August 31st, 2011 (A)
September 1st, 2011 (B)
Dear Seventh Grade Students:
What
was the most interesting new thing you learned about the ABCs in our
last class? Will you remember some of those funky-sounding terms like bilabial, fricative, and dipthong?
Syllables are the name of the game for our second day of boot camp.
We'll have a syllable war and put the six syllable types into action to
the tune of If You're Happy and You Know It.
The
definitions for the three types of syllable count poems we will discuss
in class are below. Your poem will be graded on accuracy of form,
clarity, creativity, and artistry. You may try sending it via a blog
comment, email me a copy at adatchison@moundsparkacademy.org, or bring a
hard copy with you to our next class. The poem is worth ten points
using a similar grading scale to the 12-minute write, but a title will
be optional (your name is still required), and there's no need to
highlight or bold your best writing.
Enjoy!
Mrs. Atchison
Haiku
The
haiku originated in Japan about 800 years ago. Each poem contains three
unrhymed lines and 17 syllables, arranged in lines of 5, 7, and 5
syllables. A haiku usually describes a scene in nature and includes a
seasonal reference.
This poetic form takes its name from the Latin word quinque, "five." The cinquain is like the haiku in that it is composed of a set number of syllables (22) and a per-line syllable count (2-4-6-8-2). A good cinquain will flow from the beginning to end rather than sounding like five separate lines.
Tanka
The tanka is a five-line cousin of the haiku and has been a popular form of poetry in Japan for more that 1300 years. Rather than count the total number of syllables in the poem, some tanka poets prefer to hear the accented syllables in each line: 2-3-2-3-3; others prefer the per-line syllable count of 5-7-5-7-7. And unlike the haiku, the tanka can include figures of speech, such as metaphors and similes.
