learning2gether My students, their families, myself and our blog visitors learning together!

Alinea’s new Personal Interest Project is about Cadbury Chocolate. She would be grateful if you could take her survey.

What is poetry? I can usually recognise poetry when I see it but how do I know that’s what it is? How is it different from prose? (Prose is the usual form of writing that is NOT poetry.)

Here are some features of poetry that may be true for some poems:

It LOOKS like poetry! The lines are arranged differently to prose. The poet decides where the lines end and this is a deliberate choice to influence how the poem is read. Poetry communicates through how the words look on the page.

Poetry also communicates through how the words sound. Poems have rhythm (the special poetry word is ‘metre’).

Every single word in a poem is chosen carefully. Words work really hard in a poem. Each word might be doing the job that several words or sentences would do in prose writing. A 10 line poem might communicate the same information as a 10 page document in prose.

Poetry aims to speak to the emotions of the reader. The topic, word choice, rhythm and how the poem looks are all chosen to have an emotional effect. 

Poems aim to create strong visual imagery for the reader. Poetry has been called “a speaking picture”.

Poetry aims to show things in a different way that the reader may not have thought of before.

Reference: http://www.creative-writing-now.com/definition-of-poetry.html

 Now read these poems and think about whether they do all these things:

GATHER ye rosebuds while ye may,

Old time is still a-flying :
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he’s a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he’s to setting.

That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer ;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may go marry :
For having lost but once your prime
You may for ever tarry.

by Robert Herrick (1591–1674).

 I didn’t like my lunch today
and traded it for Amy’s.
She didn’t like it either, so
she traded it for Jamie’s.
Jamie didn’t like it, so
he traded it with Brian.
Brian didn’t like it, so
he traded it with Ryan.
Ryan didn’t like it, so
he traded it with Jack.
Jack just traded it for mine,
and now I’ve got it back.

by Linda Knauss

Which of the features of poetry described above do you think can be seen in these poems?

What do you think the first poem means?

Here are some places on the web you can find poetry to read: The Australian Poetry Library   Giggle Poetry    Classic Poems for Children    Children’s Poetry Archive (you can listen to poems here)    English Poems for Kids    The 20 Best Poems for Kids

Thomas is doing a Personal Interest Project about the NBA. He has created a survey to find out which NBA teams are the most popular. He would appreciate it if you would take his survey.

I think I could get hooked on PicLits. I enjoy having to write about the pictures with the constraints of a limited vocabulary. My students are going to produce PicLits this week. They will email them to me and I will select some to place here on the blog.

While I was checking out how they could email me with their PicLits I couldn’t resist doing another one myself. Here it is. Click on the link to see it:
a href=”http://www.piclits.com/viewpoem.aspx?PoemId=206491″>
See the full PicLit at PicLits.com

During our studies on Forces That Shape the Earth we have been learning about volcanoes.

Take this National Geographic Volcanoes Quiz and see how much you have learned.

Image by kahunapulej  found here. Creative Commons licensed.

How did you go on the quiz?

Did you learn anything new about volcanoes?

Here is a very cool online drawing tool. You create a drawing then you save it and it replays like a video. Here is my first try – pardon the basic artistic skills! The tool is called odosketch. Have fun!