Ekphrastic Poetry--Assignment #3

Assignment #3

AGENDA:

EQ: What is ekphrastic poetry

Ekphrasis is writing about any art form, but in its modern usage, ekphrasis generally refers to poetry that reflects on visual art, and most often painting. In my classroom, I often choose one or two artists for an in-depth study. Once my students are experts about the artists, they each choose a meaningful piece of work to inspire a poem. 
http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/top-teaching/2016/04/ekphrasis-poetry-about-art
http://americanart.si.edu/education/pdf/Ekphrastic_Poetry_Lesson.pdf

http://www.english.emory.edu/classes/paintings&poems/classicscene.html

The Red Wheelbarrow

William Carlos Williams, 1883 - 1963

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

ACTIVITY:

Students select a postcard or artwork.

Create an ekphrastic poem about your postcard using LINES and STANZAS!

Writing Territories and PROSE--Assignment #2

Assignment #2:  Writing Territories and PROSE

AGENDA:

Continue developing your writing territories.

WRITING:
Select one topic from your writing territories and write a PROSE piece about it.

If you write truthfully, you are writing NONFICTION.

If you make up a story based on your writing territory, you are writing FICTION.


Four primary genres:

FICTION
NONFICTION
POETRY
DRAMA

Writing Territories--Assignment #1 Making Lists

Use 12 pt. font  Times New Roman

MLA Heading (in left hand corner):

Your name

Teacher name

Course name (CW7)

Assignment/Date

Open a word document.  Put an MLA heading on top.  Create a full page of YOUR Writing Territories.  Save your document.

Assignment #1:  Writing Territories/Making Lists for Writing Topics

Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

In Collecting Your Writing Territories, Consider . . .and Make Lists of Ideas.  Brainstorm what you can write about.  Be specific.

memories: early, earlier, and recent                                favorites, now and then

obsessions                                                                    pets, now and then

idiosyncrasies                                                               teachers, now and then

problems                                                                      places: school, camp, trips, times away with friends and relatives

dreams                                                                         hobbies

itches                                                                            sports

understandings                                                              music

confusions                                                                    games

passions                                                                       books

sorrows                                                                        poems

risks                                                                             songs

accomplishments                                                           movies

fears                                                                             writers and artists

worries                                                                         food

fantasies                                                                       pet peeves

family, close and distant                                                beloved things-objects and possessions, now and then

friends, now and then                                                    all the loves of your life

fads

                                                       Adapted from Lessons That Change Writers by Nancie Atwell

Other ideas:

http://smoran.ednet.ns.ca/writing/writing_territories.htm

Welcome to CW7

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1M5hs6ahcKU

"By awakening our imagination, art intensifies and complements our own experience. Art represents people, cultures, values, and perspectives on living, but it does much more. While bringing us pleasure, art teaches us. While reading or contemplating a painting our minds go elsewhere. We are taken on a journey into a world where form and meaning are intertwined.

Form matters and gives pleasure. How a work of art is organized — its technique, its verbal or visual texture, its way of telling — gives pleasure. So does the inextricable relation between form and content. The form of imaginative art, as well as the form of well-written non-fiction, organizes the mess (if not the chaos) of personal life as well as that of external events. Form not only organizes and controls art but also other bodies of knowledge within the humanities. Form imposes structure that our own lives — as we move from moment to moment through time — may lack.

Narrative — sequential telling — imposes form as it orders and gives shape. Indeed, in the sense that each of us is continually giving shape to the stories we tell to and about ourselves, there is continuity between what we read and see and our own lives. Put another way, what we read teaches us to find narratives within our own lives and hence helps us make sense of who we are. Our seeing shapes and patterns in stories and other kinds of art helps give interpretive order — in the form of a narrative that we understand — to our lives. We live in our narratives, our discourse, about our actions, thought, and feelings.

While there is always a gulf between imagined worlds and real ones, does not the continuity between reading lives and reading texts depend on our understanding reading as a means of sharpening our perceptions and deepen our insights about ourselves? Reading is a process of cognition that depends on actively organizing the phenomena of language both in the moment of perception and in the fuller understanding that develops retrospectively."

Daniel Schwartz, Huffington Post

Classroom expectations

1) Treat others as you would like to be treated.  RESPECT ALL NOUNS (People, objects, ideas)

2) Respect other people and their property (e.g., no hitting, no stealing).

3) Laugh with anyone, but laugh at no one.

4) Be responsible for your own learning.

5) Come to class and hand in assignments on time.

6) Do not disturb people who are working.

In addition:
No food or drink in classroom or computer lab.

No cell phones.

Portfolios/Final presentations of skits

AGENDA:

For the past two weeks you have been working on your play projects.

Today you need to fill out your group evaluation sheet and write a one page reflection answering the questions about your group's work on the computer.  Then you will print this out and place it in your portfolio.  Please remember to put your MLA heading in the upper left corner of the reflection and use 12 point Times New Roman font.

Any group that has not presented will have a chance to do so at the end of class.

Today and tomorrow you will also work on completing your portfolio for your final grade in this class.  There will be an opportunity to do additional work on Thursday and Friday.

