my life are filled with lint but not just any lint. Each speckle holds a vast pool of life. You could magnify one piece of lint and you would see nothing but memories and flashbacks holding onto the past. I look at another, but I see nothing. Does this mean my life is empty or merely times when my mind is blocked. One little piece of fuzz could mean so many things that if you don’t look at it deeply or just throw it away, you may lose a part of you that you’ll never get back. There are less life-affecting pieces but they still mean so much. Like a piece that holds all the times you said “I hate you.” It may be something you wish you’d never said, but it still teaches you a lesson.

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Line Breaks

Line Breaks To introduce the concept of line breaks; to use line breaks to practice prioritizing information and creating emphasis. Optional Free Write Prompt: Write a free write in which you start sentences but never finish them.

Newspaper Poems

Step One: Start by demonstrating the importance of line breaks with a group example. Take an interesting sentence like “The lonely girl cried fat, salty tears” or “the flock of pigeons scratched hopefully at the dirt.” Then, take a large sheet of paper and cover up everything but the first word. Ask students what they would think of this word as the first line of a poem. Go on to reveal the sentence one word at a time, continually asking students what they would think of this as the first line of a poem. For example:

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The lonely: “This sounds like a really serious poem, right? It sounds like it’s about all the lonely people in the world.” The lonely girl: “What about this? Now it sounds more like a story, with the lonely girl as our main character.” The lonely girl cried: “Now it’s totally different: it’s got action. We start wondering what she’s crying about, and what she’s going to do. We care more about the crying than we do about the loneliness.” The lonely girl cried fat: “Now it’s kind of funny, isn’t it? What does it mean to cry fat? How would you feel if this were the first line of a poem?”

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Step Two: Explain that line breaks do exactly what you just did: when you end a line, you briefly cover up the rest of the sentence. The last word of a line is instantly the most important word to the reader, and by making different words important, you can drastically change the meaning of a sentence. You can make any sentence interesting by choosing line breaks that are funny, surprising, or meaningful in some way.

Step Three: Have each student rip a page out of a newspaper or a magazine and select one

paragraph that grabs their attention. Have them turn that paragraph into a poem by adding line breaks in strategic spots. Then, have them repeat this exercise two or three times with the same paragraph but using different line breaks, thus creating a poem with a different meaning each time. Have them choose their favorite version at the end and share it with their classmates, explaining why they like it best.

Line Breaks

Readings: “To a Poor Old Woman” by William Carlos Williams, “Chansons Innocentes: I” by E.E. Cummings

Have every student invent a sentence of their own. Tell them that it can be about anything—funny, sad, simple, crazy, whatever. Once they have written their sentence down, tell them to write a poem about any topic of your choice (though you may want to have a few topics for students to choose from, should they get stuck). The only rule is that you must repeat your sentence four times, breaking the line differently each time—just like William Carlos Williams in the example poem.

Related Quote: “If my poetry aims to achieve anything, it’s to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel.” – Jim Morrison

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Line Breaks

To a Poor Old Woman

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By William Carlos Williams reprinted with permission, courtesy of New Directions Publishing Corporation After reading this poem, discuss with students the importance of the line breaks: Why does Williams repeat â&#x20AC;&#x153;they taste good to herâ&#x20AC;? in so many different ways? How does that make us feel about the old woman? About the plums? What are all the different meanings that he makes with just that one sentence? Why is the final line so satisfying? munching a plum on the street a paper bag of them in her hand They taste good to her They taste good to her. They taste good to her You can see it by the way she gives herself to the one half sucked out in her hand Comforted a solace of ripe plums seeming to fill the air They taste good to her

Line Breaks

Chansons Innocentes: I by E. E. Cummings When reading this poem, ask students what they think of the broken, scattered format. Do they like it? Dislike CAUTION it? Why? What do the line breaks make us think of? What does it make us feel when he smashes words together, like eddieandbill? Why would he choose to write a poem about childhood in this format? How do the line breaks make us feel about this mysterious balloon man? in Justspring when the world is mudluscious the little lame balloonman whistles far and wee and eddieandbill come running from marbles and piracies and itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s spring when the world is puddle-wonderful the queer old balloonman whistles far and wee and bettyandisbel come dancing from hop-scotch and jump-rope and itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s spring and the goat-footed balloonMan whistles far and wee

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Sound

Sound Contributors: Melissa Sanso, Abigail Miles, Sarah Bates, and Mojo Roberts To introduce students to free-form, associative poetry; to be goofy and inventive; to build confidence in reluctant students; to show how the sounds of words play a crucial role in their meaning and effect.

LINK 15 Optional Free Write Topic: Play an audio clip (but not video!) from the show Stomp. While students listen, ask them to write about what they think is happening. Let students share their ideas, and then reveal that the musicians were actually playing trash cans and matchbooks and other household items—not one person had a traditional instrument. Explain that, just as these musicians made music without real instruments, we can make poems without real words. What’s important is the way it sounds. Scrabble Scramble

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Step One: Hand every student a mix of scrabble tiles (or printed-out letters). Tell them

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to rearrange their letters into something that sounds like a word, but isn’t actually one. Give them an example: f n o s r might be snorf, or forns.

Step Two: Ask students to write down a definition of their fake word. To demonstrate,

point out that “snorf ” probably isn’t a delicate morning flower or an intricate lace doily—why is this? What about the sound of the word makes us think of (as a fellow teacher put it) “a solid fart through several layers of clothing”? Can we invent a more delicate-sounding fake word? How about liliate, or vanasy? What makes them sound sweeter than snorf?

Step Three: Allow students to share their definitions. This is always, without fail, completely hilarious.

Sound

Readings: “The Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll; “The Bifire” by America Drew

Write a poem using at least five made-up words.

Related Quote: “I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells.”- Theodor Geisel

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Sound

The Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll For this poem, have students circle invented words as they go along. Ask students: what do we think these words mean? Why would Carroll invent these words, rather than using CAUTION words that already existed? What does that add to this poem? How would “The Jabberwocky” be different if it used conventional language instead? `Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe. “Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun The frumious Bandersnatch!” He took his vorpal sword in hand: Long time the manxome foe he sought -So rested he by the Tumtum tree, And stood awhile in thought. And, as in uffish thought he stood, The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, Came whiffling through the tulgey wood, And burbled as it came! One, two! One, two! And through and through The vorpal blade went snicker-snack! He left it dead, and with its head He went galumphing back. “And, has thou slain the Jabberwock? Come to my arms, my beamish boy! O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!’ He chortled in his joy. `Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe.

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A New Word by America Drew, age 9

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A bifire starts with too much talking. A bifire burned down a building with people in it that lost their lives. A fire starts when someone leaves something hot on the stove, but people in the bifire start it by talking. They say things about other people: youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re ugly, youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re stupid.

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Juxtaposition

Juxtaposition To introduce juxtaposition; to have students learn to recognize contradictions and contrast; to use juxtaposition to create new meanings out of old images. Optional Free Write Topic: Write about a time when you saw someone wear something strange or inappropriate.

Collage

Step One: Hold up a gray piece of paper next to a white piece of paper. Ask students:

Does the gray paper look bright or dark right now? Once you establish it looks dark or dingy next to the white paper, hold it up to a black piece of paper instead. Do we still think it looks dark and dingy? Probably not so much as we did before—putting it on top of black paper makes it look brighter. Discuss why this is true and define the term “juxtaposition”: the act of placing two things close to each other so that you can see the contrasts between them. Explain that, by choosing different backdrops, we can make our subjects look different.

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LINK 16 Step Two: If you have time, show example videos from Stephen Colbert’s

“Make McCain Interesting” contest, in which contestants placed various amusing backgrounds behind former presidential candidate John McCain in order to set off his rather muted (let’s be honest: post-mortem) speaking style. You can find several of the funnier clips at the link we’ve provided.

Step Three: Have a stack of magazines and photos handy and ask students to cut them

up and make a collage, using no more than three pictures, that juxtaposes unexpected images. When they are finished, have students title their collages and show off what they have done. A good way to share is to ask students to leave their work on their desk and circulate through the room to look at everyone else’s pieces.

Step Four: Lead a discussion on what the juxtapositions in one or two student collages

could mean. Even if students seem like they put little thought into the activity, work hard to find meaning in the contrasts between their pictures. This will help disengaged students see the importance of the activity and to be more invested in the writing portion of the day.

Juxtaposition

Readings: Juxtaposition can be funny, but it can also be serious: check out “At a Station of the Metro” by Ezra Pound and “Strange Fruit” by Abel Meeropol, as sung by Billie Holiday.

Found Poems

Step One: Tell students to search through newspapers and cut out a few stories on radically different topics. Then, ask them to create a poem by mashing together sentences from all of the different articles.

Step Two: Ask them to focus on putting unexpected words together, or jamming sentences from fluff stories next to sentences about a local murder. Give them an example of your own making, like this: “Sgt. Daniels returned from Iraq last Thursday and Is playing the title role in You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown, opening this weekend at The site of the explosion”

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In a Station of the Metro by Ezra Pound This poem frames two entirely different images in terms of each other, changing how we feel about both of them. Ask students: when we think of these faces like petals, what does that make us think? What about when we think of petals like faces? What does this juxtaposition tell us about Poundâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s opinions about the metro? How is it that such a short poem can make us think so much?

The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough.

Juxtaposition

Strange Fruit Sung by Billie Holiday, written by Abel Meeropol

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LINK 17 You can find audio of the song, some important historical background, and several heart-

breaking photographs at the provided link. Before playing this song, show students a photograph of a lynching and offer a brief historical overview of lynching in America.

Afterwards, talk about how juxtaposition works in this song: Why are these bodies compared to something sweet and happy, like fruit? Why is this scene compared to pastoral scenes of the â&#x20AC;&#x153;gallant Southâ&#x20AC;?? What effect does it have on us, as listeners, to think of the smell of burning flesh right next to the sweet smell of magnolias? Finally, what effect does the music itself have? What does it make us feel when we listen to such a beautiful song with such an ugly meaning? Southern trees bear a strange fruit Blood on the leaves and blood at the root, Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees. Pastoral scene of the gallant South The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth Scent of magnolia, sweet and fresh Then the sudden smell of burning flesh Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop Here is a strange and bitter crop.

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Love Poems

Love Poems To strengthen students’ understanding of cliché and how to avoid it; to be silly; to stretch the imagination; to let students vent their raging adolescent hormones. Optional Free Write Prompt: Write about a crush.

Instant Love Poems The goal of this activity is to point out how cliché love poems are a dime a dozen; real love poems take a lot more work. CAUTION

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Step One: Hand each student a different cliché love poem (LovePoemsAndQuotes.com is a true treasure trove, but you can find plenty of bad poems in any greeting card aisle). Have students read the poems and cut them apart into individual sentences or couplets. Then, throw all the phrases into one bucket. Say, “Now, we’re going to make some instant love poems. No effort and no thought required.” Step Two: Have volunteers pull out five phrases at random, and then place them in an

order that makes the most sense. When they are finished, read it aloud. Ask students if that sounded like a real love poem that they might find on a card. Most probably, it did—the blander the original poems, the more likely it is they will sound perfectly normal when mixed together. Repeat two or three times, each time emphasizing how easy it is to make a Hallmark love poem this way.

Step Three: This is the crucial part: now you must help your students realize that, because it is so easy to write a poem like this, that means the poem is meaningless. Say something like this: “We always say it’s the thought that counts, right? Now, did these poems take any thought? No! These are all cute and sweet, and certainly easy to make, but let’s think for a minute: who here would want to receive a love poem from their boyfriend or girlfriend that had just been slapped together in fifteen seconds using words from other poems? Who here wants to be given a poem that takes no effort and sounds like it could be about anybody at all? Would that make you feel really special and loved? No? Would you like it better if it sounded like they put a little work into it? Do you want a poem that sounds like it could be about any girl or boy, or would you like a poem that’s really about you? Ok, so let’s practice writing poems that sound like you really wrote them, rather than like you just cut up some other people’s poems and shoved them back together.”

Love Poems

Readings: “Sonnet 130” by William Shakespeare; “Two Big Cupcakes” by Teaysia Biggins. Another good poem is “Your Feet” by Pablo Neruda, though it has some slightly racy content.

Think of someone you love (and it doesn’t have to be romantic love— family and friends work fine, too). Then, think of his or her least appealing feature. Write a poem about that feature of that person. This feature can be big hairy feet, for example, or constant onion breath, or a habit of never letting you finish your sentences. (Warning: infatuated students have, in the past, insisted that the object of their affections doesn’t have any unappealing features—force them to dig for it, saying something like, “Well, then, your crush must be pretty boring if he does everything exactly right all the time.” If that doesn’t work, then ask them to write about bad things that other people have said about that person.)

Related Quote: “The cliché is dead poetry.” —Gerald Brenan

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Love Poems

Sonnet 130 By William Shakespeare This is a good example of a love poem that fights cliché. Ask students: What kind of woman is CAUTION

Shakespeare describing? Does he talk about her the way we would expect him to talk about his girlfriend? Why do you think he would write about her this way? To extend the discussion, ask: Is anybody perfect? If you write about someone like they are perfect, then are you really writing about that person, or are you making up a boring, imaginary version of them? Is love about finding someone perfect, or is it about finding someone real, whose imperfections you can enjoy? What does the final couplet really mean? If you like, show students a boring, old-timey love poem that uses a lot of the clichés that Shakespeare reverses here, so that they can compare the two.

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips’ red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. I have seen roses damasked, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak, yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound; I grant I never saw a goddess go; My mistress when she walks treads on the ground. And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare.

Love Poems

Two Big Cupcakes By Teaysia Biggins, grade 6 This poem, written by a 6th grade Deep student, is full of vivacious, memorable specificity. Despite the fact that it is a kind of love poem, there is not a clichĂŠ in sight! Ask students to pick out lines that CAUTION tell them something unique about the author and her paramour. Ask them to identify what they will remember tomorrow and why. What makes this poem different from other love poems?

Smoo-wa! Smoo-wa! Wet like a baby tee-teeing on your face Your two lips smelling like old syrup Pushing your lips hard on my face like a police Trying to knock a door down Jumping on my face like the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s coming to an end Your lips are like two big cupcakes! And the feeling tickling my face Like a massaging chair shaking me Even though this sounds gross I love your two big cupcakes.

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Point of View

Point of View Notes on this lesson: This lesson has extremely varied results. Some students absolutely love it and write brilliantly for it, and some arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t yet ready to put themselves in other peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s shoes. After all, it is a tall order to ask someone who is still figuring out his own identity to figure out who someone else is, too. If you think you might have problems with this lesson but still want to try it, focus on getting students to mimic other people or write down monologues that they have heard from their friends or family, rather than on getting them to get inside the mind of a stranger. In this case, pay attention to imitating word choices and speech patterns, rather than understanding why other people act the way that they do. To introduce voice and point of view; to build compassion; get students in the habit of looking at ideas from several perspectives. Optional Free Write Topic: Write about someone you see every day but whom you know little about.

