[etni] bookless beginning year activities - simple poems
- From: sommer ben <sommerbtch@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: etni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 28 Aug 2004 09:29:28 +0100 (BST)
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Greeeting colleagues,
I liked the poem Judy Freedman sent in, and have also been thinking about using
poems.
I'm thinking particularly of my weakish 7th and 8th grade classes, and 1 point
class in high school, who will as yet most probably have no books ? and of
course there are budgetary restrictions on supplying pages of duplicated
materials.
So I have decided to try some poems in simple language, using the blackboard.
Here they are.
I
(Theme: A slightly tongue in cheek look at how we feel about school and why we
should be most happy to be back.)
BACK TO SCHOOL
By Ben Sommer
We?re back in school.
Oh what fun!
Here we are,
everyone.
We sit here
in class again,
nice young women
and nice young men.
We want to learn.
We want to know.
Teacher help us
learn and grow.
We want to sit
and learn all day.
We do not want
to go away.
We had too much holiday.
We want to come to school and stay!
Give us homework!
A quiz! A test!
These are the things
that we like best!
We do not want
to stop and rest!
We lazed for 8 weeks,
now we say!
Enough, enough
of holiday!!
II
Theme: Our minds range far afield when we are asleep. Where do we go? There are
the dreams when we feel we are flying and soaring over all, dreams when we go
over past incidents and revisit old friends and dreams when we meet famous
people?. sometimes we remember bits of these, but often not. This may be
elicited from the students in discussion prior to the presentation of the poem.
I would do this longish poem in two halves.
NIGHT TRAVELS
by Ben Sommer
Who knows,
who knows
just where we go
when we go
to sleep?
Our bodies are here,
That is clear,
But do we just count sheep?
Or are we in
some strange, far place?
Do we meet dragons
face to face,
or maybe fly
past purple seas,
or great red fires,
or great green trees?
Yes, while our bodies
lie in beds,
are we there
inside our heads?
Do we fight
old fights again
with teachers, parents,
scary men,
with brothers, sisters,
old girlfriends?
Do we fight monsters,
remember school,
or funny times
we played the fool?
Do we remember
friends from our past
who we see
in dreams at last?
Or do we talk
with movie stars
and dance with them
at pools, or bars,
or drive around
in big, fast cars?
When we sleep
we fly away.
Where do we go?
Who can say?
These poems provide short simple sentences, broken up visually to fit into the
stanzas. Hopefully they will enable vocabulary, and grammar, revision,
discussion, oral practice, repeated readings of the text and writing practice.
I plan to first go over the vocabulary. Then I will write a verse on the
board, and read it out. Next I?ll invite volunteers to have a go at reading
it out loud, and follow this with some discussion of the meaning - and so on
with the rest of the verses.
Once the whole poem is on the board I will rub out the selected vocabulary
words (remember we have already gone over vocabulary so they will have these
items listed in their notebooks).
I will then ask them to copy the poems into their notebooks and complete the
missing words.
Once this is done we can go over the answers, thus reading the text yet again?
Homework can be learning the words, learning a verse off by heart and so forth.
Better students could prepare two sentences of opinion about the poem,(or
perhaps add two lines or a verse.)
If you use these in class, I would be most interested to know what you did and
how they went.
Ben Sommer
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