What a coincidence: all classes are beginning new units within a day of each other: first period began a unit on persuasion on Monday; second and sixth periods began the same unit on Tuesday; fourth period began a unit on poetry today.

First period went over persuasive techniques. Second and sixth periods presented their persuasive arguments trying to convince me to give them the prize. (What prize? They didn’t even know — part of the challenge.) Fourth period began a poetry unit, looking at Howard Nemerov’s wonderful poem about poetry:

Because You Asked About the Line Between Prose and Poetry
By Howard Nemerov

Sparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzle
That while you watched turned into pieces of snow
Riding a gradient invisible
From silver aslant to random, white, and slow.

There came a moment that you couldn’t tell.
And then they clearly flew instead of fell.

We took some time going through it, but I was careful to make sure we didn’t do as Billy Collins, author of our second poem, warns about in “Introduction to Poetry”:

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

We’ll be looking at more Collins — my favorite poet — tomorrow.

The lesson seemed to be a success, judging from some of the ticket-out-the-door responses to “How do you feel about our poetry unit?”

• “I feel better about poetry because it was kind of fun working today. I also understand how to understand poetry better now.”
• “In this is the first session of poetry I really enjoy poetry.”
• “At first, I was not excited for poetry. Now, I feel a little bit better and confident about it. After learning the steps [to comprehend poetry] and knowing that all I have to do is think about certain key words, it will help me understand poetry more.”
• “I believe that spending this time with poetry will be helpful with overall reading comprehension.”

A good start — wait until we cover meter, though. I do hope I won’t kill that budding appreciation of poetry with that lesson…

Homework

• First period: Identify two types of persuasive techniques you use when trying to convince your parents of something.
• Second, fourth, and sixth periods: None.