Writing from Photos

Step One: Gather photos of a wide variety of people. Diane Arbus photos work particularly well for this activity, as do Walker Evans pictures. Try to avoid magazine or fashion photos, as these often lead to bland writing. Photos containing action are ideal. Make sure you have enough for everyone in the class to have their own.

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Step Two: Hand a photograph of a person to each student and give students thirty

seconds to write a sentence that tells the thoughts of the person in the photo. Pass around the photos and have everyone comment on at least four or five pictures.

Step Three: When students are finished commenting on the photos, share some of the

sentences and talk about how we guess what someone is thinking: How often do you think we are right? How often are we wrong? Do you think that other people can guess what you are thinking?

Point of View

Readings: “The Grass” by Carl Sandburg; “Late for School” by Yasmaine Simmons. Other good options for this lesson are “We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks, “Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes, and “Skinhead” by Patricia Smith (though this last poem—written by a black woman, but taking the point of view of a skinhead—contains rough language and challenging political content).

Have students write a poem or monologue from another point of view. If students need help brainstorming, give students one or two minutes to jot down thoughts on each of the following perspectives, saying “Go!” to get them started and “Stop!” when you want to announce a new perspective to write from.

a. Your parent/guardian trying to get you and your siblings ready for school b. A cat sitting outside alone, at night c. A mentor or guardian of yours giving you a piece of advice d. A teacher of yours first thing in the morning e. Someone you see every day but rarely speak to (bus driver, lunch lady, etc.) Have students pick their favorite prompt and turn it into a poem or monologue using the remaining class time. If students seemed to enjoy the photo activity at the beginning of class, you can also ask them to choose their favorite photo and write a longer monologue from that point of view.

Related Quote: “If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.” –Henry Ford

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Point of View Grass by Carl Sandburg

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Point out to students that they don’t have to write from a human being’s point of view; they can write in the voice of a thing. Here, Carl Sandburg turns grass into a far more complex character than we might otherwise imagine it to be.

LINK 18 Before beginning, be sure to explain that the places listed in this poem are all important battlefields where many, many people died. If you have time, show before-and-after photographs of a battlefield; we’ve provided some at this link.

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo. Shovel them under and let me work— I am the grass; I cover all. And pile them high at Gettysburg And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun. Shovel them under and let me work. Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor: What place is this? Where are we now? I am the grass. Let me work.

Point of View

Late for School by Yasmaine Semaj Simmons, grade 6

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This sharp, vivacious poem was written according to the prompt, “Write from the point of view of a mother trying to get her children to school.” Prompts that allow students to mimic voices they hear all the time can be a lot fun, especially for students who are wary of writing. Late for School Girl, my chern is late for school. Let me get off this phone. Get up. Lord, if y’all don’t hurry up. Y’all already late. Girl do yo hair, you look a hot mess. Boy go brush yo teeth–they are a little tart. Y’all better hurry up. Come on get in the car before I slap the breaks off you. Lord y’all look a hot mess but you better hurry up.

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Why We Tell Stories Why We Tell Stories: Story Circles Contributor: Emma Lunbeck

To connect everyday life to literature; to get students excited about telling their own stories; to build community in the classroom. Note: This lesson depends heavily on group work. Because of that, it may be a bit unwieldy in a large classroom or in a classroom with serious disciplinary problems. Despite these challenges, it is an extremely useful lesson and I recommend attempting it. In the past, this lesson has been a huge hit and done an excellent job of getting students excited about the fiction unit—in particular, this lesson is great for engaging otherwise apathetic or hard-to-reach students. If you are worried about breaking the classroom into small groups, consider recruiting a few friends or fellow teachers to help you out for a day by serving as group leaders. Free Write: I suggest skipping the free write today in order to focus on oral storytelling.

What Makes a Good Story?

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Step One: Ask students, “What makes a good story?” Write their suggestions on the board. Keep this warm-up simple; writing time today is an activity in itself, and students will want plenty of time to do it. As you listen to students’ answers, be sure to add some of your own insights. In particular, make sure you mention that interesting conflict and compelling characters are two important elements of a good story. Step Two: After establishing what a good story is, ask students: “Today, we’re going to prac-

tice telling good stories. To start us off, who in here knows a good story that they can tell about something that has happened to them?” Call on two or three students listen to their stories—this is a great opportunity to call on and praise students who do not think of themselves as good writers. If students get stuck or seem unresponsive (sometimes a question this vague makes students nervous or confused), then consider offering prompts or telling your own story first. Good prompts might be: -Tell a story about an embarrassing moment you had as a little kid. -Tell a story about a time when you got lost. -Tell a story about your pets. I usually start things off by telling a story either about a time when I hit my friend with my tennis racket during a game of doubles, or a time when I peed my pants in kindergarten and spent the whole day trying to hide it (this story involves a pair of hot pink nylon parachute pants—it’s all thoroughly embarrassing but very funny to the students).

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Why We Tell Stories

Reading: “Why We Tell Stories” by Lisel Mueller

Story Circles Today, rather than having students write down a story, we are going to have them make up a story as a group. If you want to go all out, put a fake campfire in the middle and hand out s’mores for atmosphere.

Step One: This activity works best in groups of 6-12; if you have a big classroom, consider splitting it up into smaller groups and assign a “story master” for each group to keep things on track. The story master can be either another teacher or an especially trustworthy student.

Step Two: Choose a story that one of the students told in the activity. Be sure that the story includes a clear conflict and plenty of room for embellishment, as some stories are too simple to be fruitfully expanded.

Change the names and genders of the main characters to fictionalize it, and then explain that the group will now re-tell the story as well as they remember, with each person adding one sentence to the story, while the last person in the circle is responsible for bringing the story to a close. Go around clockwise. The instructor or story master begins. Stress that what is important here is building on what the other students say, not ignoring it. (For example: my students were once doing a story circle about a girl who took home a stray cat. Halfway through, one student hijacked it, saying, “It turned out the cat was a robot! And then it exploded!” If this happens, gently remind your students that this is a group project, and that it isn’t fair to the other students to ignore what they have said and completely change the scenario. Thank the errant student for his creativity, but then ask him to begin again, keeping in mind what has already been said and continuing that story, rather than starting his own.) Note: if students did not tell strong enough stories in the activity, then you can provide an entirely new conflict, like, “Susie is driving up to Atlanta to visit her cousin Joe. She has been babysitting his enormous pitbull for the last week, and she is finally taking the dog back up to him. She is almost out of gas and she pulls over to fill up, but as soon as she pulls over, she realizes that her purse has gone missing, along with all of her money and her phone.”

Step Three: At the end of the story, ask what the students thought of the story they told. Was it good or

bad? Don’t shrink from using these words—if you are frank, with an eye to improvement, they will respond to your observations. Depending on how well the circle went, you may either want to re-do the round after making a few suggestions or move on to round three.

Step Four: Let students flesh it out. Go around the circle again, but this time ask students to add details,

descriptions, motivations, new scenes. If necessary, add conflict! This time, students can add up to six sentences. Instructor should give a lengthy, descriptive example. Depending on how rowdy the kids are, either the instructor can begin the circle, or after providing the example, can ask for a volunteer to begin. Remind students, however, that they must still begin and end the story the same way as before—just because they are adding more details doesn’t mean they can get sidetracked or force the last person to summarize the entire last two-thirds of the story.

Why We Tell Stories

Step Five: After the round, ask students to say what they liked about the story they told. worked? What details caught our attention?

What

Step Six: Briefly discuss the idea of conflict—stories are based around characters who want something, and in a good story, the character doesn’t get what he wants right away – or even at all, sometimes. What helped contribute to the conflict of this particular story, and what distracted us from it? Praise students for their good contributions. Step Seven: After finishing the story circle, ask students to relate their story to what Lisel Mueller said in her poem. Was our story like any of the stories that she described? Why did we tell this story? Did we enjoy it? Why? What makes us love telling stories?

Story Circle Example One of the most rewarding Deep story circles was a story told by a girl about her little sister’s birthday. As a birthday gift, the girl had disguised herself as the Little Mermaid, hoping to surprise and delight her sister, who despite her efforts recognized her immediately. The teacher chose this story for the group to fictionalize, and they named the main character “Bob”—suddenly the students were telling a story about a boy who dressed as a mermaid out of love for his sister! Listen carefully and your students will lead you in the right direction.

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Why We Tell Stories

Why We Tell Stories By Lisel Mueller For Linda Foster

This poem is difficult, but it is also, in my opinion, painfully good. When you discuss it with your stuCAUTION

dents, break it down by stanza. Consider having students work in three groups to break down each stanza and describe it or act it out for the rest of the class. Some questions that might facilitate discussion: 1st Stanza: What does Mueller mean we used to have leaves? What is she saying that people once were? What about when she says we had feathers, or when she says we had no lungs? According to her, where did people come from? When did we awaken and learn to speak? Why would all of these things make us tell stories? 2nd Stanza: Why would poor people tell stories about treasure, and why would defeated people tell stories about riddles only they could solve? What feeling does it give us to listen to a story about someone who solves riddles and succeeds? Why do we love those kinds of stories so much? 3rd Stanza: What on earth does Mueller mean when she says that all of us tell the same story? What is the human story? What do all human lives have in common? How is it that we all tell this story differently? How is it that the story of our life becomes our life? Finally: why is the last word of the poem and? 1 Because we used to have leaves and on damp days our muscles feel a tug, painful now, from when roots pulled us into the ground and because our children believe they can fly, an instinct retained from when the bones in our arms were shaped like zithers and broke neatly under their feathers and because before we had lungs we knew how far it was to the bottom as we floated open-eyed like painted scarves through the scenery of dreams, and because we awakened and learned to speak >>

Why We Tell Stories

Why We Tell Stories CONTINUED

2 We sat by the fire in our caves, and because we were poor, we made up a tale about a treasure mountain that would open only for us and because we were always defeated, we invented impossible riddles only we could solve, monsters only we could kill, women who could love no one else and because we had survived sisters and brothers, daughters and sons, we discovered bones that rose from the dark earth and sang as white birds in the trees

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3 Because the story of our life becomes our life Because each of us tells the same story but tells it differently and none of us tells it the same way twice Because grandmothers looking like spiders want to enchant the children and grandfathers need to convince us what happened happened because of them and though we listen only haphazardly, with one ear, we will begin our story with the word and

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Truth, Lies and Fiction

Truth, Lies and Fiction To introduce students to fictionalization; to practice preserving salient facts while discarding irrelevant ones; to manipulate mood through selective fictionalization. Optional Free Write Topic: Write about a time when you or someone you know told a lie to protect someone else.

Scene Shake-Up This activity demonstrates how changing small details creates mood and enhances effect. It requires a few fearless students.

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Step One: Pull two confident volunteers up to the front of the room. (Note: This is a great chance to get distracted or overactive students involved in the lesson). Tell these students that they are about to improvise a scene.

Step Two: Ask the class to suggest a relationship like “mother and daughter” or “doctor and patient.” Then, ask them to offer some kind of conflict or problem like “she wants her mom to let her get a dog!” or “the patient is running late for something else!”

Step Three: Once you have your characters and your conflict, assign each volunteer a

character and tell them to improvise a scene in which their characters face the conflict. Limit the scene to two or three minutes.

Step Four: Thank your volunteers and then tell them that they are about to do the same scene again, but this time with a new twist. Ask the audience to offer a surprising new location for this scene, like a roller coaster ride or a murky swamp. Have your volunteers play the scene again—same characters, same conflict—with this new twist.

Step Five: Repeat several times with different, inventive details. (What if one of them has a fatal disease? What if one of them doesn’t speak English? What if one of them has a pathological fear of laughter?)

Step Six: Discuss the different scenes. Ask students: What happens when we make up

new details to change the scene’s meaning? How did these changes affect our feelings towards the characters? How did they affect our interest in the different scenes? Which changes worked best and why? Then tell students that this is what good fiction writers do all the time—they take scenes that they see in everyday life and then tweak them to make us feel a certain way about what is happening.

Truth, Lies and Fiction

Readings: “Tell All the Truth but Tell it Slant” by Emily Dickinson; selection from The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien; selection from A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams

Have students think of a scene from their own lives—perhaps a time when they felt betrayed, or a time when they learned something surprising about someone else—and then fictionalize it by changing an important detail. Give students an example: “Maybe I would write about a time when my mother couldn’t understand why I really needed the Playstation 3, only in the fictionalized version, it would turn out that didn’t understand because she was actually an alien!”

Related Quote: “Truth is beautiful, but so are lies” –Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Truth, Lies and Fiction

Tell All the Truth but Tell it Slant By Emily Dickinson

CAUTION Before beginning, ask students to define a white lie, a half-truth, a lie by omission, and any other kind of lie they can think of. When is it okay to lie? Never? Sometimes? What is the difference between an acceptable lie and a bad lie? Ask students to give specific examples and tell stories. What about truth? Are there different kinds of truth? What about metaphor and figurative language? If I say “my heart is on fire,” am I telling a lie? After leading a brief discussion on the different kinds of lies, tell them that they are about to read a very beautiful poem about how to tell the truth in a way that people will understand it. Preface the poem by warning students that it will be difficult and that there will be words that they don’t know, but promise them that you will take your time and explain anything they don’t understand. I suggest going through the poem very slowly, defining words as you encounter them and having students paraphrase each line before they move on to the next one.

