Once or twice a year, I bring my mp3 player into class, and we write to music. We write to things like Tchaikovsky, Bach, Buena Vista Social Club, Edith Piaf, fiddle tunes, Tuvan throat singing, and a seven year old’s piano compositions. I avoid English lyrics, just to let everyone’s imaginations be free of aContinue reading “Writing to Music”
Tag Archives: Education
Ancestor Interviews
Every family has stories. Every fall, with a nod to Halloween and Day of the Dead, we go out and learn some of them. I ask my students to go home and talk to one of their relatives — preferably some one old, maybe someone they don’t see all the time, but even a parentContinue reading “Ancestor Interviews”
The Busy City: Playing with Noise in Poetry
I want to share something really cool that formed in class today. We had been talking about noises in poems — noisy things, words we liked the sound of, onomatopoeia — and decided to write a group poem about a crazy, noisy city night. Everyone, including me, was given a small slip of paper. We eachContinue reading “The Busy City: Playing with Noise in Poetry”
James Bond and the Past Perfect: teaching grammar through poems
As I was organizing things for the first class of the year yesterday, I found a gem from the archives. We had been learning about the past perfect tense and how weird it is to try to write in it in any extended way. Instead of just blabbing at the kids about this, I hadContinue reading “James Bond and the Past Perfect: teaching grammar through poems”
FROG HOLLOW SCHOOL 