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DIALOGUES AND TWO PERSON POEMS
by Mary QuattlebaumHave you ever read dialogue that feels rambling and flat? (Ha, sometimes I’ve written such dialogue and then, of course, had to revise.) To help students think more carefully about the point of and voices in a piece of dialogue, try this:
*Have students make up one big and one very small character (for example, seagull and tiny crab, child and ant, cat and mouse). One wants something that the other has (for example, the gull might want to eat the crab; or the ant might want child’s cupcake crumb). What do they say to one another? How are their voices different? (For example, the gull might be rude and the crab very polite. Or the ant, though tiny, might be very bossy and the child apologetic.) What happens and how does the dialogue end?
*Once students have written and revised their dialogues or two-speaker poems, have them pair up with someone in class and speak/perform the part of their two characters. Have fun!
Below is an example of a two-speaker or dialogue poem. In “Encounter,” a girl and firefly have an imaginary conversation about their different experiences of firefly being caught by girl and then released.
Encounter
Girl Firefly Quick leap, turned wrist. Bright dot in my fist.
Night wide— sharp snap! I flicker in a trap.
Gliding spark, quiet flash: go forth, go fast.
Sudden window opens high; warm wind whispers “fly.”
--by Mary Quattlebaum, Cricket magazine
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TIPS FOR USING TECHNOLOGY
Recently, I visited a third grade classroom, at the request of his teacher, for an individualized writing conference. Cameron (fictitious name) and I sat down in a quiet corner of the room with a laptop. “Can you log in to the computer for me?” I asked him. Cameron’s face went blank. “Do you know your login?” “I think so.” My school, like many, gives each child his or her own login, so everything created is stored on personal server space. This works fine as long as the child remembers how to access his or her information or there is a teacher available who does. Unfortunately for us, there was a substitute in the classroom that day. Without his login, Cameron couldn’t even open up a word processing system. We ended up logging in under my name and starting a new story that day, which I stored on his grade level server space. I showed him where it was on the S drive. “Do you think you can find this tomorrow to continue your story?” “I think so,” Cameron answered tentatively. On several occasions, I have seen students spend more time unloading and loading the laptops from a mobile cart than actually writing. Not only does it take time to remove the computers from the cart, it takes time to get the computers functioning. Elementary students make typing mistakes, creating a need to attempt login more than once. And a networked computer can take several minutes to boot, not to mention shut down. Precious little time is already allotted to writing workshop. Should it be spent logging on and booting up? And what about the need to share the mobile cart between classrooms? The demand is high and teachers must adhere to a rigid schedule so everyone gets a turn. Just when your students are settled in and feeling their words flow may be the moment when computers must be shutdown and put back in the cart for the next class to use. Writing time should be devoted to trying to make a story work, not a computer. Efficient use of technology is essential. Here are a few suggestions: · Teachers lucky enough to have classroom workstations should assign a classroom helper to boot up and log in the computers first thing every morning. Classroom computers should always be ready to go when a student has a piece ready to type. · Teach students to save their work on a shared drive. This means that students don’t have to log in individually to access their work. This also allows teachers to review work in progress and write conference notes to students. It is often difficult to reach all students in person who want to conference each week. Give yourself another option for the student you didn’t have time to meet with in class. · Backup work on individual flash drives. If students can’t purchase their own flash drives, petition the PTA to purchase them. When each student has a flashdrive, work cannot only be backed up, it can be taken home to finish. · Allow students to finish typing pieces at home. Thirty minute writing workshops do not provide adequate time for a mini-lesson, composing time, and typing time. Students need to learn how to compose a story on a computer. This requires the ability to type. Typing is a skill that takes hours of practice. We don’t have hours at school, particularly on the elementary level, for any activity. Allowing students to type at home gives them the practice they desperately need in an unrushed environment without the distraction of friends. Many teachers are reluctant to allow students to work at home because they are afraid the product will have too much parental involvement. While I will accept that this is a real concern in some households, it is not the case in most. Schools do not have to be like the airports which require us all to suffer through security hassles for a terrorist minority. Just because a few parents will take over student writing projects doesn’t mean that all children should be robbed of the opportunity to practice writing at home. Besides, parental help can be helpful. My mother taught me to punctuate. She insisted I correct my papers before I turned them in. After seeing numerous students in grades 3-5 pass in stories absent of any punctuation at all, I sometimes wish more parents were like my mother. Teachers don’t have time to do everything. And we must acknowledge, as Alison Hart so aptly discussed in her introductory Pencil Tips blog, writing is complicated. It takes the acquisition of many skills. We need to give our students the opportunity to practice writing skills at school and at home.
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Personification: Making a Poem Breathe
by Laura Krauss MelmedA few months ago, I had the good fortune to attend an amazing production of the play, Warhorse, on Broadway. The horses, main characters in the story, were portrayed by life-size puppets, each made of a wire armature with three people, clearly visible, operating it. The way the puppeteers moved the horses, including making them breathe, brought them absolutely, convincingly to life. In poetry, the device of personification performs a similar function by breathing life into inanimate objects or forces of nature through the use of words, usually including evocative verbs.
A lesson on personification should begin with reading some poems that utilize this device. In the following poem excerpts, three poets have used personification to describe “night,” each in a fresh, original way.
from Taking Turns by Norma Farber
When sun goes home Behind the trees and locks her shutters tight –
Read the lines and ask the students questions such as the following: What occurrence is Norma Farber writing about? What images did her words created in the mind’s eye? How does she manage to describe something that happens every day all over the world in such a unique and vivid way? Which specific words or phrases give the excerpt its strong imagery? The poem is called "Taking Turns" because once the sun has gone home, other things begin to show up in the sky. Can you guess what they are? What do you think Norma Farber has to say about themThe next two poem excerpts can be similarly read and discussed, and all three compared:
from Night Creature by Lillian Moore
I like the quiet breathing of the night,
The tree talk the wind-swish the star light.
from The Night
The night creeps in around my head and snuggles down upon the bed . . .
Once the students have caught on to the concept, let them have a try at writing their own poems utilizing personification. First write three headings on the board or on three pieces of chart paper: Action Words, Places and Nouns. For Action Words prompt the students to come up with a large variety of verbs by asking them what actions different parts of the body can do, what actions various animals might perform, what sounds different animals make, etc.) For Places, have students throw out a bunch of settings, such as city, forest, beach, meadow, swamp, mountain. For Nouns, elicit various inanimate objects and phenomena that might be found in those places. Now have the students chose a season and a place for the title of their poem. They can then choose from the nouns and verbs to write a four line poem, as in the following example (although in the quoted examples the poets used rhyme, you should not require this of your students). Here is an example I wrote:
Summer in the City The sun glares angrily At the sweating sidewalks, As they lie there dreaming Of a day at the beach.
Your students will have fun making their poems breathe!
P.S. You can find the poems from which these excerpts were taken in Talking Like the Rain, A First Book of Poems, selected by X.J. Kennedy and Dorothy M. Kennedy, Little, Brown, 1992 ("Taking Turns" and "The Night"), and Sing a Song of Popcorn, Every Child's Book of Poems, selected by Beatrice Schenk de Regniers, Eva Moore, Mary Michaels White, and Jan Carr, Scholastic, 1988 ("Night Creature").
http://www.laurakraussmelmed.com/
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