Topic: Stories Behind Nursery Rhymes

10-second review: If you can find this article on ERIC (http://reading.indiana.edu/), buy it. The legends behind the nursery rhymes.

Title: “Mother Goose—Elucidated.” Margaret Chisholm. Elementary English (December 1972) 1141-1144. Elementary English was the elementary publication for the NCTE that preceded Language Arts.

Summary: The author visited the sites in the British Isles in which different nursery rhymes were composed. She was accompanied by a self-styled “expert” in English literature. This lady, who is not named, described the evidence and the legends behind each of the famous nursery rhymes.

For example:

Mary, Mary Quite contrary

How does your garden grow?

With silver bells and cockle shells

And pretty maids all in a row.

“Mary in this nursery rhyme refers to Mary Queen of Scots, who went to France when she was a young girl to obtain her education. While she was in France, the religion of England changed to Protestant. When Mary returned to England after marrying the French Dauphin, of course, her Catholic religion was contrary to the rest of the country. The reference to bells referred to the call to mass and cockle shells were the symbols worn by those on pilgrimages. The pretty maids all in a row were these “Four Marys,” the maids who were faithful to her until her execution.” p. 1141.

Comment: Well, it sounds like a stretch. Still, the explanations are worth considering and then possibly checking for any other information you can find on the Internet. For example, the first site I visited agreed that the subject of the rhyme was Bloody Mary, but the bells and cockle shells were instruments of torture used in Mary’s reign against the Protestants. With this article as the source, you might have an interesting lesson in one of your high school classes. Check the Internet ahead of time to be sure some of the content is not controversial. The explanation for “Mary Mary” is at least R-rated. RayS.

Topic: Portrait of a Writer

10-second review: Description of how Richard Rovere, a writer for The New Yorker, wrote his articles. From a eulogy in the pages of The New Yorker.

Title: “Richard Rovere.” The New Yorker (December 10, 1979), p. 218.

Quote: “Richard Rovere, who died the day after Thanksgiving, always seemed surprised to discover that a fellow-writer had filled a whole wastebasket with preliminary drafts before turning in an article. If that worked for someone else, fine, said Rovere, who was as undoctrinaire about literary habits as about most other aspects of life. What worked for him, he would say, was to write a piece directly on the typewriter in one long take. In reality, by the time he handed it in, his typewritten manuscript would often be an almost impenetrable thicket of crossed-out phrases, ballooning inserts, and tangles of handwritten amendments curling in and out of margins. Once an editor had followed the signs and picked his tortuous way through it, however, it would reveal itself as the usual Rovere marvel of clarity, simplicity, and insight—truths plucked out of an apparently hopeless muddle and put into an order that immediately seemed to be the only rational one. He was 64.”

Comment: Another tribute to the variety of writing practices that worked for someone. How do my readers write? RayS.

Topic: Using Models (Patterns) to Write Poems

10-second review: Suggests that younger students begin to write poetry by using the following: free verse, Haiku, Cinquain, Diamante, Quinzaine, and Quintain.

Title: “Exploring Poetry Patterns.” Iris M. Teidt. Elementary English [No Date]. p. 1082-1084. Elementary English was the NCTE elementary school publication preceding Language Arts.

Summary:

Free Verse: no rhyme. Ideas and images.

Example: The moon is a sun drowsing,/but never going to sleep./ The stars are faces in the sky./ Time is how long it takes you/ to do your homework. Phyllis Dyer.

Haiku. Ancient form of Japanese poetry. No rhyme. Three short lines totaling seventeen syllables. Line 1, t syllables. Line 2, 7 syllables. Lin3, 5 syllables. References to nature. Few articles.

Example: Lightly a new moon/ Brushes a silver Haiku/ On the tips of waves.

Cinquain (sin’ kain). 5 line verse. Line 1: one word. Title. Line 2: Two words, adjectives. Line 3, Three words, verbs. Line 4: Four words, phrase. Line 5: One word, summary.

Example: Bed/ Soft, warm/ Fun, bouncy, tumbling/ Fun on my bed/ Comfortable.

Diamante (Dee ah mon tee). Contrast. 7 lines. Line 1, subject, (one word). Line 2, adjectives (two words). Line 3, participles (three words). Line 4, nouns (four words). Line 5, participles (three words). Line 6, adjectives (two words). Line 7. noun, opposite of the subject (one word).

Example: Air/ Balmy, soft/ Floating, wafting, soothing/ Typhoon, wind, gale, cyclone/ Twisting, howling tearing/ Bitter, cold/ Blast. Vera Harryman. In the shape of a diamond.

Quinzaine (kan zen’). Makes a statement followed by a question. 3 lines: 7 syllables, 5 syllables, 3 syllables.

Example: Boys screaming in the distance--/ When will they be still/ On this dusk? Irma Johnson.

Quintain (kwin ten’). Syllable progression: 2, 4, 6, 8, 10.

Example: Poems/ Read for Pleasure/ Before the bright firelight/ Words meant for all those who enjoy/ Delightful, soothing, lovable music. L. Willie.

Comment: You can extend the same principle for older students to include a sonnet. RayS.

Topic: Adolescents Defined.

10-second review: Stop looking at adolescents as “peer-governed, raging-hormonal, imperfect adults in transition.” Start seeing them as individuals.

Title: “Reconcpetualizing Adolescent Identity.” F. Serafini. TW Bean. JE Readance. Reading Research Quarterly (October/November/December 2004), 482-489. A publication of the International Reading Association (IRA).

Summary/Quotes: “…tells educators to pay particular attention to the interests and needs of individual adolescents rather than treat them as a homogenized population without regard for individual differences.” 488.

