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Our presentation went well.  I am very excited to start using my smartboard this fall, and the resources our group accumulated will be extremely helpful.  I am going to wait for a while to write my found poem–my ideas need to brew.  I posted our presentation handout on the blog, which is very handy.  I feel as if I’ve learned a lot in this class.  Through splitting the topics among the groups, we were able to cover a huge amount of information in a short amount of time.

I feel brave enough to try the triadic writing after Michele’s presentation.  She showed me her piece when she was getting ready to present to Dr. Frick’s class during the last school year, so I had some idea what the process was, but after doing the spider exercise, I feel as if I could do this in class.

The group contributions for the new golden lines song lyric list were great! I think I will divide the list into two categories: song lryics/cultural references and literary lines.  I can then require the kids use a certain number of lines from each category.  This could also work for writing a story instead of poetry.

Golden Lines-Song lyrics with a sprinkling of poetry and proseCompiled by Addie Hunter, Lisa Craig, Marla Taylor, Michele Kelley, Stacey Meyer, Roxanne Hoover, Sheryl Walker 

Take the lines/words below and arrange them into a “found” poem.  You may add filler words such as “a” “an” and “the,” but the majority of the poem should be the words below.  You may mix and match words and phrases of your own as well.  Feel free also to change pronouns (ie:  change “he” to “she” or “I” to “you”).

Turn around, bright eyes

A good man is hard to find (short story of the same name by Flannery O’Connor)

On little cat feet (Carl Sandburg’s “Fog”)

Simply irresistible

Total eclipse of the heart

I need a hero

‘tis better to have loved and lost (Alfred, Lord Tennyson)

Shot full of love

Something wicked this way comes (Shakespeare’s Macbeth)

A view to a kill

Mental health will drive you mad

Can you hear me now?

Thunderstruck

How do I get you alone?

We beat on, boats against the current (F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby)

Back in black

Goodbye, Michele, it’s hard to die

You’re poison

Nevermore (Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven”)

Running with the shadows of the night

We all live in a yellow submarine

Pour some sugar on me

She’s got Bette Davis eyes

You shook me all night long

I’ve fallen and I can’t get up

Purple rain

It was the best of times (Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities)

Dancing on the ceiling

Jesse’s girl

Can’t repeat the past?! Why, of course you can! (F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby)

Paradise by the dashboard lights

Material girl

I want to check you for ticks

My give-a-damn’s busted

She thinks my tractor’s sexy

She sweeps with many-colored brooms (Emily Dickinson)

Mama, don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys

Cool, clear water

Like a rhinestone cowboy

She was a phantom of delight (“She was a Phantom of Delight” by William Wordsworth)

Where’s the beef?

You light up my life

Crazy ex-girlfriend

Oh, Mandy, you came and you gave without taking

Your nobody called today

The coward of the county

I ain’t missing you at all

They call him the streak

Can you feel the love tonight?

Neither a borrower nor a lender be (Shakespeare’s Hamlet)

Sleeping single in a double bed

Walk the line

I shot a man in
Reno just to watch him die

Kicking and a’gouging in the mud and the blood and the beer

Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Every rose has its thorn

She don’t know she’s beautiful

Well, I was born a coal miner’s daughter

I’m crazy for feeling so blue

It was the worst of times (Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities)

Walking after midnight

Don’t it make my brown eyes blue

Jaded

Searching for my lost shaker of salt

Wake me up inside

Fair is foul (Shakespeare’s Macbeth)

Lean on me

Little red corvette

To be great is to be misunderstood

I must be cruel, only to be kind (Shakespeare)

Gag me with a spoon

The queen of my doublewide trailer

Raspberry beret

Hit me with your best shot

It’s a nice day for a white wedding

White sport coat and a pink carnation

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy (F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby)

Here I go again on my own

Life is but a shadow (Shakespeare’s Macbeth)

Our life is frittered away by detail (Henry David Thoreau’s Walden)

Eye of the tiger

You can eat crackers in my bed anytime

Life ain’t easy for a boy named Sue

Ring of fire

Ruby, don’t take your love to town

Bille Jean is not my lover, and her kid is not my son

Stay off of my blue suede shoes

The mind can make a heaven of hell (Milton’s
Paradise Lost)

You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog

I did it my way

Come sail away with me

I get around

Fly me to the moon

She let herself go

Living in a powder keg and giving off sparks

It was a great refresher on Movie Maker. Kudos to Lisa!!  Addie was also inspiring, especially since I’m getting a new digital camera in my room this year, so I can do more projects like the ones she showed.  With all students having either a digital camera their own, or a camera on their cell phones, we need to do more to incorporate digital photos into the curriculum.  I’m also excited about the resources we’ve found so far about interactive whiteboards for our group project–the list is endless!

I have had my students write about cyberbullying in class, responding to the Rosalind Wiseman article “The New Bullies”.  The students all agree that threats and harassment such as posting photos of other students in the locker room is over the line, but they seem to be of the opinion that name calling is acceptable as long as they are “friends” with the person they are insulting. Since they are teenagers, if they really don’t like someone, their normal response is to ignore/shun him or her, not actively harass him or her.  So what prompts this shunning to turn into harassment or bullying?  Is it boredom? Teens daring one another, feeding on the attack (mob behavior)? The perception that the victim has somehow crossed a line and “deserves” the harassment? I’m not sure, but teens can turn on one another like jackals one moment and be extraordinarily kind to one another  the next.  Maybe that’s simply human nature.

Luscious Drizzle lolls in a chair

devouring trashy novels and bon-bons

while it rains.

 

Sheryl has fifty million chores to do

and regrets the sugar content of bon-bons.

 

Luscious Drizzle sits by

while Raoul vacuums and dusts.

her hair a riotous mass of curls, nails perfectly polished,

definitely no cow shit on her shoes.

 

Back up a horse trailer?

Vaccinate a steer?

Not in Luscious’s sphere.

 

Pretty but useless, who would have thought

Lucious yearns to be Sheryl in her next life.