You are to remain in your seats throughout the class unless directed by the teacher to go next door
to work on your project.

Group Project--Drama

GROUP PROJECT: Adapting a fable or fairy tale for the stage

AGENDA:

In small groups, you will be adapting a fable or fairy tale for the stage.

Your project requires:

1. A script for a skit.

2. A set and costume design.

3. A song to be sung for the skit by a character(s) to set the scene.  You can write the words to any famous melody.

4. A performance for the class.


What is the difference between a fable and a fairy tale?

http://www.differencebetween.com/difference-between-fable-and-vs-fairy-tale/

1. Review with students the elements of a fable: characters, setting, events and a moral. In most fables the characters are animals. These animals usually represent specific human qualities(personification).

2. Review the concept of a moral. Tell students that fables are meant to teach a lesson or moral. The moral is usually revealed at the end of the fable. Sometimes the moral is delivered as a statement, such as "Be happy with what you have," or "It is easier to think up a plan than to carry it out."

3. Ask students to re-read The Ant and the Dove and have them orally identify the characters, setting, and moral of the story (the moral is already provided).

 The Ant and the Dove 


  AN ANT went to the bank of a river to quench its thirst, and
being carried away by the rush of the stream, was on the point of
drowning.  A Dove sitting on a tree overhanging the water plucked
a leaf and let it fall into the stream close to her.  The Ant
climbed onto it and floated in safety to the bank.  Shortly
afterwards a birdcatcher came and stood under the tree, and laid
his lime-twigs for the Dove, which sat in the branches.  The Ant,
perceiving his design, stung him in the foot.  In pain the
birdcatcher threw down the twigs, and the noise made the Dove
take wing.


 One good turn deserves another

4. Tell students that they will be reading more fables individually and that they must be able to identify key elements of the fables.

Prewriting: Tell students to make a plan before writing. For the pre-writing stage, encourage students to use graphic organizers (see below) to organize their ideas. Students should plan out the following:

• Characters (for example, a cat and a dog)
• Setting (for example, a vacant lot)
• Events (for example, a dog encounters a cat who has a piece of meat)
• Moral (for example, pick on animals your own size)

Drafting: Direct students to follow the order of the original fable or the order of events they listed and to begin writing a first draft.

Revising: Eliminate this step during this section. When students are in small groups, have the other group members revise and proofread the fable that they are choosing for the skit.

Proofreading: Students should check spelling, capitalization, punctuation and word usage. This can be done using a word-processing program.

Publishing: In this final stage of the writing process, students submit their writing. They have the option of extending on the lesson by publishing their creative work in a number of outlets(submitting to a newspaper or literary magazine, for example).

FABLES:


Fox and the Grapes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkZp4eH04c8&feature=player_embedded

Fox and the Grapes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hACpLj0_EiA


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtnyD2uG8yo



Adapting a Fairy Tale:

http://writingfairytales.weebly.com/adapting-a-fairy-tale.html

Prompts for the New Year

10...9...8...7...

New Year Creative Writing Prompts

By Maria Chatzi

The beginning of a creative new year! It is the time to weave new dreams and new hopes for your creative life, as well as reflect upon the plans of the prior year that have gone wrong and the resolutions that have been broken. The following short list of writing prompts could be used to ignite your imagination for journal writing or just as an exercise to get you back to your daily creative thinking and creative writing habit, after the holiday break. So, grab a pen and a cup of coffee, get cozy and start writing!

10Imagine a wicked witch had put you under a spell and you had fallen asleep through winter. What would you have missed out on? What if, instead of the witch, it was a compassionate wizard or your fairy godmother — what would they have saved you from by casting this spell?

9Think of two words you hated the previous year and two words you loved. Think of “why” you felt the way you did about them. What could have made things be the other way round? When could at least one of your hated words have become a loved one, and in what case would at least one of the loved words turn into a hated one?

8You receive an unusual email message. It is a letter from one of the mistakes you’ve made last year, which has come to life. Write what your mistake wrote to you.

7You wake up one morning to find you are travelling inside a snowflake. What was the weirdest thing that happened to you on this journey.

6Write about a snowball that was actually a camouflaged tiny planet.

5Write a list of winter-related words. Then use them all in a piece of writing on a Spring theme.

4On returning home, you find a huge snowman standing in your living room. “I came for the interview.” he says in a strange sounding voice. You notice that, although close enough to the burning fireplace, he’s not melting. Continue the story.

3Write about a time when the turning of the year came with the disappearance of your most treasured possession.

2If your present creative life was a quilt what would it look like? Describe it in detail. Try to make the description as vivid as possible, so that the reader could live your creative experience through it. Also describe what the quilt looked like in the beginning of the previous year and what it is going to look like a year ahead from now.

1You’re hosting a party for New Year’s Eve. An Unfulfilled Wish (or Dream) and a Broken Resolution, both coming from the previous year, come to life and sneak in, uninvited. They start a conversation with one of your guests. Write part of this conversation.

Happy writing! •

© 2013 Maria Chatzi. All rights reserved.