We began by looking at the first question for the new article of the week. Early in the piece, there is a challenging sentence that we went over: I have become consumed with an alarming possibility:...
Archive
What our classroom did in previous days, weeks, months, even years…
Tonal Shift: “The Lanyard”
We went over "The Lanyard" today, beginning with Collins reading the poem at a poetry festival. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khQ9e0QpEM8 Students were surprised to hear the audience laughing at...
Tone Continued: “The Lanyard”
Today we continued working with tone, and we stuck with Billy Collins's work, reading "The Lanyard" today. We began by building a little background knowledge about Proust's madeleine: That...
Tone 3: Finishing “Forgetfulness”
Today, we went over a new poem: Billy Collins's "Forgetfulness." The name of the author is the first to go followed obediently by the title, the plot, the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel...
Tone 2: Forgetfulness
We finished up looking at tone in "My Papa's Waltz," determining that there was a somewhat-nostalgically playful tone in the poem. Afterward, students worked on Billy Collin's poem "Forgetfulness."...
Tone Beginning
Today, we began looking tone by examining one of the most famous poems ever written: Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night." We spent the day working our way through the poem, making...
Schaffer Poems
Today we combined two of our favorite things: poetry and Schaffer analysis. Over the next few weeks, we'll be creating Schaffer paragraphs simply by planning them: we won't actually write them, but...
My Papa’s PSAT Waltz
We had the PSAT today, so many students were out during class. No matter -- it's recorded and posted on Google Classroom. We began the day with a short open-note quiz on the two poems we just...
Connotation 2 Completed
Students today completed Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays" with the annotations below: Students who did not view the streamed class need to view the recording now on Google Classroom. ("But Mr. Scott!...
Connotation
Today we began working on connotations by looking at Robert Hayden’s excellent poem “Those Winter Sundays.” After defining connotations through a modified form of inductive reasoning, we looked at...
End of Poetry Beginnings
We finished going over today the poem "Because You Asked about the Line Between Prose and Poetry." An annotated copy is below. We also completed the list of actions for understanding a poem: Read...
Poetry Beginnings
We began a new unit today in which we'll be studying poetry, working specifically to develop skills necessary to parse and to understand a poem. We went over the first of several steps on how to...