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant— Success in Circuit lies Too bright for our infirm Delight The Truth’s superb surprise As Lightening to the Children eased With explanation kind The Truth must dazzle gradually Or every man be blind—

Truth, Lies and Fiction

selection from The By Tim O’Brien

Things They Carried

LINK 19 This passage is brilliant but difficult. If you choose to read it in class, be prepared to spend up to half an hour discussing it with your students and providing many examples. CAUTION

Before beginning, explain that this is an excerpt from a book about a soldier who fought in the war in Vietnam. The author writes it like a nonfiction essay, but many stories that he tells are not exactly true. This passage is his explanation of why he fictionalizes his stories; it’s excellent, but it’s very complicated to a student who hasn’t thought about these questions before. Ask students: what does O’Brien think truth is? What makes a story true? How is it possible for something to have happened and yet be a lie? If your students are interested in war stories, I would suggest reading the whole chapter, which is extremely gripping, and choosing a more narrative section of it to read aloud to your students as a preface to this selection. You can find a copy of the entire chapter at the provided link. In many cases a true war story cannot be believed. If you believe it, be skeptical. It’s a question of credibility. Often the crazy stuff is true and the normal stuff isn’t because the normal stuff is necessary to make you believe the truly incredible craziness. In other cases you can’t even tell a true war story. Sometimes it’s just beyond telling… You can tell a true war story by the questions you ask. Somebody tells a story, let’s say, and afterward you ask, “Is it true?” and if the answer matters, you’ve got your answer. For example, we’ve all heard this one. Four guys go down a trail. A grenade sails out. One guy jumps on it and takes the blast and saves his three buddies. Is it true? The answer matters. You’d feel cheated if it never happened. Without the grounding reality, it’s just a trite bit of puffery, pure Hollywood, untrue in the way all such stories are untrue. Yet even if it did happen—and maybe it did, anything’s possible—even then you know it can’t be true, because a true war story does not depend upon that kind of truth. Happeningness is irrelevant. A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth. For example: Four guys go down a trail. A grenade sails out. One guy jumps on it and takes the blast, but it’s a killer grenade and everybody dies anyway. Before they die, though, one of the dead guys says, “The f*** you do that for?” and the jumper says, “Story of my life, man,” and the other guy starts to smile but he’s dead. That’s a true story that never happened.

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Truth, Lies and Fiction

A Streetcar Named Desire By Tennessee Williams

scene CAUTION

from

Give students the background on this scene: Blanche is an aging woman whose family has lost all of their money and prestige. She spent the summer lying to her boyfriend, Mitch, about her age and status. Until now, she hasn’t let him look at her in bright light; she didn’t want him to see her wrinkles. In this scene, Blanche tries to stop Mitch from turning on the light and taking a good look at her. Let two students (or you and a fellow teacher, using your best New Orleans drawl for full effect) stand up and act out this short scene. Consider asking students the following questions: how does Blanche excuse her lies? Do you agree with her that it was the right thing to do? Have you ever tried to create a little “magic” with a lie? If you are also reading Dickinson for this lesson, ask: would Emily Dickinson side with Blanche or Mitch? Is this like telling a good story, or is it different? How?

Blanche: I don’t want realism! I want magic! I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things to them. I don’t tell truth, I tell what ought to be the truth. And if that is sinful, let me be damned for it! Don’t turn the light on! (Mitch turns the light on) Mitch: (slowly and bitterly) I don’t mind you being older than what I thought. But all the rest of it–Christ! The pitch about your ideals being so old-fashioned and all the malarkey you’ve dished out all summer. Oh I knew you wasn’t sixteen anymore. But I was a fool enough to believe you was straight.

Truth, Lies and Fiction

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Introducing & Describing Characters

Character: Introducing and Describing Characters Contributors: Sarah Bates, Gino Orlandi

To begin a three-lesson arc in which students will create a short story; to introduce students to the idea of characterization; to explain that character is best demonstrated through action. Notes: This lesson is the first in a three-lesson arc. In this first lesson, students create a character, in the second lesson, they create a setting for that character to exist in, and in the third lesson, they create a plot for that character. By the end of these lessons, students should be able to write a complete short story about their character. While this first lesson was originally designed for younger students, it works wonderfully for older students, too. Optional Free Write Topic: How would you describe yourself to someone who has never met you, without using any dead words?

LINK 20 Introductory Activity

Step One: Open with a small discussion on character. Show the Genie clip from Disney’s

Aladdin (the moment right after Aladdin escapes the Cave of Wonders), which you can find at the provided link. Ask students to pay particular attention to how many characters the genie plays. Before showing the clip, ask the students to get out a pencil and paper, and encourage them to make a tally mark for every character-change that they see. Watch the clip all the way through (and be prepared to watch it again, because it’s fun!), then have the students announce how many characters they thought they saw. You can even make it into a contest: who can spot them all?

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Step Two: Once you have a numerical count, ask them to name aloud some of the specific “characters” that they remember seeing. Prompt them with questions: How did you know that Genie had switched characters? Was his voice different? His body language? What was different about it?

Examples help here. Demonstrate for the class that, if we have a character who’s keeping her head down and talking quietly (do this for them), she will be read as shy and introverted. If the character is boisterous and in-your-face (again, demonstrate), they might be read as outgoing.

Introducing & Describing Characters

Activity: Who’s At The Party?

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Step One: Prepare a bowl full of slips of paper, each with a different character written on it. Ideally, these “characters” should have distinct mannerisms and ways of speaking, so as not to be too intimidating. Good characters would be “an enthusiastic preacher” or “a shy student” or “a cranky grandmother.” Step Two: Tell students that they are going to have a chance to act out characters of their

own, changing their voices and mannerisms just as Genie did. Explain that students will take turns drawing a slip of paper and acting out the character written there. The rest of the classroom is going to guess who they are. Remind students that the point is NOT simply to explain who their character is, but to act out the character using mannerisms and vocal styles. They are not allowed to say who they are.

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Step Three: Before asking for volunteers, it may be a good idea to run a “Mock Round,” in which you draw and act out a character for the classroom. This way, the students will see an example of what is to be done.

Step Four: After the mock round, ask for three volunteers. Have them draw characters and

give them a few seconds to get a visual in their minds (they can even collaborate if they want to). Explain to the class that the scene will not end until ALL the characters are guessed. Then, when the volunteers are ready, start to act! (If it starts to go past two minutes, help coax the game along. Encourage students to pay particular attention to what the characters are doing—what is implied by their body language and what have they been talking about?)

Step Five: When they’ve all been guessed, have a brief discussion. Get the students to

explain, specifically, how they knew who was who. Was it the way the character walked? Was it her tone of voice? Once they’ve narrowed down the specific features, ask them, “How would you translate these specifics into writing, if we were to try and write this character? How would you describe, in words, the way Jimmy walked when he was playing an old man?” Encourage students to elaborate. “He walked slowly” becomes “he walked in timid, rickety steps, as though his toes were afraid of the ground.” Encourage them to focus on every detail of the character, from dialogue to mannerisms. Run the game as many times as you see fit, depending on class time and the number of volunteers (you may have the entire class wanting to play, and if so, you may have to state ahead of time that you’re only going to play 2-3 rounds).

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Introducing & Describing Characters

Readings: excerpt from True Notebooks by Mark Salzman; selection from Frankenstein by Mary Shelly; “Crossing the Street” by Rosy Lu

Option One: Invent a character and write a scene in which he or she does something mundane, such as crossing the street, but use the scene to tell us about your character (see student example by Rosy Lu). Option Two (for doodlers and artists): Body Map Drawing for Your Character Step One: Tell students to draw a full-length picture of a character that they want to spend the next few weeks writing a story about (preferably on a big piece of butcher paper). Tell them that it is not important that it be beautifully drawn; what is important here is originality. BE VERY EXPLICIT THAT THIS IS NOT TO BE A CHARACTER FROM A MOVIE, VIDEO GAME, OR BOOK THAT THEY ALREADY KNOW. Many students will be frustrated or disappointed by this stipulation; they prefer the comfort of relying on a character they know to the challenge of inventing a new one. If students are stuck, ask them to mix together traits that they like from different characters that they know in order to invent a new character (perhaps mixing some of the student’s own personality into the new hero!). Step Two: When they are finished drawing, have them annotate the drawing in the following manner:

•In the feet, write where this character has been

•In the hands, write what he or she does

•In the stomach, write what he or she likes to eat

•In the heart, write what the character loves

Introducing & Describing Characters

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Introducing & Describing Characters

•In the forehead, write what he or she thinks about •By the mouth, write what the character talks about • Above the head, write what this character wants

selection from True CAUTION

By Mark Salzman

Notebooks

CAUTION This nonfiction passage is about a writing teacher, Mark Salzman, who runs a workshop in a maximum security juvenile detention center. A new student, Nathaniel Hall, is joining his class.

This passage is useful for a few reasons. First, Francisco and Nathaniel make opposing statements about whether we should judge people by what they say or by what they do. This could lead to a productive discussion about whether character is best demonstrated by action, by speech, or by a combination of the two. Second, the introduction of Nathaniel is a great example of how to use a physical description to illuminate a character without letting it be the sole piece of evidence. Ask students: What do we know about Nathaniel based on what he looks like? What do we know about Nathaniel based on how he acts? How can we use similar techniques to introduce people to our characters? I asked what a messenger was. “That’s a minor who, you know, never gets in trouble,” Francisco explained, “so the staff give him stuff to do. Basically, he gets out of the room more. Everybody wants to be a messenger, but some of us get discriminated against.” “On what basis?” I asked. Francisco glared toward the staff room. “Behavior. F*** that.” “It’s so unfair,” said Patrick, rolling his eyes. Francisco seemed oblivious to the sarcasm in Patrick’s voice. “It is, man. Judge me by what I say, not what I do. But these punk-a** motherf****** get everything backwards.” His eyes widened. “Hey! What’s goin’ on?” He indicated for me to turn around. “What’s that fool doin’ here? He’s not in this class. You gotta be invited to be in this class. Mark, tell that fool to get lost.” Nathaniel Hall stood in the doorway with his hands behind his back and an enigmatic smile on his face. He was tall, black, wore his hair teased up into an Afro, and already had a mustache. He looked dashing even in his orange jumpsuit. “May I come in, sir?” he asked, charming me right away. “Please, grab a chair.” “Sh**,” Francisco complained. >>

Introducing & Describing Characters

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True Notebooks CONTINUED

The new boy unclasped his hands and rubbed his wrists as if they had just been unshackled. He looked around the room, took a plastic chair off the top of the stack, then sauntered across the room and sat down right next to Francisco. “Hall, you suck.” Nathaniel ignored him. He raised his elbows to see where they reached on either side. “Just checkin’ my clearance.” He adjusted his sitting position as carefully as if he were strapping himself into the cockpit of a jet, then lowered his forearms onto the table and nodded a greeting to the other boys. “Good evening, gentlemen. The moment you’ve been waiting for has arrived.” “Yeah, time to beat the crap out of Hall,” Francisco grumbled. “Quit f***ing around,” Jimmy said. “I prove myself through deeds, not words,” Nathaniel boasted. He pointed to the notepads and pencils in front of me. “May I?” “That’s what they’re for.” “Hall, you ain’t nothin’ but a showboat.”

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Introducing & Describing Characters

selection from

Frankenstein By Mary Shelley

This selection contains two quotes. The first is narrated by Dr. Frankenstein, and it is about seeing his monster

alive for the first time. After reading it and defining the vocabulary (itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s tough!), consider having students pull CAUTION

out some paper and sketch what they think the monster looks like. Then ask them, based on what the monster looks like, how they think it will behave.

Quote 1: His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same color as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shriveled complexion and straight black lipsâ&#x20AC;Ś A mummy again endued with animation could not be so hideous as that wretch. I had gazed on him while unfinished; he was ugly then, but when those muscles and joints were rendered capable of motion, it became a thing such as even Dante could not have imagined. This second quote is from the monsterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own mouth. He has been hiding in the woods for months, near the house of a farm family he has watched and come to love. He speaks to the blind father of the family while everyone else is away, and the blind man accepts him as a friend, but this is what happens when the rest of the family returns and sees the monster there:

Quote 2: At that instant the cottage door was opened, and Felix, Safie, and Agatha entered. Who can describe their horror and consternation on beholding me? Agatha fainted, and Safie, unable to attend to her friend, rushed out of the cottage. Felix darted forward, and with supernatural force tore me from his father, to whose knees I clung; in a transport of fury, he dashed me to the ground and struck me violently with a stick. I could have torn him limb from limb, as the lion rends the antelope. But my heart sank within me as with bitter sickness, and I refrained. I saw him on the point of repeating his blow, when, overcome by pain and anguish, I quitted the cottage, and in the general tumult escaped unperceived to my hovel. After reading this passage, discuss with students how the monster is different from what we expected him to be. What does he do in this scene? What does that tell us about him? Do we feel differently about him now than we did when we just knew how he looked? How can we best help our readers understand our characters? Is physical description enough? What else must we give our readers?

Introducing & Describing Characters

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Woman Crossing a Street by Rosy Lu, grade 7

She stood there awkwardly in her high heels. I knew this wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t the real her but man, she was hot! She shook her newly blonde head with a jerky shake, only managing to make more thick locks fall over her face. Her long tanned legs shivered in the hot pink miniskirt she was wearing. With one arm occupied with a matching purse and the other with a wrapped box, she managed to push the crosswalk button with her elbow. The light immediately turned red and the cars stopped passing. With one wobbly high-heeled foot she crossed the street. When she made it across, she looked around with uncertain eyes. When she saw me, her whole face lit up like a light bulb.

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Setting

Contributors: The Coastal Team To introduce setting; to have students use all five senses in describing a setting; to get students in the habit of observing surroundings; to have students practice locating important details amidst unimportant ones. Optional Free Write Topic: Describe a place where you feel uncomfortable.

Field trip!

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Step One: Get out of the classroom. Ideally, you would take your students to a gas station to discuss the Elizabeth Bishop poem. However, even sitting outside in a courtyard or gathering in the cafeteria would provide an energizing change and give students fodder for their writing assignment. Discuss the location with students when you get there, and be sure to engage all five senses: what do they notice about this place? What sounds do they hear? What smells do they smell? What do the things around them feel like?

Step Two:

Step Three: Have students share their lists with the group and discuss: what about

Ask students to spend five minutes wandering around their field trip location, be it a gas station or a picnic table, looking for important details. Ask them to especially focus on details that are unexpected, or things that they donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t normally notice. After five minutes, tell them to write down a list of all the most surprising, interesting, and telling details they noticed about this setting.

these details makes this place interesting? How is this gas station different from other gas stations? How could you describe this place in writing in a way that readers would be able to picture it clearly?

Setting

Readings: “Filling Station” by Elizabeth Bishop; “Square O’Troop” by Kayla Williams; “Troop Square” by Tamara Nowell

Using the characters that students invented last week, have your students draw a picture of setting where a story about that character would take place. After they draw the picture, ask students to write a paragraph that describes how this place sounds, smells, and feels. Encourage them to add surprising details, just as Elizabeth Bishop does in her poem about the gas station.

Related Quote: “A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.” –Michelangelo

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Setting Filling Station By Elizabeth Bishop

reprinted with permission, courtesy of Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux

When leading discussion on this poem, stress the importance of collecting and analyzing details to uncover the author’s opinions. This could be a good place to remind students of the “detective” method described in the first CAUTION section of this book. Read the poem once out loud and then read it again, stopping after each stanza to have students analyze what they think the speaker is like and how her opinions change over the course of the poem. The key here is getting students to recognize how small details can change our entire understanding of a place. What happens when we find out about the doily? And what about the begonia? Why does Bishop mention these things? What do the details tell us about her opinions? What does the speaker learn from those details? How would this poem be different without them?

Oh, but it is dirty! --this little filling station, oil-soaked, oil-permeated to a disturbing, over-all black translucency. Be careful with that match! Father wears a dirty, oil-soaked monkey suit that cuts him under the arms, and several quick and saucy and greasy sons assist him (it’s a family filling station), all quite thoroughly dirty. Do they live in the station? It has a cement porch behind the pumps, and on it a set of crushed and greaseimpregnated wickerwork; on the wicker sofa a dirty dog, quite comfy.

Some comic books provide the only note of color-of certain color. They lie upon a big dim doily draping a taboret (part of the set), beside a big hirsute begonia. Why the extraneous plant? Why the taboret? Why, oh why, the doily? (Embroidered in daisy stitch with marguerites, I think, and heavy with gray crochet.) Somebody embroidered the doily. Somebody waters the plant, or oils it, maybe. Somebody arranges the rows of cans so that they softly say: ESSO--SO--SO—SO To high-strung automobiles. Somebody loves us all.

Setting

Kayla Williams and Tamara Nowell, Frank Callen Boys and Girls Club These poems were written in Troop Square in Savannah, Georgia, right outside the classroom—you don’t have to travel far to inspire interesting work!

Square O’ Troop by Kayla Williams

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Time passes and so does what you don’t know, Secrets are history and also what doesn’t show. There are people here who walk and slipped on the concrete Of this square as they watched someone lean on the tree, Before you got here, As if you really know where you are at with nature surrounding you corner to corner.

Troop Square by Tamara Nowell As a beautiful garden It would attract your mind The bricks and stones from its Natural home redefine our definition of exquisite. The plaques of gold seem So bold leaving no words Left to describe it. The vibe inside this Square is dull. Dark or dim, warm Is what we feel inside. I guess that’s why our troops sigh, they lay Down and die for this land which we stand upon This square, this side It’s our time to make it right!

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Plot

Plot: ?!.

Contributors: Dave Thier, Gino Orlandi, and the Coastal Team To teach a method for creating interesting plots; to have students think critically about story structure; to have fun and be silly. Optional Free Write Topic: Tell a story in ten words or less. Note: How Not to Explain Plot For some reason, every schoolteacher in the country (myself included, at one point) has relied on the following chart to explain plot development: climax rising action

dénouement

This is ludicrous. Kids rarely understand this—I barely understand it. What does it mean when that line goes upwards or downwards? What on earth happens in an “upwards” scene? And how do you begin? How do you end? While this chart may help in analyzing literature, it’s almost totally useless as a writing guide.

Learning Plot Through Punctuation Kurt Vonnegut created the most succinct explanation of good plot I have ever seen:

?!. CAUTION

A good story begins with a question that draws you forward (?), then it uncovers a surprising and interesting answer (!), and finally it draws to a close (.). A lot of good stories can be summarized in three sentences following this pattern. This structure is most apparent in mystery novels: Who did it? It was Mr. X the whole time! I guess he got what was coming to him. But it also applies to a wide variety of classic works: Will Jane Eyre hook up with Mr. Rochester? No! Rochester has a crazy wife in the attic! The crazy wife dies in a fire and Jane ends up with Rochester anyway. Will Hamlet kill his uncle to avenge his father’s death? Doesn’t look like it, but then suddenly he does in a big scene where everyone dies! Good old Fortinbras will take it from here.

Plot

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Step One: The way I usually teach the ?!. concept is to start by asking students what each kind of punctuation means. Next, use their explanations of the punctuation marks to compare the punctuation to different parts of a story (explaining, first, that these punctuation marks refer to how the reader is feeling, not actual punctuation marks that the author is using): “So, guys, in a murder mystery, what question is the reader asking himself? Right! It’s who did it? And what’s the exclamation? Usually, Oh my goodness, it was Mr. X! And what’s the final statement? Often maybe something like, well, I guess he got what he deserved.” Step Two: Next, I hand them each a strip of paper with a question on it like “What’s that noise?” or “Where did everyone go?” (or, if you are pressed for time, just write one question up on the board and have everyone use it). Students must then make three different three-sentence stories by answering that question with three different exclamations and declarations. For example, if your question is “Where did everybody go?” your students might write something like: They were abducted by aliens! Turns out, life in a spaceship is better than earth, anyway. or They all got turned into zombies! Luckily, a hero invented a cure for zombie-itis and everyone is better now. or It’s a surprise birthday party for Melvin’s hundredth birthday! Melvin died of a heart attack—it’s not a good idea to surprise old people.

Step Three (optional): If there is time, let students illustrate one of their three-sentence stories as a three-panel comic (see examples by Gino Orlandi).

Readings: “Kiwi!” video; “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson

Writing Prompt: Have students write a three-sentence story about the character they invented in the character lesson, and then let them expand that into a page-long story using the descriptive techniques they learned in earlier lessons.

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Plot Example Three-Panel

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Comics illustrated by Gino Orlandi

Plot

Kiwi! LINK 21 Play your students the short video provided in the link (which is probably one of my favorite animated videos of all time). CAUTION

Beforehand, ask students to watch carefully for the ?!. structure. What question are you asking yourself in the beginning? What is the shocking answer to that question? What is the period—how does the story create a definitive ending? Would the story have been as good if it told us what he was doing from the beginning? How can we use a similar structure in our own stories?

The Lottery by Shirley Jackson LINK 22 The story “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson—a creepy and fascinating tale—is another excellent example of the ?!. structure. It is too long to print here, and it uses a sophisticated vocabulary, but it demonstrates the value of a good mystery and the punch that an unexpected ending can make. You can find a copy of it at the provided link. I suggest reading it out loud in class and stopping every few paragraphs to discuss what the main question of the story is and what clues we are accumulating to solve it. When the revelation is made, talk about why Jackson waited so long to tell us what the lottery was about. What payoff does this “exclamation point” have? Does it make for a more interesting story than if we knew at the beginning what it was about? Finally, what is the “period” for this story? What feeling does it leave us with? Why would she end the story so shortly after the big revelation?

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Origin Myths

Origin Myths Contributors: The Coastal Team

Notes: This lesson is a lot of fun—in end-of-term surveys, our students almost always name it as one of their favorites. It is an especially useful lesson when students are lagging and listless, or when the kids are chomping at the bit, ready to finish a whole story in one sitting. To have students practice the fiction skills they have learned; to have fun and do something a little bit different; to take students’ understanding of symbolism and metaphor to a new level; to complete a full story in one sitting. Optional Free Write Topic: Write about a lie that parents traditionally tell little kids (Santa Claus, Tooth Fairy, baby stork, etc.)

Pandora’s Box

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Step One: Define “myth”: a myth is a story that people make up to explain why things are the way they are. Ask students if they know of any myths and allow a few students to share examples. Be warned: if students have heard the term before, they might think “myth” means “old Greek story.” Point out that this is not necessarily the case: Santa Claus is a myth, for example, and he’s definitely not a Greek god (especially with that paunchy physique).

Step Two: Tell students the story of Pandora’s Box, as an example of an origin

Step Three: Have students make their own Pandora’s box by giving them each a

myth. Feel free to ham it up—that adds to the fun:

According to Greek mythology, Pandora was the first woman. All of the gods pooled together to give her different gifts and talents—her name means “all gifts”—and these gifts included everything from beauty to charm. One of the gods, however, was jealous of Pandora and gave her a box that contained all the world’s evils. Pandora was told not to open it but, of course, she did anyway. By the time she realized that all the evils were escaping and slammed the box shut, the only thing left in the box was a little bit of hope. This is a story about where the evils of the world come from, but it is also the origin of hope. After all, you can’t have hope without evil.

few slips of paper and letting them write down some of the evils in the world. Encourage creative answers like “alarm clocks” and “gross cough medicine.” Tell them to keep their evils secret; simply put them silently in the box when they are finished. When finished, set the box aside.

Origin Myths

Step Four:

During writing time, tell students that they can draw an item out of the box for inspiration if they want to, but be warned: if they take something out, then they’re stuck having to use that word somewhere in their story. Can they resist the temptation to see what people put in the box, knowing that they will be stuck using it in their story? (Alternative: Invite students to come pick an evil out of the box and act it out for the class. Once the class guesses what the evil is, it goes away, but until then, it continues to pester them. Keep calling students up until there are so many evils running around that students can really sympathize with Pandora as they try to guess the evils and make them go away.)

Readings: “How the Elephant Got His Trunk” by anonymous, aged 8; “The Origin of Love” from Hedwig and the Angry Inch

Writing Prompts: Have students write their own origin myth. Here are some ideas for questions they could answer:

•Why do cockroaches run from light? •Where do the tides come from? •Why do parrots talk? •Where does wind come from? •Why are people different colors? •Why do people sneeze? •Why do oysters make pearls? •Why are rivers always running places?

Related Quote: “Myths are public dreams; dreams are private myths.” - Joseph Campbell

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Origin Myths CAUTION

How the Elephant Got His Trunk This story is by an anonymous British 8-year-old from St. Ives. Students should be able to grasp this story without too much discussion; point out to them that if an 8-year-old can write such a sweet, clever origin story about the trunk of an elephant, surely a middle school student can write something even better.

Once upon a time, there was a sad elephant. He was dirty and stinky, because he could not reach to wash his back. All the other animals didn’t play with him because he was smelly. Elephant sat under a tree, where nobody could see him. He started to cry. His head was hanging down, crying big tears. He sat and cried for days. One day, when his tears had dried up, he went to itch his head and he felt a bump on his back. Then he noticed his nose had stretched because it had got wet with all the crying and it was now a long trunk which had hit him on his back. He went to the river and got his trunk, put it in the water and sucked the water up. Then he sprayed his back with water. All the other animals came over to him and said “you are so clean and smell so lovely. Do you want to play with us?” The elephant was so happy and said “yes.”

Origin Myths

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The Origin of Love From Hedwig and the Angry Inch

CAUTION LINK 23 This is a song based on an ancient Greek story about the origin of love. You can find the music video and the complete lyrics at the provided link. This song claims that people once had four arms, four legs, and two faces. These four-legged people were so happy and proud that the gods grew jealous of them and Zeus split them all apart with lightning bolts. Now, we are only halfcreatures, and we spend our whole lives looking for our other half. When we find that half, we fall in love. “The Origin of Love” is complex and mature, and it addresses a deep sense of loneliness that younger students may or may not yet understand. I recommend it for students aged 13 and older. Note: Hedwig, the singer, is a transsexual—if you watch the video in class (which I highly recommend—it’s beautifully illustrated), expect some startled or even upset comments regarding Hedwig’s appearance. Bluntness and honesty are the best ways to keep discussion on track: “Yes, Hedwig is a transsexual. And yes, the song makes references to both homosexual and heterosexual couples when it discusses the origin of love. Now: why does Hedwig say that Zeus split the couples apart? What do you think it would feel like to lose half of your body?” Some useful discussion questions: •According to this song, what is love? Where does it come from? •What other feelings does it explain, besides love? •According to this song, does love feel good? Does it hurt? Does it do both? Why? •Why would you tell this pretend story instead of talking about it in terms of reality? •What does this myth help us to understand about our feelings? (This is a complicated question, but if they can grasp it, it will significantly broaden their understanding of mythology)

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Your Name Your Name To have students relate writing directly to their own lives; to discuss prejudice. Optional Free Write Topic: If you had kids, what would you name them and why?

Alter Egos

CAUTION

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Step One: Hand every student a blank name tag (or, if you don’t have any, just give them a piece of paper and some tape).

Step Two: Tell students that today they are going to give themselves a new name. It can be whatever they want (within reason, of course—no curse words). Ask students to choose a name that they think suits them, or that makes them feel special.

Step Three: Have students make a name tag that says their new name and one sentence about why they chose it. When they finish, allow a few students to introduce themselves with their new names and explain why they think that name suits them.

Step Four: Announce that students will be called by their new names for the rest of the day. If you like, create a funny rule to punish people who forget to do this: “Remember, guys—if you call someone by their old name, instead of their new name, you have to do ten jumping jacks!”

Step Five: Discuss with students: How does it feel to be called by a different name? Why does it feel that way? What makes names important?

Readings: Monologue from Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare; quotation by Malcom X; “Is My Name the Frogleg of Names?” by Tashjadala Norette Anacaryica Mikell. Also recommended for this lesson is the chapter “My Name” from The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros.

Write about your name, BUT DON’T DO AN ACROSTIC POEM. Be firm on this last point; acrostics (i.e. poems that start each line with the next letter of a word, like “CAT: Cranky, Agile, Taciturn”) are so formulaic that they often encourage cliché, lazy writing. Make your students challenge themselves.

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Your Name

selection from Romeo by William Shakespeare

and Juliet

This passage is best for advanced students, as it has complex syntax and vocabulary, but any CAUTION

group of students can understand it if you go slowly enough. Before beginning, ask students if they are familiar with the story of Romeo and Juliet. If they are not, explain the basic premise: Romeo and Juliet are in love, but their families (the Capulets and the Montagues) hate each other and would never let Romeo and Juliet get together. This monologue is Juliet talking about how she still loves Romeo, even though she hates his name. Go through it line by line and help students paraphrase what Juliet is saying. When you are finished, ask students: Do you think that Juliet is right to say that names don’t mean anything? Are we really separate from our names, or are our names a part of us? How do you think things work out for Romeo and Juliet in the end? Juliet: O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father, and refuse thy name; Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, And I’ll no longer be a Capulet… ’Tis but thy name that is my enemy; Thou art thyself though, not a Montague. What’s Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot, Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part Belonging to a man. O! be some other name: What’s in a name? that which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet; So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d, Retain that dear perfection which he owes Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name; And for that name, which is no part of thee, Take all myself.

Your Name

Malcom X on His Name This quote treads on sensitive ground, but it provokes lively and enlightening discussions. Before beginning, show students the following names and have them guess where these people are from and what each of them looks and acts like: Malcolm Little Detroit Red el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz

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LINK 24 When they have finished discussing what each of these people might be like, reveal to students

that these are all different names for one person: Malcolm X. Show them a picture of him and give students a very brief synopsis of Malcolm X’s civil rights work. You can find more information about him, including photos, at the provided link. Explain to students that Malcolm X went by several names in his life, and each of these names represents a different part of his personality. For example, he replaced his original last name, Little, with an X because the name “Little” came from his family’s former owners, and he did not want to bear a slave-owner’s name. This passage is about his Muslim name: “When I’m traveling around the country, I use my real Muslim name, Malik Shabazz. I make my hotel reservations under that name, and I always see the same thing I’ve just been telling you. I come to the desk and always see that ‘here-comes-a-Negro’ look. It’s kind of a reserved, coldly tolerant cordiality. But when I say ‘Malik Shabazz,’ their whole attitude changes: they snap to respect. They think I’m an African. People say what’s in a name? There’s a whole lot in a name. The American black man is seeing the African respected as a human being. The African gets respect because he has an identity and cultural roots. But most of all because the African owns some land.”

