Poetry Study

Welcome back!   I hope everyone had a lovely break.

We began studying poetry in writing this week!  We've read lots of poems and made observations about the writing.  We've also do some writing of our own, inspired by the good writing we notice in our mentor poems.  The focus question is, "What can this poem teach us about writing poetry?"  To get the ball rolling, we notice what we like about each poem and try to name it.  Here are the notes from Monday's conversation about Foul Shot by Edwin A. Hoey.  The Notes in color coordinate with a mark in the poem itself, and the notes in black stand alone.

After examining the poem, we talked about how Hoey might have made us feel all that tension.  The class said that he:

-drew a picture in his head, or picked a scene

-put every little detail in words that describe them

-used words that describe, and strong verbs to describe action

- wrote like a list so there's hesitation between line breaks

-uses punctuation to tell you where to hesitate.

Then, students wrote poems based on Foul Shot.  Their job was to write about a suspenseful moment using lots of detail, and to write like a list with carefully chosen words to make it suspenseful.  They also thought about the role of punctuation.  Here are some of their first tries at poetry this year: