"In teaching others we teach ourselves" - Proverb

June 12th, 2018:

We finished class so quickly, I forgot to assign your homework assignment. It will be given tomorrow.

June 13th, 2018:

5 paragraphy expository essay due tomorrow.

In the past few years, there have been more and more incidents of violence reported on school campuses. In fact, there have been many reports of violence even at the kindergarten level! What do you think is the cause of this rise in violence? Think of some possible reasons. Write an essay explaining why you think there have been more incidents of violence in schools in recent years.

Thursday: June 21st

Your "How to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich" essay will be do. No late essays will be excepted.

Expectations for your How to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich:

Imagine you are giving instructions to someone who does not know how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
Describe ingredients, utensils that will be used.
Describe in logical sequence/step by step how to construct a pb&j sandwich.

Ms. Torre will provide the following:

Butter knife
Peanut butter
Jelly
Paper plates
White bread

EXAMPLE:

In class example:

How to make rice in a rice cooker

Have you ever come home from a long day at school and were starving? When you checked the refrigerator you found a pot of adobo but no rice! What! No rice! Well, I’m going to teach you how to cook rice in a rice cooker.

First, you need to make sure you have rice in your pantry. Next, take out your rice cooker, place it on your kitchen counter and plug it into the outlet. Grab a measuring cup then you scoop 2 cups rice. Then you put it inside the rice pot.

Then ~~press cook.~~ we wash the rice with water. When the water is milky white, pour all the water out. Repeat. Next, wipe the rice pot and put it in the rice cooker. You will need to put the same amount of water to rice. So place 2 cups of water in the rice pot. Cover the rice pot with the lid and press cook!

In 20 minutes you should have delicious fluffy and sticky rice.

MEMOIR MINI PROJECT OUTLINE

Guidelines:

CONTENT: WRITING

Your memoir will include the following written entries:
- A special place poem
- A special person poem
- Two lessons I learned as a small child poem
- A memorable experience
- “Who I Want To Be” poem

Remember to use the poems we read in class as a guide to help you with ideas, revising and editing your own memoir pieces.

STYLE AND STRUCTURE:

Your memoir must have a title that is representative of the poems you have included
Each individual entry must have a title
Make use of sensory details in each story—taste, touch, sound, sight, and smell
Make use of figurative language: simile, metaphor, onomatopoeia, personification, hyperbole, ect…

AESTHETICS:

Please include a recent photo of yourself and a baby or toddler photo
Each entry must have a visual representation to accompany your writing. Visuals may include drawing, photographs, clip art, magazine or newspaper cutouts, ect.
Experiment with borders and clip art for your poems
You may include pictures or drawings with your poems

DUE: STUDENT PRESENTATIONS WILL BEGIN ON TUESDAY JUNE 26 THROUGH THE 28.

An excerpt from:

How to Write Your Own Memoir

By Abigail Thomas

What is memoir? How do you write one? What if you can't remember anything, or worse, what if you remember it all? What do you put in? Who do you want your readers to be? I can't write personal stuff, you say, my family will be upset. You have to put those worries aside. You need to feel free to write about the uncomfortable truths, and unless your motive for writing is revenge, you may find that these moments of discomfort are mostly your own.

Writing memoir is a way to figure out who you used to be and how you got to be who you are. Still, as Raymond Carver once said, "What good is insight? It only makes things worse." Why dredge up a lot of dusty memories? Why remind yourself that the old days will never come back? Why remind yourself of your own mortality? (The word memory comes from the same root as the word mourn, and that should tell you something.) You will find there are many reasons to go look in the icebox or turn on the television, or reread Middlemarch. But pay attention to the little voice that whispers, "This part was interesting." Pay attention to everything.

Take any ten years of your life, reduce them to two pages, and every sentence has to be three words long—not two, not four, but three words long. You discover there's nowhere to hide in three-word sentences. You discover that you can't include everything, but half of writing is deciding what to leave out. Learning what to leave out is not the same thing as putting in only what's important. Sometimes it's what you're not saying that gives a piece its shape. And it's surprising what people include. Marriage, divorce, love—yes, there's all of that, but often what takes up precious space is sleeping on grass, or an ancient memory of blue Popsicle juice running down your sticky chin. When you're done, run your mind over everything the way a safecracker sandpapers his fingers to feel the clicks. If there is one sentence that hums, or gives off sparks, you've hit the jackpot. Then write another two pages starting right there.

The Road Between Here and There – Galway Kinnell

Here I heard the snorting of hogs trying to re-enter the under earth.

Here I came into the curve too fast, on ice, touched the brake

               pedal and sailed into the pasture.

Here I stopped the car and snoozed while two small children

               crawled all over me.

Here I reread Moby Dick, skipping big chunks, skimming others,

               in a single day, while Maud and Fergus fished.

Here I abandoned the car because of a clonk in the motor and

               hitchhiked (which in those days in Vermont meant walking

               the whole way with a limp) all the way to a garage where I

               passed the afternoon with ex-loggers who had stopped by to

               oil the joints of their artificial limbs and talk.

Here a barn burned down to the snow.  “Friction,” one of the ex-

               loggers said.“Friction?” “Yup, the mortgage, rubbin’ against

               the insurance policy.”

Here I went eighty but was in no danger of arrest for I was blessed-

               speeding, trying to get home to see my children before they

               slept.

Here I brought home in the back seat two piglets who rummaged

               around inside the burlap sack like pregnancy itself.

Here I heard again on the car radio a Handel concerto transcribed

               for harp and lute, which Ines played to me the first time,

               making me want to drive after it and hear it forever.

Here I sat on a boulder by the winter-steaming river and put my

               head in my hands and considered time—which is next to

               nothing, merely what vanishes, and yet can make one’s

               elbows nearly pierce one’s thighs.

Here I forgot how to sing in the old way and listened to the frogs at

               dusk.

Here the local fortune teller took my hand and said, “what is still

               possible is inspired work, faithfulness to a few, and a last

        love which, being last, will be like looking up and seeing

        the parachute turning into a shower of gold.”

Here is the chimney standing up by itself and falling down, which

               tells you you approach the end of the road between here and

               there.

Here I arrive there.

Here I must turn around and go back and on the way back look

               carefully to left and to right.

For when the spaces along the road between here and there are all

               used up, that’s it.

My favorite poem of Kinnell’s also addresses this theme. Traveling on a familiar road, we often think, “oh, here is where….” As we get older, we think of so many things on our daily journeys, each tied to a certain space or place on the road. So many memories. Kinnell says “when the spaces along the road between here and there are all used up, that’s it.”

Maybe Kinnell’s spaces were all used up, his memory too full, it’s hard to say, what I can say though, is that I’m glad he left record of his “spaces” for us.

Sonnet - a short rhyming poem with 14 lines. The original sonnet form was invented in the 13/14th century by Dante and an Italian philosopher named Francisco Petrarch. The form remained largely unknown until it was found and developed by writers such as Shakespeare. Sonnets use iambic meter in each line and use line-ending rhymes.

The Safety of Darkness

FJ Thomas

She never understood the phrase "blood thicker than water"

The meaning she did; but not why people held to it so

She was one of six; the "hardest to like, "the ugly daughter"

Not til her teen years would the weight of those words show

In each class she would try so hard, listen so intently

But the teachers words made no sense and often left her confused

Each year calls go home criticizing her less than gently

Pulled her from the back of their minds to be yelled at and abused

She learned to live in darkness; far from any line of sight

It didn't matter the age or place, to no one she stood out

Comfortable in the dark she grew to shudder around light

Outwardly she changed but only knew emotional drought

A woman she still steps lightly; her spirit asleep in deep burrows

She, forever to remain, the essence of soft shadows

Couplet - two lines of verse which rhyme and form a unit alone or as part of a poem

Rhyming Couplet Examples

She was a little tense

The notice made no sense

I saw a little hermit crab

His coloring was oh so drab

It’s hard to see the butterfly

Because he flies across the sky

Hear the honking of the goose

I think he’s angry at the moose

His red sports car is just a dream

It needs no gas, it runs on steam

The children like the ocean shore

We want to leave but they want more

I made the cookies one by one

I hear the bell, so they are done

My cat, she likes to chase a mouse,

Especially one that’s in the house

Lightening, thunder, all around

Soon the rain falls on the ground

I tire of writing poems and rhyme

I think I need vacation time

Jack be nimble, Jack be quick

Jack jump over the candlestick

Rhyming Couplets in Classic Literature

"Be not the first by whom the new are tried,

Nor yet the last to lay the old aside." - "An Essay on Criticism," Alexander Pope

"’Tis education forms the common mind,

Just as the twig is bent, the tree’s inclined." - "Epistles to Several Persons," Alexander Pope

"O could I flow like thee, and make thy stream

My great example, as it is my theme!" - "Cooper’s Hill," John Denham

"Time and Death shall depart, and say in flying,
Love has found out a way to live, by dying." - "One Happy Moment," John Dryden

"So, lovers dream a rich and long delight,
But get a winter-seeming summer's night."- "Love's Alchemy," John Donne

Rhyming Couplets from William Shakespeare

"The time is out of joint, O cursed spite

That ever I was born to set it right!" - Hamlet

"This precious book of love, this unbound lover,

To beautify him only lacks a cover." - Romeo and Juliet

"Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;

And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind." - A Midsummer Night's Dream

"For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;

Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds." - "Sonnet 94"

"Thus have I had thee as a dream doth flatter

In sleep a king, but waking no such matter." - "Sonnet 87"

The Reason for These Rhymes

Now you can see how rhyming couplets work. Thanks to their short and succinct form, they are a good way to produce a startling or dramatic effect in a poem, or provide a sense of completion to the piece.

Limerick - a five-line witty poem with a distinctive rhythm. The first, second and fifth lines, the longer lines, rhyme. The third and fourth shorter lines rhyme. (A-A-B-B-A).

My homework has just been beset

by the memes on the Internets

There's a panda that sneezes...

But then my comp freezes!

And I'm stuck with some math I don't get.

****

There once was a young boy named Bieber

who gave all the young ladies fever

Small pox it was not,

they just thought he was hot,

with that hair like a golden retriever.

Haiku - This ancient form of poem writing is renowned for its small size as well as the precise punctuation and syllables needed on its three lines. It is of ancient Asian origin.

Haiku's are composed of 3 lines, each a phrase. The first line typically has 5 syllables, second line has 7 and the 3rd and last line repeats another 5. In addition there is a seasonal reference included.

Country Morning by Line Gauthier

spring country morning

the smell of budding life

six lunch bags for school

Yellow by Line Gauthier

yellow school bus

rural destination

daydreaming

Epic - a lengthy narrative poem in grand language celebrating the adventures and accomplishments of a legendary or conventional hero

The story of life

By: Richard Nnoli

the story of life

life is not a sugar

Cain stick

it is not sweet like

we want any more

intelligent human

has turned it upside

down

they are now in charge

we gave them the chances

all what they need

so we are tied up

to their ropes of

no justice

the story of life

life is not a bread

and honey Paradise

any more

it has been captivated

by evil human

so the righteous

always have a

cross to bear

the reality of life

now is full of lies

the truth is not legal

any more in too many places

the fact of truth is always

a closed factor

it is hated nowadays

so all we do is just follow

in an era of manipulation

the story of life

the reality of life

nowadays is painted

with struggles and suffering

that included everyone

we all suffer one way or the other

no land is a perfect place now

in a perfect world

the programming of the mind

never stop

the mind control system is still

in charge of our freedom

the super powers still waving

the flags of wars

the poor still in fears of their tommorow

what a life

what a world

a true life story

the story of life

life is a free zone

I wonder how true

is that now

the rich still richer

the poor remains more poorer

the games of civilization

is still the same

the greedy are still greedy

nothing has change

the old evil ways still

never gone

but only improve and modernized

to further improve

the captive of the common man

who innocently serve and

believe in his land

our life is nothing good

better than that of the old

years gone

we are still fighting

and that is a very sad story

what a story

the story of life

Free Verse - A Free Verse Poem does not follow any rules. Their creation is completely in the hands of the author. Rhyming, syllable count, punctuation, number of lines, number of stanzas, and line formation can be done however the author wants in order to convey the idea. There is no right or wrong way to create a Free Verse poem

July 2nd, 2018

HOMEWORK:

First draft of your resume will be due for review Tuesday,July 3rd.
Study your resume vocabulary for an activity tomorrow.