After reading this passage, talk about the effect that this African name has on people. What assumptions do we make about people, based only on their names? Has anyone ever made an assumption about you based on your name? Do you match your name? Why or why not?

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Your Name CAUTION

The Crazy Name You Gave Me By Tashjadala Norette Anacaryica Mikell, grade 6 Is my name the frogleg of names. First Name: Tashjadala It sounds like four different names put together. Tasha, Jada, Dada, and the letter “a” That’s just crazy. You could have at least called me Tasha or Ta’sheai, but why Tashjadala? Is my name the frogleg of names. Second Name: Norette Look, I know you were trying to be nice, But what were you thinking? Norette sounds like a way to stop smoking. Is my name the frogleg of names. Third Name: Anacaryica Wow! I thought Norette and Tashjadala was Crazy But Anacaryica? Where in the ham sandwich Did you get that from? It’s a shame. Grandma can’t even say it. Again I say: Is my name the frogleg of names.

Your Name

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Your Thoughts

Your Thoughts Contributor: Emma Lunbeck

To apply metaphor to an abstract concept; to have students critically analyze their own thought patterns. Optional Free Write Topic: Write about a dream you had recently.

Looking At Your Thoughts

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Step One: Have all your students close their eyes and put their heads down for one minute. Ask them to watch themselves think: How do you jump from thought to thought? What do you think about most? What do you keep returning to?

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Step Two: Ask students to try to think about only one thing for thirty seconds. Is it easy or hard? Why?

Step Three: Ask them to think about nothing at all for thirty seconds. Discuss: Why is this so impossible?

Your Thoughts

Readings: “Vermin” by E.B. White; “The Circus Animals’ Desertion” by W.B. Yeats (recommended for use only with advanced students; the second stanza is omitted for the sake of clarity); “Canival” by Mallory Hendley

Write a figurative description of your thoughts. If students are having trouble, suggest that they think of the place where their thoughts live. Is it a greenhouse? A zoo? A desert? Or, ask them to think what object their thoughts are like. A balloon? A cheese grater? A pinball machine?

Related Quote: “We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.” –The Buddha

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Your Thoughts

Vermin By E.B. White CAUTION

The mouse of Thought infests my head. He knows my cupboard and the crumb. Vermin! I despise vermin. I have no trap, no skill with traps, No bait, no hope, no cheese, no bread – I fumble with the task to no avail. I’ve seen him several times lately. He is too quick for me, I see only his tail.

The Circus Animals’ Desertion W.B. Yeats I suggest writing out the poem in huge letters on a giant sheet of paper. Use color-coding and markers to sort out syntax with your students. I suggest that you keep the poem veiled from view, revealing it line by line. This way, you will avoid overwhelming the students with an incomprehensible mass from the beginning; the poem will seem more manageable if they approach it one line at a timee, and they will feel that they are actively discovering, rather than simply receiving, the meaning of the poem. While reading this first stanza, ask students: What is Yeats’ problem? What is he trying to do? What does he mean when he starts talking about circus animals? Is he really talking about circus animals, or are they a metaphor for something else? What could they be a metaphor for?

I I sought a theme and sought for it in vain, I sought it daily for six weeks or so. Maybe at last, being but a broken man, I must be satisfied with my heart, although Winter and summer till old age began My circus animals were all on show, Those stilted boys, that burnished chariot, Lion and woman and the Lord knows what. >>

Your Thoughts

The Circus Animals’ Desertion CONTINUED While you read this next stanza, you may want to do some out-loud rearranging: “Those masterful images grew in pure mind, (and we know that) because (they are) complete”—again, adding to the idea of Thought as somehow higher, more complete, more pure, more beautiful, more perfect, than real life. Note the contrast of this completeness with the imagery that follows: garbage, a broken can—real world is broken, incomplete, ugly. Ask students: What does Yeats compare his thoughts to? Where does he say ideas come from? What do you have to do to find your best ideas? III Those masterful images because complete Grew in pure mind, but out of what began? A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street, Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can, Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut Who keeps the till. Now that my ladder’s gone, I must lie down where all the ladders start In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.

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Carnival by Mallory Hendley from Southwest Middle School, grade 7 My mind is like a carnival. It speeds through just like bumper cars and the thoughts go as slow as the Ferris wheel. It goes from what to do when I wake up to when I go to bed. What to say to people and how to say it will run through my head. My mind wins the creative games and wins a teddy bear. I see things when I’m thinking of something totally different. When it starts to get into a big fight with my older sister, my mind thinks of a cheetah ride about to crash. My mind just soars like it does when the ride comes down from the top. Then my mind forgets what to do next or what to say just like the ride when it doesn’t know what to say and then crashes. I now start to have the worst days I could possibly think of and they start to feel so lonely. As I start to get those days, it feels like the whole carnival is closing down. Nobody talks to me just like nobody is coming to the carnival because they go away and find a new place to enjoy. The carnival then feels lonely and so forgettable. I feel like I’m not special any more. As I walk by it is very quiet and the rides are empty. It seems to be very clean. It just looks like torn up cotton candy and nasty tasting chocolate. Then I find a new life that I can enjoy. I start to be happier, just like the carnival does when it has customers! It’s like everything starts to fall right into place. The carnival soon becomes the most enjoyable place to be and I become the most enjoyable person to be around!

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Bullies

Bullies (and building compassion) Contributors: Oluwakemi Elufiede and Adeeba Rana

To build compassion; to help students think critically about their behavior; to create a positive classroom atmosphere and to quell bullying or other disciplinary problems. Notes on this lesson: My co-teachers and I first designed this lesson when one of our students began seriously harassing several of his peers. Traditional discipline was not working, so we decided to approach the problem from a different angle: literature. This tactic was tremendously effective. Though the reading for today is a clip from the television show The Wire, rather than a written document, the script is as sharp, interesting, and complex as any other literary selection in this book. Showing this clip and discussing it at length radically changed the classroom atmosphere. Students became instantly more respectful towards each other, and the effects were lasting. Be warned, though: the effectiveness of this lesson comes from the graphic content of the clip and the frankness and detail with which we talk about it. Be prepared for a long, complex, and interesting discussion—I have included extended notes on how to talk about this piece with your students in a way that will help them draw interesting, enlightening conclusions.

Optional Free Write Topic: Write about a time when someone made you angry.

Body Map The goal of this activity is to help students find qualities in common with each other, to help students recognize how little they know about each other, and to build a sense of community and compassion.

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Step One: Have every student draw an outline of a human body on a blank piece of paper. If you have time and a large roll of butcher paper, have students lie down and take turns helping each other outline their bodies with markers. Step Two: Have students describe themselves using this outline as a map: • In the feet, write the places you have been. • In the hands, write what you do. • In your stomach, write what you like to eat. • In your heart, write what you love. • In your head, write what you think about. • Above your head, write something surprising about yourself.

Bullies

Step Three: When students have all completed their body maps, have them circulate through the

room to look at everyone else’s work. Tell students to find one thing that they have in common with each person in the room and one thing that surprised them. Discuss this activity with the students: What did they find in common with their peers? What do they all love? What do they like to do? What surprised people? What do these body maps tell us about the classroom as a whole?

Readings: Clip from The Wire; “Doggie Bag” by Jabarie Simpson; “A Letter to My Bully” by De’Aire Kemp

Write about a time when you learned something about a person that surprised you. (If students can’t think of anything, then ask them to write about a time when they hurt someone—either physically or emotionally—and later regretted it.)

Related Quote: “Our task must be to free ourselves...by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.” – Albert Einstein

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Bullies

First Day of School The Wire CAUTION

Note: This clip from the television show The Wire has adult content. It drops the f-bomb, and there is graphic violence. It is best used with students over the age of twelve. Warn students that there is language and behavior in this video that you don’t condone, but we must acknowledge that bad behavior exists in order to discuss its consequences. Tell them that you are treating them as adults in showing them this CAUTION video, and you expect them to act accordingly. Below you will find detailed notes on how to run a productive discussion on this scene. It is important to guide students through this piece in a very particular order so that they draw the right conclusion from it—the lesson is not “If you are mean, someone might slice your face with a razor” but, rather, “You never know what the people around you are thinking, why they do what they do, or what they might be suffering through. It is easy to hurt people badly even when you think you are joking, so be careful about what you say.”

LINK 25 Scene One: You can find this scene twenty-two minutes into the third episode of

the fourth season of The Wire, or you can use the clip at the provided link. Before playing this clip to students, ask them to try to remember as many of the characters as they can and to start to guess why they do the things they do. Play the beginning of the scene and then pause it at 2:14 minutes. After watching the clip, ask students: Who are the characters in this scene and what do we know about them? Guide students with the following questions about each of the main characters: • Dequan, or “Dukie” o Why would Dequan smell like a garbage can? o Why doesn’t he say anything when the girl moves her seat away from him? • Chiquan, the bully girl o What do we know about this girl? o Why is she so mean to Dequan, when it is clear that he hasn’t done anything to her? o The teacher is asking questions—does Chiquan know the answers? What do you think her grades are like? Why do you think she makes fun of people instead of answering the questions? • Laetitia, the girl Chiquan teases o What do we think this girl is like? What kind of attitude does she have? o What kinds of things might lead someone to be this edgy? What do you think her home life is like?

Bullies

• Naimond (the boy with the ponytail) o What is he like? Why do you think he acts that way? o Does he have the answers in class? • Mr. Prezbo o Is this teacher doing a good job? o Why does he let Chiquan get away with her bullying? What could he be doing differently?

Scene Two: Once you have established the setting, play the rest of the clip. When you finish the episode, CAUTION

and your students are paraplegic with shock, lead the following discussion:

• What happened? (Allow your students to freak out for a moment and shout things like “She sliced that girl’s face open!!!”) • Is it okay that Laetitia sliced Chiquan’s face with a razor? (Establish fast that this is not okay, no matter how obnoxious Chiquan was being.) • So who expected this to happen? (Probably no one—how on earth could you see that coming? ) • When she was walking to school this morning do you think Chiquan expected this to hap pen? What did she unknowingly do that led to this violence? • When Laetitia attacked Chiquan, was it just because Chiquan was shining a light in her face, or was it something more? Why do you think she did it? • Why do you think Dequan sits next to Laetitia and holds a fan up to her face? What do the two of them have in common? • Given we don’t know what different people are going through, how can we prevent things like this from happening? • Even if Laetitia hadn’t attacked Chiquan, what are some other things that she might have done as a result of being bullied? (Possible answers: she might have hurt herself, been sad, stopped making friends, it might have made her feel worthless.) It might have looked like fun when Chiquan was teasing her, but it really wasn’t, was it? • Have you guys ever been joking around and gone too far? For example, have you ever been making fun of someone’s parents and then found out that their parents are dead, or not around? • How can we prevent moments like this from happening? What can we do to make sure that people don’t hurt themselves, or each other?

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Bullies CAUTION

Doggie Bag by Jabarie Simpson While many students will write serious works in response to this lesson, many may write something simple and funny, like this sharp bit of dialogue below. Some students may not yet be able to do the kind of introspection that this lesson asks for, so it is fine to allow them to write something like this (as long as they learn something from the video clip, which is the centerpiece of this lesson): “Come on, Richard, I’m taking a doggie bag.” “I’m not, I’m stuffed.” “Alright, let’s go.” “Okay.” Chick chick bump bump. Vroom. “Ahhhhhh! I’m blind, I can’t see! Help me, please!” “Turn on the windshield wipers!” “Wait, was that my doggie bag?” “I think so. Maybe you should lap it up.” “Not funny, Richard. Why did you do that?” “Do what?” “Put my food up on the roof.” “I didn’t.” “Don’t you lie to me, Richard.” “You put your food on the roof.” “Really?” “Yes.” “I feel silly. You know I was just playing. We still on for Tuesday?” “Uhh, yeah.”

Bullies

A Letter to My Bully by Deâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Aire Kemp

CAUTION

Malik,

Stop bullying people, and pushing, boxing people and shoving them out of their desks. Troy, Jaquais, and you always box me in my face. Jaquais always calls me fat. I want to tell you to stop. Be good and do your work. Stop being bad. It makes me feel sad and angry when you are mean to me. You always push me out of the line. You should be good so you can get your education and go to college. From, Deâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Aire

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Friendship

Friendship To discuss friendship (both the good and bad sides); to encourage students to be compassionate with each other; to let students write about a topic that invariably interests them. Optional Free Write Topic: Write about the first friend you ever had.

Human Knot

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This activity—common at camps and leadership retreats across the country—is a great way to teach your class to work as a team. In order to succeed, they must demonstrate the qualities of friendship: trust, communication, teamwork, and patience. In addition, the difficulty of the project points out to students that even the best teams have to work hard to achieve anything together. Warning: this game involves physical contact. Be very clear with your students what kinds of contact are appropriate and what kinds are not.

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Step One: Push the desks out of the way and have your students stand in a

circle. If you have a large group of students, split into two or three circles of about ten students each.

Step Two: Have students reach into the circle and hold hands with two dif-

ferent people (one person for each hand). Ask students to make sure that they are holding the hands of two different people, and that they are not holding the hand of a person next to them.

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Step Three: Once the students are all holding hands, tell them that they are

going to have to untangle themselves by stepping over and under each other’s arms to get back into a circle. They are not allowed to let go of the hands that they are holding onto (though they can change their grip if they need to).

Step Four: Let the students figure it out. This will be difficult—if the exercise

goes past four minutes, offer advice from the outside. If it takes longer than eight minutes, praise the students for the progress that they did make and then allow them to sit back down or start over.

