Homework!

This week we've been looking at SYMBOLISM .

We talked about the symbolism in the front cover art for the famous book 'Twilight' and thought about the kinds of symbols we see around us every day that work like a code - symbols that we associate with religions, or with ideas, or with products or companies.

When they want to communicate ideas in their work, poets often use symbols as a way to make the reader think of lots of other things.

In 'Valentine', Carol Ann Duffy chooses not to use the cliched, familiar symbols of love (roses, hearts, flowers etc) and instead makes her own symbol of love: the onion. It's surprising and funny at first, but she shows us how this makes sense and has real truth to it as well. She makes us think about onions in a new way, finding unexpected beauty in them, as well as showing us the less pretty parts of love.

So for your homework this week, we're going to think about symbols. I'd like you to think hard about who you are, your strengths and weaknesses and dreams and values, and decide what would be a really good symbol to represent YOU.

Please prepare this on a piece of paper (you can print it or make it by hand) with a picture and an explanation of why this is a good symbol for you. You should have at least 3 good reasons why this image could signify you.

(DON'T come with a picture of something you like and say "I like dogs so my symbol is a dog." It's not just something that you like. It's something that can REPRESENT you.)

Oh! The places you'll go!

Splendid work today in Drama, ladies and gentlemen!

By a huge majority, the poem & performance you liked the most was Tao's team with "Oh, The Places You'll Go". Therefore that is the poem we'll take as the basis for our assembly. You can listen to the whole poem here, and see the pictures too:



Start thinking about how we can make this into a performance, my lovelies! I was VERY impressed by your creativity this morning and I feel confident that we're going to come up with something fabulous.

Back at school!

Hey guys!

It's lovely being back at school again - I have a feeling that we'll end up having to close again, because there's still a massive volume of water creeping into Bangkok like the world's slowest disaster movie, but it's good to know now that most of us can access Edmodo and the blog from home. If and when we end up having to close again, you'll know what to do! :D


I know some people are having problems finding a poem to learn by heart; you DO need to show it to me first, because there are a lot of badly-written poems out there on the internet, and although I don't at all mind if your poem is one written by an amateur writer nobody has heard of instead of a famous professional poet, I do want to be sure that it's well done.

If you are stuck & cannot find a poem, here are some poets you could Google:

Spike Milligan - funny & silly

Michael Rosen - funny & silly

Shel Silverstein - funny

Ken Nesbitt - funny

Dr Seuss - funny & silly

Roald Dahl - funny and silly

These first few all write poetry aimed specifically at kids; it isn't usually very deep & thought-provoking, but it's fun! The next lot write poetry that you have to think about a bit more:

Carol Ann Duffy - serious; uses symbolism & makes you think; sometimes funny

Wilfred Owen - serious (World War II poet - he was a soldier on the front lines, writing the truth about the war); generally pretty heart-breaking

Ted Hughes - often writes about animals & wildlife; usually serious; makes you think;

William Carlos Williams - doesn't use obvious sound patterns of rhyme/rhythm - instead his poems tend to be vivid snapshots


WHAT MAKES A GOOD POEM?

We've talked about what makes a poem different from prose: you guys know that poems are a mixture of music and meaning, and that the pattern of sounds in the air is very important. You know that the way a poem is written down on the page usually tells us something about those sounds in the air. You know that a poem can be full of symbols and make you think about lots of things outside the poem. But what's the difference between a good poem and a bad poem? Is it just a matter of personal taste?

No.

Personal taste determines whether you LIKE something. But that's not the same as being able to make a sensible and reasoned assessment about whether or not something is well made. (I quite often like things even though I know that, objectively, they're not very good - for example, I like really terrible B-movies about giant sharks eating people. I also sometimes don't like things even though I can see they are done to a very high standard, like operas and football matches.)

A good poem (or any kind of art, really) should be able to move you. It should make you feel something - even if it only makes you grin because the words are fun to say and hear.

A good poem might show you something ordinary and everyday, but make you feel like you've really noticed it for the same time. Or it might show you something wildly new and unfamiliar, but make it feel relevant and meaningful and understandable.

It might communicate a story, or an image, or even just nonsense words that make enjoyable sound patterns and evoke images and ideas in your mind.

A good poem should be funny or beautiful or true. It might be a combination of these things, but it must be at least one of them.

What's more, a good piece of art (poem, music, painting, photograph, drama, whatever) should have nothing in it that's wasted. Nothing extra, or weak, or pointless, or flabby. Every bit of it should be carefully chosen, and purposeful.

So a GOOD poem is carefully built out of the very best words, and it does precisely what the poet wants it to do. That might mean it's musical, or silly, or heart-breaking, or clever, or that it puts bright and vivid pictures into your mind. There are all kinds of ways that a poem can be wonderful. A poem's job is to make a connection between the poet's mind and your mind, and to communicate something. It's like a message in a bottle that the poet tosses out onto the oceans of time, not knowing who will pick it up and read it.

A poem should be built just as carefully as a car designer would design a car - every bit of the poem should be there for a purpose, every word chosen because it fits beautifully and effectively with every other bit. There are lots of different kinds of car, just like there are lots of different kinds of poem. If a car designer is building a Formula 1 racing car, they will not build it the same way that they would build an off-road vehicle designed for mountains and deserts, or the way they would build a large family car for driving around the city. If a poet is building a funny poem for children, they won't build it the same way that they would build a poem about the meaning of death, or a poem intended to seduce somebody they fancy, or a poem intended to creep people out as they sit around a campfire.