“Schools, as a reflection of society, have done an inadequate job of distinguishing among the identities of their constituents, leading to a one-size-fits-all curriculum.” 488.

“Commonsense developmental conceptions of adolescents as peer-governed, raging-hormonal, imperfect adults in transition provide an easy rationale for the teacher-centered, authoritarian schooling practices many youth face in today’s schools.” 488.

Comment: It’s common sense to look at minorities and adolescents as individuals, but I think we have to be reminded of that. I think it’s too easy to forget that people are individuals and slip into the group mentality. RayS.

Topic: Sentence Structure and Style (2)

10-second review: Thomas Kane: “Good sentences are the sinew of style.” Can you correct the following sentences?

Title: “Sentence makeovers.” Arthur Plotnik. The Writer (December 2004), 15-16. The Writer is a magazine by writers for writers.

Faulty Sentences: Can you improve the following sentences?

1. “She asked what writing was all about, who could answer?” (Run-on sentence)

1a. “She asked what writing was all about, but who could answer?”

2. “Manny could not, in spite of all his training, knowing that the platoon depended on him, even with the enemy in his cross hairs, fire.” (Subject and verb too far apart.)

2a. “Manny could not fire, in spite of all his training, knowing that the platoon depended on him, even with the enemy in his cross hairs.”

3. “There were outcries by the people for more Krispy Kremes.” (Sentence begun with “There”)

3a. “The people cried out for more Krispy Kremes.”

4. “She had a yellow forked tongue. Its papillae were poisonous.” (Strengthen “to have” and “to be” sentences)

4a. “Her tongue unraveled, yellow and forked. Poison oozed from its papillae.”

5. “Suspended from the very catalpa that she had climbed as a child, she saw his body swaying.” (Inconsistent tense)

5a. Suspended from the very catalpa she had climbed as a child, his body swayed in the wind as she caught sight of it..”

6. “About one out of every four or five women of that village get married.” (Subject/Verb agreement)

6a. “About one out of every four or five women of that village gets married.”

7. “The body was discovered in the library; later, the identification was done.” (Passive)

7a. “A homeless woman discovered the body in the library; later, the victim’s father identified it.” (Active)

8. “Because the publisher did not act decisively, the book was not in any position to succeed in the chain stores.” (Double negative)

8a. “Because the publisher waffled, the book crash-landed in the chain stores.”

9. “She was of an opinion that all one could ever be for was truth, and not for any sort of compromise.” (Verbose)

9a. “She favored uncompromising devotion to truth.” (Concise)

Comment: The “fixes” were written by the author. I am not sure I would have “fixed” them in exactly the same way. RayS.

Topic: Sentence Structure and Style

10-second review: Thomas Kane: “Good sentences are the sinew of style.” What is wrong with the following sentences?

Title: “Sentence makeovers.” Arthur Plotnik. The Writer (December 2004), 15-16. The Writer is a magazine by writers for writers.

Faulty Sentences: Can you make the following sentences better?

1. “She asked what writing was all about, who could answer?”

2. “Manny could not, in spite of all his training, knowing that the platoon depended on him, even with the enemy in his cross hairs, fire.”

3. “There were outcries by the people for more Krispy Kremes.”

4. “She had a yellow forked tongue. Its papillae were poisonous.”

5. “Suspended from the very catalpa that she had climbed as a child, she saw his body swaying.”

6. “About one out of every four or five women of that village get married.”

7. “The body was discovered in the library; later, the identification was done.”

8. “Because the publisher did not act decisively, the book was not in any position to succeed in the chain stores.”

9. “She was of an opinion that all one could ever be for was truth, and not for any sort of compromise.”

Next blog: The fixes. RayS.

Topic: Grammar and Writing

10-second review: RayS.’s principles of teaching grammar and writing.

1. The purpose for teaching grammar is to help students polish their writing.

2. The reason that all those research studies showed grammar to have no influence on learning to write was that grammar and writing have two different focuses.

Grammar is concerned with the sentence. Writing is concerned with whole compositions and paragraphs. No wonder grammar did not appear to have any influence on composition. Holistic grading focused on the whole composition and the paragraphs of which it consisted. Grammar is applied to editing.

3. Writing and grammar should be taught concurrently so that teachers can show students how to apply it to their writing.

4. Keep the language of grammar to a minimum. Begin with problems and teach the parts of speech and sentence as needed to solve the problems. For example, begin with the possessive problem—“it’s/Its,” the most frequent mistake in students’ compositions—and then teach the chapter on possessive nouns and pronouns.

Another example of how to teach grammatical terminology: Define the three most important uses of the comma—after introductory expressions, around interrupters and before afterthoughts. If you need to identify participial phrases, appositives, infinitives and absolutes, teach them in the context of the uses of the comma and reinforce as needed. But explain the label. Why is a “participle” called a participle?

5. Writing involves the following steps in the writing process: brainstorm; thesis sentence; first draft, including intermediate and summary paragraphs; introduction; revising (insert, replace, and move text); and editing. The purpose of editing is to polish the final draft.

6. To prepare for the “grammar” section of the SAT, take the first ten minutes of class and put a problem on the board—dangling modifier, for example. Students try to correct it. If they do, they receive extra credit.

OR, for the first ten minutes of the class, students write as well as they can for ten minutes on a topic of their choosing and the teacher corrects that night. Schedule these 10-minute essays for three weeks per class for consecutive classes and repeat in the second semester. Ten minutes is not much writing and the teacher can correct fairly quickly one class’s ten-minute essays. In addition, students will develop the habit of writing.

Taking the first ten minutes for correcting problems in grammar and style or writing 10-minute essays quiets the students, puts them immediately to work and begins to prepare them for the writing section of the SAT.

What do you think? RayS.