Friendship

Step Five: Discuss the activity with students and relate it to the theme of friendship. Ask students: What did

people do that made this activity easier? What did people do that made it harder? What kind of an attitude do you have to take to an activity like this for it to work well? Do these same skills apply to friendship? What can you do to make a friendship better? What sorts of things do people do that make friendships worse? Even if everyone is doing what they are supposed to do in this activity, is it always easy? Even if people are always doing what they are supposed to do in a friendship, is it always easy? Or do friendships go through challenges and rough spots? Readings: selection from Dancing on the Edge by Han Nolan; selection from Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck; “Fake Friends” by Ciera Smart

Write about one of the following: •A time when you felt betrayed by a friend •A time when you made a new friend •A time when you learned something surprising about a friend of yours

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Friendship selection from Dancing By Han Nolan

on the Edge

CAUTION This selection comes from a story about a mentally disturbed girl named Miracle. Miracle has no friends until one day, at school, she pretends to be a medium who can cast love spells. The first spell she casts actually works—or, at least, the boy ends up asking the girl out for whatever reason—and then all the girls in school want Miracle to cast spells for them. For a while, Miracle thinks that she has finally made friends. Ask students: What does friendship really mean? Has Miracle made friends? What are real friends like? What does it mean when Miracle says that these false friendships made her feel separate from herself? Everyone knew me, knew my name. I was Miracle, the love magician. It was wonderful to hear people call my name without having eggs and rocks hidden behind their backs. It was fun saying things I knew no one understood, but because I was the love magician, they all laughed as if I had told a joke. It was fun when the girls did what I said. If I said they had to sleep out in a tree in front of their beloved’s house all night, they did it. If I said they had to sing a love song in the boys’ bathroom, they did it, and it seemed that they had so much fun wondering what I would ask and watching others do silly things, it didn’t matter whether the spells worked or not. Then it all changed. It turned sour, bit by bit. I had decided I wanted the girls to invite me over, let me go to their parties. I wanted them to call me up on the telephone. Every day before I left for home I’d say to someone, “Now you call me up, okay? You have my number? Don’t lose it it’s not listed in the directory. Call me, ok?” They always said they would, but no one did. Then I made it part of the instructions for one of my spells. Tilly Ann had to call me and speak to me for fifteen minutes if she wanted Timmy Riggs to be hers. Tilly Ann called me, and I could tell she was nervous. She asked me what she was supposed to say to me for fifteen minutes. I told her to say whatever it was she said to her other girlfriends. Tilly Ann just giggled and hung up. She had been on the phone with me for twenty-nine seconds. That’s when I realized the truth. None of the girls liked me. They were afraid of me. They never spoke to me except in a group and only during lunch or after school, and only about love potions. No on else ever called me up on the telephone, or rode home with me, or spent their Saturday afternoons with me. The more I was with them, surrounded by them, the more separate I felt, not just from them but from myself.

Friendship

selection from Of

Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

CAUTION This passage is a beautiful definition of what friendship is. These two men work as farm hands together. Lenny, a large but childlike man, listens as his clever friend George explains why the two of them are different from all the other ranch hands. Discuss with students: Do you have anyone who would do these things for you? What do you think a friend is? Do you agree with George? “Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. They got no family. They don’t belong no place. They come to a ranch an’ work up a stake and then they go inta town and blow their stake, and the first thing you know they’re poundin’ their tail on some other ranch. They ain’t got nothing to look ahead to.” Lennie was delighted. “That’s it—that’s it. Now tell how it is with us.” George went on. “With us it ain’t like that. We got a future. We got somebody to talk to that gives a damn about us. We don’t have to sit in no bar room blowin’ in our jack jus’ because we got no place else to go. If them other guys gets in jail they can rot for all anybody gives a damn. But not us.” Lennie broke in. “But not us! An’ why? Because… because I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you, and that’s why.” He laughed delightedly. “Go on now, George!”

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Friendship CAUTION

Fake Friends by Ciera Smart, grade 9 It was 1996. I was only three when she stole my man. We was just waking up from nap time and it was feeling weird. He wasn’t there in the play-pen. I stood up and there he was sharing his Buzz Light-Year blanket with the new girl, Shalavakia. I was so mad I caught a fit, woke up every kid. Lil Jay-Jay stayed ‘sleep. I was so mad—before nap, I shared my huge cookie and fruit roll-up with Shay-Shay. And I told her about Jay-Jay. She hit me hard that day. I had lost my daycare boyfriend to the new ghetto kid, All because I liked Toy Story and he loved Buzz Light-Year.

Friendship

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Competition

Competition To have students think critically about competition; to teach a topic that will interest a wide array of students (including ones who do not typically enjoy literature). Notes on this lesson: This lesson can go one of two ways, depending on what your students need. I first invented the lesson to interest boys who were obsessed with football and video games. My sole purpose was to engage these students and to get them excited about writing. This lesson was very effective for that, but I have since also used the lesson in advanced classrooms to teach students about plot: competitive characters are often compelling, and competitions are great plot devices. In addition, you can encourage students to analyze their own competitive behavior: When is competitiveness useful? When does it get in your way? Optional Free Write Topic: Write about a game you love to play.

Games

CAUTION

Play a competitive game. Two good options are Simon Says and Lost Soul (see explanation below; Lost Soul great for building teamwork and community, in addition to being a lot of fun). After playing, lead a discussion on why so many of the students tried to win even when there was no prize. Lost Soul: Have the students sit in chairs scattered around the room. Leave one chair empty and assign one person to be the “Lost Soul”—or, better, be the Lost Soul yourself—and tell students that the Lost Soul is a very tired ghost looking for a place to sit down. The lost soul can move only at a slow walking pace, but everyone else can hustle if they want to. It is the students’ job to prevent the lost soul from sitting down in the empty chair; they do this by getting up and sitting in the empty seat before the lost soul gets there (though, of course, as soon as they get up, the lost soul will head for their now-empty chair instead). Tell students that once they get up from a chair, they must find a new chair to sit in; they cannot return to the chair that they just left. This game is harder than it sounds, but it is always a big hit.

Competition

Readings: selection from Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card; selection from Topdog/Underdog by Suzan Lori-Parks; “The Chess Game” by Tarik McKenzie

Let students choose one of the following prompts to write about: •Write about a time when you lost. •Write about the game you are best at and how you feel when you play it. •Write about the first time you beat a parent or a big sibling at something. •Write about a time when you cheated.

Related Quote: “It’s not the size of the man in the fight...it’s the size of the fight in the man.” —Anonymous

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Competition

selection from Ender’s

Game By Orson Scott Card

CAUTION This selection is from one of my favorite sci-fi novels. I would suggest assigning the whole book to your students; I remember that the week my friends and I discovered this book in 7th grade, the bus ride home was silent for nearly a week as we devoured the book. Before reading this passage with students, give them some background: Ender’s Game is a novel about a young boy named Ender who was sent to a military school in space to be trained up as a commander. At Battle School, they train the students by having them play a war game against each other. Ender was recently given his own army to command in the war game, and he has become the best commander in the school despite the fact that he is much younger and smaller than the other commanders. This passage about how Ender feels about leading the Dragon Army to victory. At the end of the week Dragon Army had fought seven battles in seven days. The score stood 7 wins and 0 losses… no one believed anymore that it was a fluke that put him first in the standings. He had beaten top armies by unheard-of margins. It was no longer possible for the other commanders to ignore him. A few of them sat with him at every meal, carefully trying to learn from him how he defeated his most recent opponents. He told them freely, confident that few of them would know how to train their soldiers and toon leaders to duplicate what his could do. And while Ender talked with a few commanders, much larger groups gathered around the opponents Ender had defeated, trying to find out how Ender might be beaten. There were many, too, who hated him. Hated him for being young, for having made their victories look paltry and weak. Ender saw it first in their faces when they passed him in the corridors; then he began to notice that some boys would get up in a group and move to another table if he sat near them in the commanders’ mess; and there began to be elbows that accidentally jostled him in the game room, feet that got entangled with his as he walked into and out of the gym, spittle and wads of wet paper that struck him from behind as he jogged down the corridor. They couldn’t beat him in the battle room, and knew it—so instead they would attack him where it was safe, where he was not a giant but a little boy. Ender despised them—but secretly, so secretly that he didn’t even know it himself, he feared them.

Competition

selection from Topdog/Underdog By Suzan Lori-Parks

In this scene, Booth and Lincoln are two unfortunately named brothers, living together in a rundown modern-day apartment. This excerpt is deceptively complex and nuanced, and your CAUTION students will love to read it and act it out—in fact, many of them may ask to borrow a copy of the play from you to read more of it. Ask students: Why is this play called Topdog/Underdog? What are these two brothers competing over? Who is winning? Who is the top dog? When does it change and how? Note: The misspellings here are intentional. Lori-Parks creates voice through writing dialogue as the characters themselves would write it. Booth: You like this place? Lincoln: Ssallright. Booth: But a little cramped sometimes, right? Lincoln: You dont hear me complain. Although that recliner sometimes Booth, man—no Booth, right—man, Im too old to be sleeping in that chair. Booth: Its my place. You don’t got a place. Cookie, she threw you out. And you can seem to get another woman. Yr lucky I let you stay. Lincoln: Every Friday you say mi casa es su casa. Booth: Every Friday you come home with yr paycheck. Today is Thursday and I tell you brother, its a long way from Friday to Friday. All kinds of things can happen. All kinds of bad feelings can surface and erupt while yr little brother waits for you to bring in yr share. (rest) I got my Thursday head on, Link. Go get the food. Lincoln doesn’t budge. Lincoln: You dont got no running water in here, man. Booth: So? Lincoln: You dont got no toilet you dont got no sink. Booth: Bathrooms down the hall. Lincoln: You living in the Third World, fool! Hey, I’ll get thuh food. (Lincoln goes to get the food…) Thats soup and thats sauce. I got you the meat and I got me the skrimps. Booth: I wanted the skrimps. Lincoln: You said you wanted the meat. This morning when I left you said you wanted meat. (Rest) Here, man, take the skrimps. No sweat. (They eat…)

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Competition

The Chess Game by Tarik MacKenzie, grade 7

CAUTION

I looked into the eyes of the old man. The measure of intensity was gigantic. Would I win this time? Just the thought of winning was exciting. My dreams were soon to be crushed, though. The man kept my gaze and moved his queen. “Checkmate,” he whispered, and I could smell his musty old breath. “What?!” I cried out in defeat. This had been my 83rd chess game against Mr. Brinson and I had lost again. “If you don’t pick up your game, I might have to start letting you win,” the man chuckled. Oh yeah! Real Mature! Just brag and gloat about winning. Next time I’d win. Even if it meant that I’d have to… Before I say it, I want people to know that I’m not a cheater. Sometimes I alter circumstances so that things are in my favor, but I’m not a cheater. I prefer not to think of it as cheating, but as making a change for the better. Anyway, as I was saying, even if it meant I had to cheat. “Good game,” I mumbled, extending a hand to him. “I can’t shake hands with you!” he cried. “You might rub some of your bad chess skills onto my hand!” What a jerk. I try to be polite to my elders and this is what I get. “Just joking,” he said. You better be, I thought. I folded the chess board and tucked it under my arm. I took the bus home. During the ride, I planned a way to win. By the time I got home, I had come up with a plan so complicated, so smart, and so fabulous that it was a shame I had to wait until next Wednesday to use it. More time to perfect it, I thought to myself. Wednesday came and I was ready. I didn’t even bother to practice my chess this week; I was sure that I’d win. I arrived at the nursing home at 6:59 and strolled through the door at 7:00 sharp. At 7:01, Mr. Brinson came out of his bedroom. “Sorry I kept you waiting. I like to be fashionably late,” he told me as he walked into the lounge. No worries, I thought, you gave me enough time to go over my plan one more time. We set up in our usual spot. I looked around. Nobody was here. Even better. I put the chess board on the table and started setting up. “What’s this?” he asked, looking into my basket that I had brought (it was part of the plan). >>

Competition

“Oh, they’re just some oatmeal raisin cookies that my sister made,” I lied. “You have a sister?” he asked. “Yep,” I lied again. “She works at that restaurant downtown.” “Which one?” he replied. Would he stop asking questions? This wasn’t part of the plan! CAUTION “Umm, that one near the park…” I guessed. “You mean the park next to the theater which is next to the hotel that’s on that street with a lot of traffic?” he shot back. “Ummm, I don’t know!” I cried. “Do you want a cookie or not?” “I’ll take one,” he said, moving his king. The second he put the cookie in his mouth, his eyes widened. “IS THERE CINNAMON IN THEM!?” he yelled. “Yeah, cinnamon is my sister’s secret ingredient. Well, it’s not really a secret anymore…” “I’m allergic to cinnamon!” the man cried. “Oh my goodness!” I exclaimed, acting like I didn’t already know that. I reached over the table to help him and “accidentally” knocked over all the chess pieces. “You go to the kitchen and get some water and I’ll fix the board back up.” “Ok,” he said in-between coughs. He rushed towards the kitchen. Now I just had to change the pieces. I worked quickly since the kitchen was only a couple rooms away. He walked back in the room and took his seat. I was able to move a couple pieces to help me win. He looked back at the chessboard and made a confused look. Oh no! had he noticed? “Even when you cheat, you still lose,” he muttered. WHAT!? “Checkmate,” he said, moving his queen. I was even a failure at cheating. I never played chess again.

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Family

Family To have students think critically about their own families; to build compassion and help classmates bond with each other; to connect art with life. Optional Free Write Topic: Write about dinnertime at your house.

Seat Switch The goal of this activity is to be silly and fun, and also to show students that families come in all shapes and sizes. Students from nontraditional families often feel left out or believe that something is wrong with them, and this is a great way to show them that they are in good company. CAUTION

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Step One:

the floor).

Push the desks aside and have students sit in a circle (either in chairs or on

Step Two: Say to students, “Okay, when I say go, everyone wearing blue needs to get up and switch seats with each other as fast as you can—everyone else stay exactly where you are.” (Statements like “Everyone with brown eyes” or “everyone who is a girl” or “everyone who walked to school today” work fine, too.) Do a practice round or two like this so that students get used to switching seats with each other when you call on them.

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Step Three: Say “Okay, now this is a competition: the last person to sit down is out. When

you are out, you become a referee and you have to watch the game to help me decide who gets out in the next round.”

Step Four: Continue to play the game, but start focusing on the theme of family, using prompts like these:

•Everyone who lives with both of their parents, get up and switch seats. •Everyone who lives with a grandparent, get up and switch seats. •Everyone with a brother, get up and switch seats. •Everyone with a sister, get up and switch seats. •Everyone who lives with a stepparent, get up and switch seats. •Everyone with a half-brother or half-sister, get up and switch seats. •Everyone with nieces or nephews, get up and switch seats. •Everyone who lives in a couple different places (mom’s house, dad’s house, grandma’s house, aunt’s house sometimes…) get up and switch seats. •Everyone who has lost someone in their family, get up and switch seats.

Family

Use your knowledge of your students to give prompts that will help them find things in common with each other, as well as demonstrate the diversity of the different kinds of families in the classroom.

Step Five: Discuss this activity with students. Ask: Does everyone have the same kind of family? What do we

have in common? What are some things that surprised you about the families of your classmates? How is your family different from other people’s families? Readings: “Dear Mother Why Do You Weep” by Sabria Jones; “Sibling Laughter” by Jasmine Smart; “After the Divorce” by Brian Taylor; “Dear Brother” by Arkeen Moore. Other good readings are “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke and “Smart Cookie” from The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. The Glass Castle, a memoir by Jeannette Walls, also has many fantastic passages on family (and is a great read anyway—I highly recommend it).

