creating new verses for an old campfire and blues song
This lesson was created by Corbett Harrison after he heard Jodie Black share Karen Beaumont's wonderful book as a read-aloud.
The intended "mentor text" to be used when teaching this on-line lesson is the picture book I Ain't Gonna Paint No More! by Karen Beaumont. Before writing, students should listen to and discuss the writing style of this book's author.
If you are a Washoe County teacher, click here to search for this book at the county library.
Teacher Instructions & Lesson Resources :
Pre-Step (before sharing the published model): There are many renditions of the song "It Ain't Gonna Rain No More" available for download at I-Tunes. Several Disney children's albums feature this song, but there are also some very interesting blues and country renditions to share with your students. Our current favorite is by blues guitarist and songster Mance Lipscomb. His rendition is worth the cost for the song's download. Play it for your students and talk about its rhyme scheme.
Step one (sharing the published model):Karen Beaumont has cleverly adapted the old song, “It Ain’t Gonna Rain No More,” in her book, I Ain’t Gonna Paint No More! David Catrow uses his witty and crazily colored illustrations to visually enhance the story of the little boy who paints his whole body while introducing a series of hilarious rhyming couplets. While this book is specifically targeted at pre-school to kindergartners, all ages will enjoy the song, the illustrations, and the last slightly naughty innuendo in rhyme. Jodie suggests, "Teachers are going to want to read and sing I Ain’t Gonna Paint No More several times with their students prior to attempting the writing activity. The uniquely colorful illustrations serve to tell the story as humorously as the text does and students will want to pour over them time and time again."
Teachers of younger students should stress, during oral readings, how the words, the rhyming scheme, the punctuation and the illustrations let us hear so clearly the voice of the main character as he goes about doing exactly what his mother doesn’t want him to do. These initial readings and discussions can flow naturally into some whole class sharing about things all of us have to do, want to do or don’t want to do.
Step two (introducing models of writing): In small groups, have your students read and respond to any or all of the student models that come with this lesson. The groups will certainly talk about the sentence fluency, since that's the focus of this lesson, but you might prompt your students to talk about each model's word choice as well.
Step three (thinking and pre-writing): For students' internal rhymes to match the rhythm, students will have to use words that rhyme with helping verbs (auxiliaries). The worksheet below will help them brainstorm these types of words. Have student groups brainstorm as many words as they can on this sheet; it will give them more options for their own attempts at writing.
Once the first line is crafted to nicely fit the rhythm of the original song, the second and fourth line are pretty much created too. The next trick is to create the third line, which will require some more rhyming and word experimentation. The interactive button game on the Student Instructions Page might give your students some ideas for writing the third line of their stanzas, so might the website Rhymezone, but so might just a good discussion with a partner or writing buddy.
Rhyme and rhythm are not easy for many developing writers. Some of your students will quickly finish a four-line stanza, and they should be encouraged to create more of the same. A page in a Writer's Notebook that is devoted to stanzas that can be sung to this tune might be something you encourage these students to set aside.
Step four (revising with specific trait language): Two tools for revision are provided below. You can use one or both, depending on how much time you have to spend on this assignment.
To promote response and revision to rough draft writing, attach WritingFix's Revision and Response Post-Its to your students' drafts. Make sure the students rank their use of the trait-specific skills on the Post-Its, which means they'll only have one "1" and one "5." Have them commit to ideas for revision based on their Post-It rankings. For more ideas on WritingFix's Revision & Response Post-Its, click here.
Step five (editing for conventions): After students apply their revision ideas to their drafts and re-write neatly, require them to find an editor. If you've established a "Community of Editors" among your students, have each student exchange his/her paper with multiple peers. With yellow high-lighters in hand, each peer reads for and highlights suspected errors for just one item from the Editing Post-it. The "Community of Editors" idea is just one of dozens and dozens of inspiring ideas that is talked about in detail in the Northern Nevada Writing Project's Going Deep with 6 Trait Language Workbook for Teachers.
Step six (publishing for the portfolio): When they are finished revising and have second drafts, invite your students to come back to this piece once more during an upcoming writer's workshop block. Their stories might become a longer story, a more detailed piece, or the beginning of a series of pieces about the story they started here. Students will probably enjoy creating an illustration for this story as they get ready to publish it for their portfolios.
Interested in publishing student work on-line? We invite student writers to post final drafts of their original at WritingFix's Community of Student Writers. This is a safe-to-use blog for students and teachers. No writing is posted until it is approved by the moderator. Contact us at publish@writingfix.com if you have questions about getting your students published.