Whatever kind of poem it is, it should be built out of the very best words for the purpose. It shouldn't be clumsily or lazily built. It shouldn't be trite or cliched. It shouldn't be dull.

Distance Learning: Day 8

Good afternoon, my lovelies!
As I type, we're still awaiting confirmation from the Ministry of Education as to whether we will be permitted to open on Monday 7th. I do hope that all of you are safe and dry, wherever you are; school remains untouched by the floods at present and I hope it will remain so.

Okay, today's mission may take you a while: you're going to learn a poem by heart. You can choose any of these poems and you need to memorise it so that when I call on you to stand up in class, you will be able to recite the poem from memory.

I think this will take quite a few days of practice, so I'm giving you until the end of next week to be perfect.

That means you need to start practicing NOW and keep practicing every day until you can do it without looking at the words. It would be A REALLY REALLY BAD IDEA to leave it until the last minute, so I feel confident that none of you will do that.

http://web.cs.dal.ca/~johnston/poetry/timothy.html

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/dis-poetry/

http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww260.html

http://www.shakespeare-online.com/sonnets/18.html

http://www.online-literature.com/shelley_percy/672/

http://www.poetryconnection.net/poets/Ted_Hughes/4244

These are my suggestions. If you have a different poem that you personally would like to learn by heart, then I'm open to ideas; write to me & give me a link to the poem and I'll tell you whether or not it will count.

Guys, don't worry if you don't understand all the meanings of all the words in the poem you choose. For this activity I'm just asking you to memorise the poem first off - like learning a song or a piece of music. Just worry about remembering all the words. We'll focus on comprehension exercises later, once you've got your poem memorised.

Distance Learning: Day 7

Good morning ladies and gentlemen!

Today we're going to focus on reading comprehension as well as understanding the structure of the poem. (I mean we're going to talk about what the poem MEANS, as well as the way it's built from a pattern of sounds.)


FUNERAL BLUES

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East, my West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

by WH Auden

Now answer these questions using the P.E.E. skills we used when writing about short stories. (That means you need to use quotations as proof every time, remember.)

1) What is this poem about?

2) How does the narrator feel? How do you know they feel that way?

3) Why does the narrator want to give the dog a juicy bone?

4) Why does the narrator want to put crepe bows on the necks of public doves? And why do they want traffic policemen to wear black gloves?

5) Every 4-line stanza has the same rhyme scheme (or rhyme pattern). What is this pattern?

6) How did this poem make you feel?

7) What was the most powerful or moving line for you when you were reading it?

Distance Learning: Day 6

Good morning!

I'm delighted to see that most of us seem to be getting on top of rhyming now - bravo! Good job! :D

Let's turn our attention to alliteration today.

As you know, alliteration is kind of the opposite of rhyme; rhyme is where the END of the words sounds the same, but alliteration is where the BEGINNING of the words sounds the same.

Here's a little warm up activity to help practice alliteration!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/starship/english/games/space_spins/small_no_sound/standard.shtml

TODAY'S LESSON
Learning Objective: Identifying and using alliteration.

PART 1:
Here's part of a poem I wrote a few months ago, which uses regular patterns of rhyme and rhythm and lots of alliteration.

Please identify all the alliteration and also any rhymes you find - I've done the first two verses for you as an example.

(DO NOT BE FOOLED JUST BECAUSE YOU SEE THE SAME LETTERS! SAY IT OUT LOUD AND CHECK THAT IT'S THE SAME SOUND TOO! Remember your phonics lessons - sometimes a letter sounds different depending on what it's next to - for example, c doesn't sound the same as ch, these are different sounds, just like t and th are different sounds.)

AN ALLITERATIVE ANIMAL ALPHABET

Alliteration quite astounded all the creatures of the world

And a realm of new linguistic possibilities unfurled:

Alligators aptly snapped up the acrostic form with ease <--- "apt" & "snapped" rhyme too!

And amazed their awe-struck visitors, ad-libbing A-to-Zs;

Burly bears became beguiled by the beauty of their ballads

And gladly swapped their diet of raw meat for one of salads;

And captive cobras concentrated on their compositions

Distracted by their muses into docile dispositions;

A dainty dingo dreamed of writing syncopated doggerel
Convinced that gorgeous poetry would move her love to snog her well;

While elephants penned epics in the style of Virgil’s Iliad

And no one had the heart to tell them that their rhymes were really bad;

If you're curious, you can find the whole poem here:

http://www.hitrecord.org/records/402057

And you can listen to it being performed here:

http://www.hitrecord.org/records/403229

*******************************************************************

PART 2:

Once you have finished that, can you make up five new tongue-twisters of your own? I'm sure you remember that a tongue-twister is a sentence that's packed full of alliteration, like these:

"The sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick."
"Betty bought a bit of butter but the butter was too bitter so she bought a better butter to make the bitter butter better."
"She sells seashells by the seashore."

(CHALLENGE: You might like to use more than one kind of alliteration in your tongue-twister, to really tie people's tongues in knots! It can be especially tricky to pronounce a tongue-twister that has similar sounds in it, like lots of Ss and also lots of Shs, or lots of Fs and Vs together, or lots of Ps and Bs together, or lots of Ts and Ds together.)

Finally, here's a game to help you practice the skills of rhyme, rhythm and alliteration:

http://www.earobics.com/gamegoo/games/wiznpigs/wiznpigs.html