Have students choose from the following writing prompts: •Write a letter-poem to someone in your family that starts with a question (see “Dear Mother Why Do You Weep”). •Write about something you do with someone in your family (see “Sibling Laughter”). •Write about a moment when you realized something important about someone in your family (see “After the Divorce” Pg. 188).

Related Quote: “All men are children, and of one family.”—Henry David Thoreau

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Family CAUTION

Dear Mother Why Do You Weep by Sabria Jones, grade 8

Dear mother why do you weep? I know you are sad from your past, But why do you have to suffer and weep? You are my mother, and I love you so. Dear mother why do you weep? For I know that your life is not a puzzle So I can’t fit the pieces together, But do we have to suffer because of your past? You are my only mother, in which I adore I feel our pain, and absorb it like a sponge When you weep, my life feels like A roar of thunder that won’t pass Dear mother why do you weep? Is it because your parents are deceased? For you are a tree that won’t stop shedding leaves. Your tears are falling into my palm It feels like the ocean is rushing towards me. Dear mother why do you weep? Is it because I am here? You are my mother, and I love you so But mother please stop your weeping Before I just have to let go.

Family

Sibling Laughter By Jasmine Smart, grade 8

Sitting in a quiet room, not a sound or movement in sight. But a sound interrupts like a strong beam of light, that good kind of sound you hear on those orange juice commercials where everybody is happy. It explodes out like an erupting volcano pouring happiness throughout the room, but the odd thing about this eruption is no one knows where it came from or why it is happening. It is the choreographed laughter only strong siblings have. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s part of the reason weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re so close, that we can all start laughing at the same time for no reason.

CAUTION

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Family CAUTION

After the Divorce by Brian Taylor, grade 8

The old cross that stood watch over the fireplace was gone. It was Maâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s All that remained was the dusty outline of what once remained. The wooden bookcase where me and Ma used to put books we read at nighttime was also gone, all that was left was the imprint of it. The same with my heart, only the imprint of what once remained.

Family

Dear Brother by Arkeen Moore, grade 7

CAUTION

What are you gonna do when you move out? You are like snowy weather once you are happy. Why are you moving to Wilmington Island? You talk like a 23-year-old, since you are 23. What kind of taste will you have when you move out? Orange? You are like a happy, joyful lion now. How will you feel when you move out? Timid? You move like a hedgehog in just a second. When are you buying your pet cat? When will he or she get tame? Why are you taking your thousands of clothes with you? Who is going to pay for your rent? Why can’t you live close by to us? You are like the brother I’m going to miss for a while. PS – Can I name your cat when you get him or her?

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Death

Contributor: John Powers To help students speak openly about a difficult topic; to encourage supportive group discussion and bonding; to look at death and loss critically, from several different angles. Notes on this lesson: I recommend this class for students who have already begun to mention death in class, or if it is otherwise clear that a significant portion of the students have lost someone. With 9th and 10th-grade students, I have also successfully combined this lesson with the lesson on juxtaposition, asking students about how death often comes with strange, contrasting moments: bits of humor, bits of relief, surprising feelings of togetherness amidst the sadness. This led to excellent writing, but it is a challenge to approach both topics at once without overwhelming students. Optional Free Write Topic: Write about death (a vague and intimidating topic, yes, but one that will probably inspire a strong response from students).

CAUTION

I usually skip activities today in lieu of open discussion. Begin with something simple like, “Today, we’re going to read and write about death, which is a scary topic and a sad one, but also a really important one. It’s also a topic that some of you have already had to deal with in your lives. Who here knows someone who has died?” Then, allow students to tell their stories if they want, but don’t force anyone or put them on the spot. Listen carefully and respectfully, and only ask very open-ended follow-up questions like, “Do you want to tell us anything else about that, or about how it made you feel?” Continue discussion until everyone who wanted to speak has had an opportunity. Alternate Activity: Paper Hearts

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Step One: Have students cut a heart out of a piece of construction paper. Step Two: Tell students to write the name of someone they have lost in the middle of the heart.

Step Three: Have students fold their hearts in half. On one side of the crease, ask them to write down all the best qualities of this person. One the other side, have them write down all the worst qualities of this person.

Step Four: Discuss with students: Why is it that we often try to pretend like people who have died are perfect? Are they really perfect? Would they have been the same person if they hadn’t had faults, too? Would you have loved them as much if they had done exactly the right thing all the time? Why might it be important to remember the whole person, instead of a fake, perfect version of them?

Death

Readings: “Childhood is the Kingdom Where Nobody Dies” by Edna St. Vincent Millay; “Going to a Funeral” by Darnicia Bowens; “The Girl in the Mirror” by Shanika Franklin. Also, consider “The Glass” by Sharon Olds from the first lesson in the poetry section, or “Building Nicole’s Mama” by Patricia Smith from the first lesson in the book. Also, The Year of Magical Thinking, a memoir by Joan Didion, is an incredibly moving look at grief— consider reading it to find passages that appeal to you personally.

Write about someone you have lost, or about watching someone you know grieve.

Related Quote: “We cannot banish dangers, but we can banish fears. We must not demean life by standing in awe of death.”—David Sarnoff

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Death

Childhood Is the Kingdom Where Nobody Dies by Edna St. Vincent Millay reprinted with permission, courtesy of the Millay Society

CAUTION

I can’t teach this poem because I start crying. Maybe you can manage it: Childhood is not from birth to a certain age and at a certain age The child is grown, and puts away childish things. Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies. Nobody that matters, that is. Distant relatives of course Die, whom one never has seen or has seen for an hour, And they gave one candy in a pink-and-green stripèd bag, or a jack-knife, And went away, and cannot really be said to have lived at all. And cats die. They lie on the floor and lash their tails, And their reticent fur is suddenly all in motion With fleas that one never knew were there, Polished and brown, knowing all there is to know, Trekking off into the living world. You fetch a shoe-box, but it’s much too small, because she won’t curl up now: So you find a bigger box, and bury her in the yard, and weep. But you do not wake up a month from then, two months, A year from then, two years, in the middle of the night And weep, with your knuckles in your mouth, and say Oh, God! Oh, God! Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies that matters— mothers and fathers don’t die. And if you have said, “For heaven’s sake, must you always be kissing a person?” Or, “I do wish to gracious you’d stop tapping on the window with your thimble!” Tomorrow, or even the day after tomorrow if you’re busy having fun, Is plenty of time to say, “I’m sorry, mother.” To be grown up is to sit at the table with people who have died, who neither listen nor speak; >>

Death

Childhood Is the Kingdom Where Nobody Dies CONTINUED CAUTION Who do not drink their tea, though they always said Tea was such a comfort. Run down into the cellar and bring up the last jar of raspberries; they are not tempted. Flatter them, ask them what was it they said exactly That time, to the bishop, or to the overseer, or to Mrs. Mason; They are not taken in. Shout at them, get red in the face, rise, Drag them up out of their chairs by their stiff shoulders and shake them and yell at them; They are not startled, they are not even embarrassed; they slide back into their chairs. Your tea is cold now. You drink it standing up, And leave the house.

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Death CAUTION

Going to a Funeral by Darnicia Bowens, grade 6

12:00 pm. The bright sunny morning wind, scary, afraid, sad. My heart beating faster and faster. Images of the scene. The smell of dead people. I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t want to go. My aunt and mom drag me to the car. Their hands felt like a gorilla taking me to a tree.

Death

The Girl in the Rearview Mirror

CAUTION

by Shanika Franklin, grade 10 Waking up from a long day of costumes, scary masks, and lots of candy, I get up out of bed and walk to the bathroom to brush and wash my face. Look out the window while this shiny light hits my face. It’s about 1:00pm in the afternoon. I leave and go to my cousin’s house to get some butter. I walk in the door and everyone’s quiet with their heads down. Me with this big smile on my face, I said what’s up to everyone. It was almost like an echo in the room of my own voice. My cousin stepped to me and said, “You boyfriend got killed last night in the house.” My face felt like it had hit the floor with the rest of my body. The ceiling spun, the walls got closer, and so did the floor beneath me. It was like a nightmare I couldn’t wake up from. A week passes by. Now it’s time for the funeral as we drive off from the house on the way to the funeral. I look into the rearview mirror, seeing a girl who was so hurt, but so strong. Now, every time I think about him, I think as if he’s gone on a vacation far away, and someday I’ll see him again.

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Perseverance

Contributors: Mojo Roberts and the Coastal Team To introduce students to the concept of perseverance; to have students practice persevering through a difficult task; to create an atmosphere of patience and diligence in the classroom. Optional Free Write Topic: Write about something you really, really want and what you would be willing to do to get it.

Step One: LINK 26 Watch the video of a ballet using dancers with amputated

CAUTION

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limbs at the provided link. If you are adventurous, ask your students to stand on one leg throughout the video in order to better identify with the dancers (using a chair or desk for balance, if necessary). If they complain that it is too hard, point out that the man in the video has to live his whole life on only one leg; they can do it for five minutes.

Step Two: Discuss the video: was it better or worse because of the dancersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; disabilities? Why is that? Why do we often love things more when we know they were hard to make? How do you think it made the dancers feel to perform this together?

Step Three: Afterwards, define the word perseverance with your students (you would

be amazed how many students hear that word all the time without ever knowing what it means) and ask students to think of times when perseverance might be valuable or necessary.

Perseverance

Readings: “See It Through” by Edgar Albert Guest; “I Am” by Breanna Mitchell Tell students they will have 15 minutes (quite a long time) to write. They are not allowed to stop writing, and every sentence must begin with the phrase “I am” (or whatever other phrase you think will inspire them; “I need” and “I am going” are also good ones). Warn them that this will be very difficult, and they may feel like they are running out of ideas, but that the more they persevere and the harder they try to keep thinking of new sentences, the better their writing will be and the more cool things they will discover about themselves. Alternatively, they can write about a time when they kept trying to achieve something, despite challenges.

Related Quote: “When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.”

~Franklin D. Roosevelt

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Perseverance

See It Through By Edgar Albert Guest CAUTION This poem is especially effective when read in a group activity. This could be as simple as doing a call-andresponse reading with the students reading every other line together as a thunderous group, or it could be more complicated, such as making students read the poem while working together to lift something heavy, or running a relay race, or shooting baskets. This is a great opportunity to get kinesthetic learners involved. When you are finished reading, ask students: Does Guest say that we will always succeed when we try hard? If trying hard doesn’t mean that we will succeed, then why should we do it anyway?

When you’re up against a trouble, Meet it squarely, face to face; Lift your chin and set your shoulders, Plant your feet and take a brace. When it’s vain to try to dodge it, Do the best that you can do; You may fail, but you may conquer, See it through! Black may be the clouds about you And your future may seem grim, But don’t let your nerve desert you; Keep yourself in fighting trim. If the worst is bound to happen, Spite of all that you can do, Running from it will not save you, See it through! Even hope may seem but futile, When with troubles you’re beset, But remember you are facing Just what other men have met. You may fail, but fall still fighting; Don’t give up, whate’er you do; Eyes front, head high to the finish. See it through!

Perseverance

I Am by Breanna Mitchell, grade 6 I am gorgeous. I need more attention. I want him. I am sensitive. I need love. I want respect. I am bored. I need something to do. I want to get out of the house. I am trapped! I need help. I want to get out of here! I am fashionable. I need colors I want more I am angry I need to calm myself I am smart I need more work I want more teaching I am in love with babies I need more diapers I want more similac I am flexible I need dance classes I want to learn more steps I am colorful I need more blue I want more yellow I am sympathetic

I need more people to comfort I want everyone to be okay CAUTION I am clumsy I need more steadiness I want to be perfect I am adventurous I need places to go I want to explore more I am friendly I need respect I want respect I am a daddyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s girl I need my daddy I want him to be there for me I am what you describe as fun I need to keep happiness I want you not to be sad I am a teacherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s pet I need more teaching I want more teaching I am angerless I need to count back I want to stay angerless I am unique I need tidiness I want to stay positive I am me I need more me time I want more for myself!

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I Am Not What I Seem

I Am Not What I Seem To teach compassion and insight; to demonstrate that a first look almost never tells the whole story; to get students in the habit of close observation. Optional Free Write Topic: Write about a secret.

Old Woman/Young Woman

LINK 27 Step One: Show students the drawing of the Old Woman/Young Woman illusion shown on the next page. Ask students to estimate the age of the woman in the photo. When they realize that some of them are seeing an old woman and some of them are seeing a young woman, ask students to point out where the nose, chin, and eyes are so that all students can see both faces.

Step Two: Discuss with students whether or not they can ever see that picture in the

CAUTION

same way again, now that they know about the other face. Extend this into real life: Has anyone ever noticed something about another person, and then never been able to look at that person the same way again? How often do you think we miss important information about people in first impressions? Can you ever see everything about a person at once? What do people misunderstand about you when they first meet you?

Step Three: If you would like to extend the activity, you can have students discuss the additional illusions provided at Link 27.

I Am Not What I Seem

Readings: “A Book and its Cover” by Candis Quarterman; “The Rose” by Lashay Doyle. Also recommended: “Not Waving but Drowning” by Stevie Smith (provided at Link 27).

Option One: Write about a time when you discovered

something about someone that changed your opinion of them. If students get stuck, ask them to write about the first time they saw a parent cry, or a moment when they saw someone they dislike do something unexpectedly kind.

Option Two: Have students write a poem using the structure “I seem…but really…” in every line (see student examples).

Related Quote: “It is respectable to have illusions—and safe—and profitable and dull.” – Joseph Conrad

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I Am Not What I Seem

Old Woman or Young Woman? CAUTION

A Book and Its Cover by Candis Quarterman, grade 6

I seem like a forest fire But really I’m like Niagra Falls. I seem like Tostitos salsa But really I’m like fettucini alfredo. I seem like a kickboxer But really I’m just a counselor. I seem like an erupting volcano But really I’m just an island.

I Am Not What I Seem

CAUTION

The Rose by Lashay Doyle, grade 6

I may seem like winter, but I am summer. The things I do make me blossom in the spring. I am picky over the things I eat. I seem strong, but I am weak, Lazy over the things I do. Work hard so I can, too. I think Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m pink, but I am blue. What kind of flower do you know That I am, too? I smell like a daisy, but I am a rose. I am a blue rose.

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But My Kids Are Crazy!

