This week was our final week of poetry, and we focused on allowing students to choose from three types of poems. One type was on the topic of “talking to animals.” Each person chose an animal he/she is interested in or has questions for and wrote a poem as if in a conversation with this animal. The raven, a pet dog, a whale, an ant were all represented. The next type of poem was called a Rube Goldberg poem. Essentially, this poem is a cause/effect piece of writing, similar to a Rube Goldberg machine. Some students created a cause and effect chain of events that lead to a breakfast on a plate ready to eat. Others wrote about the chain of events in life and how one thing leads to another. The final type of poem was called an Expanded Secret poem. With this type of writing, students were to start with a statement or secret of some kind – real or made-up – and then expand the story of this initial secret. We had a lot of fun experimenting with writing and using humor to bring forth a certain mood or tone.
Finally, students worked on and shared pieces of their larger piece of work. They are coming along nicely, and it’s hard to believe that we will be reading these pieces in just two weeks. This summer has gone by fast, and it’s been a blast. We hope to see you at the brunch on August 12 and to see your students this fall or summer for more writing. Thanks again! See you next week for our second-to-last session.
August 1, 2012