Using Interactive Lessons in Classrooms with Disciplinary Problems Once, I taught a workshop at an inner-city middle school. I asked the teacher if I could rearrange the classroom from her militarystyle rows into small clusters of desks. I explained that I wanted the students to work together, in small groups, on an activity. She laughed at me. “Groups?” she said, shaking her head. “Good luck.” The school was notorious for bad behavior and poor test grades, and this teacher was certain that allowing the students to talk with each other and work together would create total chaos. She preferred lecturing from her podium and leaving little room for student interference in the lessons. To her incredible surprise, however, the activity went off without a hitch. The students worked quickly and efficiently together, they learned the concept at hand, and they demonstrated an ability to apply the concept as a group. Though there was, admittedly, occasional wayward chatting, it did not get in the way of their learning—in fact, it added to it because it kept students engaged and excited. The teacher later admitted that it was one of the most effective lessons she had seen; she would be teaching it again the next year. Please do not dismiss these lessons just because you do not think your students are mature enough to handle them. They are mature enough (or they will learn to be); they just need some help from you to keep them on track. While training your students to work in an interactive classroom will be difficult and take time, the improvement in their learning is absolutely worth the extra work. Here are some helpful hints for keeping unruly classrooms in order while still allowing students to be active, engaged participants in your class: • Have straightforward rules with reasonable consequences, and have the classroom discuss the purpose of these rules as a group. Before running an activity, anticipate what problems might occur and head them off with clear rules. Spell everything out, even if it seems obvious to you. Generally, bad behavior isn’t malicious; it is a misunderstanding of (or a habit of conveniently forgetting) what is and isn’t appropriate behavior. If possible, have students create the rules, so that they feel more responsible for their enforcement. o For example, if you are running an activity that involves students walking around the classroom, you might say something like, “Do you want your artwork getting messed up by someone running around and knocking it over? No? Okay, so Rule One: walk slowly and keep your hands by your sides. And like we agreed before, each time you break the rules, you will make the whole class start the activity over until we are all able to do it correctly and respectfully.” When setting parameters for activities, time limits also work well (“Your group has five minutes to finish. If it doesn’t get done, you will have to stay after school with me and finish it then.”) as does the “three strikes” rule (“You get two warnings for breaking the rules. On the third strike, you have to stay after school for an hour to make up the work your missed while you were fooling around.”) • Apply your rules and consequences consistently. This seems like a no-brainer, but it’s hard to do. If you say you’re going to call parents that night, you have to call them. If you say you will make the students stay after school, you have to make sure they show up. Assign consequences that you know you can follow through with. • Don’t waste valuable class time by lecturing or preaching about behavior. Students never take this seriously for more than five minutes at a time. I can’t tell you how many times I have seen students glaze over—or even fall asleep—while a teacher has shouted at them about “respect” and “responsibility.” Though they shut up while the teacher talks, they generally do not absorb the content of the speech. Just be consistent about your rules and your consequences. Good behavior will follow. • Use competitions. Students of all ages love contests. Competitions make them feel as though they are doing something for themselves, rather than just for you. It increases the energy and engagement in the classroom, and it also give the students tangible goals. When you say “follow the rules and you’ll win,” it’s a lot more fun than saying “follow the rules or I’ll punish you.”

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Assessment: Making Grading Easier! Grading creative writing projects is a delicate task. The more the grades depend on you and your opinions, the less ownership students will take of their work, and the less creative they will be. I usually abandon grades altogether in favor of detailed comments, but I understand that this is time-consuming and not practical for all teachers. If you do not have time to write detailed comments, I suggest two alternatives: peerediting and self-assessment. These tools can be used separately or in conjunction with each other.

Peer-Editing Peer-editing allows students to get useful feedback on their work without you having to comment on a hundred and twenty papers first. It also helps build a sense of community in the classroom by making students responsible for each other’s work. There are, however, important rules of thumb for creating a peer-editing experience that doesn’t frustrate or anger students: 1. Instruct students to comment on content, not mechanics like grammar, spelling, or punctuation. While it is easy to take technical correction from an expert (i.e., you), students hate to be corrected by their peers; it makes them feel stupid. Save that work for yourself. 2. Do not let students mark directly on each other’s papers. Students can be very protective of their work. While they love it when teachers and mentors write encouragement and ideas on their papers because it makes them feel special, students often become angry or possessive when another student (particularly one they might not get along with well) writes on their work. Hand students a peer-editing sheet for them to write their comments on. 3. Require positive feedback. The first question on any peer review sheet should always be “What was your favorite part?” (And explain that answers like “nothing” are not acceptable.) Criticism is about elaborating on strengths just as much as it is about eliminating weaknesses. Starting with positive feedback also helps students accept the critique to come. See the next page for an example peer review sheet.

Peer Editing Guide 1. What was your favorite sentence or line of the work? Why? What is something that this writer does well?

2. What was a part of the work that you didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t understand? What could make it better or clearer?

3. If you had to take out a few lines or sentences, what would they be?

4. Where are two places where the writer could add more figurative language?

5. What are two places where you wished the author had taken more time to describe something? Where could the author have added more details like sounds, smells, or descriptions of what things look like and feel like?

6. What else would you like to tell the writer about his or her writing?

Self-Assessment Teachers often shy away from self-assessment because it seems like an obvious opportunity for students to cheat. In my experience, however, students almost never use self-assessments to artificially inflate their grades. In fact, failing students often grade themselves far too harshly, having accepted the idea that they are not capable of success. Through allowing students to grade themselves, you can both save yourself a lot of work and also give them ownership of their writing. This deepens their commitment to class and helps them become self-motivated students. See the following page for an example of a self-assessment sheet.

Revision Self-Assessment

Not Yet

Sort of

Totally

1. My piece does a good job of using all five senses to help the reader picture what Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m writing about.

2. My piece (if fiction) has characters with clear goals: they want something and they do interesting stuff to get it.

3. My piece has a strong ?!. structure that draws the reader in with a mystery, then surprises them with the answer before bringing the story to a close (if fiction).

4. My piece does a good job of not using dead words and clichĂŠs.

5. My piece is full of details that help the reader picture where the story is happening (setting) and what everything looks and feels like.

6. My piece uses an appropriate form (poem, story, diary entry, etc.) that adds something to what I am trying to tell the reader.

7. My piece is something that only I could write.

8. I have made this piece as good as it can possibly be, and Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m proud of it.

Based on this survey, I would give myself a grade of __________. When I revise it, I will do the following to improve it: _______________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________________

Links All of these links are provided directly (and regularly updated) at www.deepcenter.org/links. No need to bother typing out these long addresses! Just visit our website.

Link 1:

A video of Patricia Smith reading “Building Nicole’s Mama” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybJARtVIXfA

Link 2:

A voice recording of Roger Bonair-Agard reading “How Do We Spell Freedom” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybJARtVIXfA

Link 3:

A video of Steve Colman reading “I Wanna Hear a Poem” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-jXDuqHEEk

Link 4:

A video of comedian Eddie Izzard talking about the word “Awesome” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6DxV-MkPgM

Link 5:

A video of a leaping shark http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-t2ayKadD0

Link 6:

A video of puns on figurative language http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmuzQ3q-Dto

Link 7:

A music video for “Waterfalls” by TLC http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WEtxJ4-sh4

Link 8: How to make an origami coin purse

www.origami-instructions.com/origami-coin-purse.html

Link 9: “Little Feet” by Sandra Cisneros

http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780307429971&view=excerpt

Link 10: “Argument Clinic” video by Monty Python http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teMlv3ripSM&feature=player_embedded Link 11: “Bullet Control” video with comedian Chris Rock http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuX-nFmL0II Link 12: “The Lobster Rebellion” by Dave Barry

http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/06/27/1680102/the-lobster-rebellion.html

Link 13:

A video of a slippery octopus http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Td_Crhogu8c

Link 14: “The Glass” by Sharon Olds http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~ddmorris/poetry/poems.html#glass.html

Link 15: Recording of the show Stomp http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zu15OujKM0&feature=PlayList&p=90C828B5C0435C5B&playnext_ from=PL&playnext=1&index=1 Link 16: Videos from the “Make McCain Interesting Contest” on the Colbert Report: Dragonball Z: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2eDVgHLKJE Night of the living candidate: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6J9e-X2Buu0&feature=related He’s that old: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Apdd-IDptHg Link 17: Billie Holiday singing “Strange Fruit” and information on lynching

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9FZMHNhJ80 lynching: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching

Link 18: Before-and-after photos of the battle of Gettysburg Photos of wartime: http://www.gettysburgboycott.com/id2.html Photos many years later, after the grass has gone to work: http://icor1348.com/Gettysburg.htm Link 19: Chapter from The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien http://us.history.wisc.edu/hist102/pdocs/obrien_story.pdf Link 20: Video of Aladdin outside the Cave of Wonders http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fm1jttsv_tE&feature=related Link 21: “Kiwi!”—an animated video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdUUx5FdySs Link 22: “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson http://www.americanliterature.com/Jackson/SS/TheLottery.html Link 23: “The Origin of Love” from Hedwig and the Angry Inch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YO9FpWX57E Link 24: Photos and bio of Malcom X http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_x Link 25: Clip from The Wire http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYsVmA4fIg8 Link 26: Video of a ballet featuring dancers with amputated limbs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnLVRQCjh8c Link 27: Optical illusions http://hubpages.com/hub/Two-Faces-or-a-Vase-10-Simple-but-Wonderful-Optical-Illusions “Not Waving But Drowning” by Stevie Smith http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/not-waving-but-drowning/ | 217

Additional Resources Books Koch, Kenneth. Wishes, Lies, and Dreams. New York: Harper Paperbacks, 1999. This book is a treasure trove of student examples and good writing prompts, as well as an interesting narrative of one poetâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s experience with teaching. I recommend it both because of its intructional value and because of its literary merits. Pollack, Stanley. Moving Beyond Icebreakers: An Innovative Approach to Group Facilitation, Learning, and Action. Boston: Center for Teen Empowerment, 2005. This collection of activities was an invaluable resource in putting together The Cure for IDK. It includes hundreds of useful group activities that address a wide variety of classroom goals. There are also several excellent sections on how to incorporate active learning into your everyday teaching process, including advice on everything from desk arrangements to running discussions. Porterfield, Gordon. The Yippee Book: A Resource Book of Creative Ideas for English Teachers with Objectives and Step-by-Step Instructions. New York: Perfection Form Company, 1987. This is the first creative writing teaching guide I ever read, and it remains one of my favorites. The activities are clever, adaptable, and invariably fun for the students.

Websites www.poets.org This website has biographies of every major English-language poet, access to many of their poems, and even recordings of the poets reading their work. It is, without a doubt, my favorite online resource. www.scholastic.com The Teacher Center at Scholastic is one of the most comprehensive curriculum resources for teachers available on the webâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;it includes lesson plans submitted by teachers across the country, as well as teaching blogs, teaching tips, downloadable programs, printable handouts, and other resources. twowritingteachers.wordpress.com This website is an honest, helpful, often funny blog written by two writing teachers, and it is brimming with both inspiration and advice. A great pick-me-up if the school day has gotten you down.

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Thank You Thank you, first and foremost, to the Hodge Foundation, whose generous support has made this book possible. Thank you, also, to the many volunteer teachers who have worked together to invent and perfect these lessons. While I have tried to acknowledge the work that teachers have done on individual lessons, Deep is a community of teachers who are constantly brainstorming together and sharing experiences, so each of Deep’s teacher has, in a way, had a hand in all of these lessons: Emma Bartholomew, Sophia Basaldua, Sarah Bates, Christopher Berinato, Alex Borinsky, Erin Chen, TiEsha Cobin, Margaret Coughlin, Kimberly Davies, Adrian Dunbar, Sabrina Dunbar, Oluwakemi Elufiede, Margaret Emanuel, Hartford Gongaware, Brittaney Harden, Tanya Hodges, Becca Holohan, Stacey Kronquest, Pinya Lindroos, Eleanor Liu, Emma Lunbeck, Jessica McIntyre, Margaret Makuch, Abigail Miles, Gino Orlandi, John Powers, Zach Powers, Allison Ramirez, Adeeba Rana, Joseph “Mojo” Roberts, Mel Rouse, Melissa Sanso, Dabarie Satterfield, Jeff Sherwood, Nicole Smith, Xavier Turner, Tandy Versyp, Harlan Whatley, and Joanna Wood. Thank you to Elaine Glenn and Kerry Coursey, who allowed us to test these lessons with over one hundred 8thgrade students in Deep’s Teacher Relief Workshop at Coastal Middle School, and to Kimberly Crawford and Dr. Gequetta Jenkins, who allowed us to test these workshops with over ninety 8th grade students in Deep’s Teacher Relief Program at Hubert Middle School. Thank you, finally, to Deep’s board members, whose support is invaluable to this organization: Development Director Chelsea Dye, Prof. Chad Faries, Creative Director Hartford Gongaware, Prof. John Lowe, and Prof. Monica Rausch.

Lessons by Deep Center 路 deepkids.com Book layout and design by Stephanie Usery 路 UseryArt.com Illustrations by Melissa Rouse 路 MelRouse.ArtworkFolio.com Cover art by Sunmin Lee 路 Behance.net/SunminLee

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Catherine Killingsworth studied English at Yale University, where she won the Curtis Prize for her academic writing and the Wright Prize for her creative writing. She also studied creative writing at Cambridge University as a Thouron Scholar and conducted research on community education in Argentina on the Wagster, Cepeda-Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Leary, and Richter fellowships. She founded Deep-a nonprofit that offers free writing workshops to public school students in Savannah, Georgiaâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;in 2008 with the aid of the Cohen Public Service Fellowship, the Ella Lyman Cabot Fellowship, and the Seymour Lustman Prize for Arts and Culture.

The Cure for IDK is not a typical lesson book. It is frank, funny, and full

of lessons that are simultaneously entertaining and challenging. More importantly, it specifically appeals to middle school students—the bright-eyed eager beavers as well as the more apathetic adolescents.

Each of the 36 lessons within fully integrates reading, writing, and oral presentation skills by offering interactive games, engaging reading selections, copious peer examples, and exciting writing prompts. The Cure for IDK shows students not just how to write but why they should want to—and how much fun it can be. Use these lessons individually, in units, or as a year-long weekly curriculum and watch your students’ love for literature grow.

Deep Center

This book is a product of the , a nonprofit organization that offers free writing workshops to public school students in Savannah, Georgia. Deep is a community of teachers who teach together, learn together, and plan fantastic, foolproof lessons together (the most successful of which you will find in this book). To find out more, or to support Deep’s work, visit www.deepkids.com.

“Deep changed my life.” – Terrell Davis, grade 7 “It’s just the best class in the world.” –Tashjadala Mikell, grade 6 “I’ve learned the magic of words. I definitely would take a million more Deep workshops for more reasons than I can fit on this page.” – Jacqualyn Ellis, grade 5

“I feel my writing is better now than before… They let me go beyond the limits with my writing.” – Jackson Brantley, grade 8

Sponsored by the Hodge Foundation cover design by Sunmin Lee a Deep Center publication www.deepkids.com