In 2004, this lesson was built at WritingFix
after being presented at the NNWP's
Piňon Poetry Festival.
The intended "mentor text" to be used when teaching this on-line lesson is the picture book Science Verse by Jon Scieszka. Before writing, students should listen to and discuss the writing style of this book's author.
Washoe County teachers, click here to search for this book at the county library.
Teacher Instructions & Lesson Resources :
Step one (sharing the published model): Enjoy Scieszka's Science Verse as a read-aloud over several days with your students. Start by sharing those poems that your students will definitely know are impersonations of other poetry they've heard: The "It's raining, It's Pouring" and "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" parodies will be easy for your students to spot. Ask them, "How does the author make sure his new poem sounds so much like the original poem?"
Before sharing Scieszka's parody of "The Jabberwocky" or "The Raven," share the original poems that inspired each parody with your students. You don't have to analyze the original poems too much, just explain that they are famous poems--well-known by many adults--and the author is going to impersonate these just as he did "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star." After sharing the original and its impersonation, ask your students, "How does the author make sure his new poem sounds so much like the original poem?"
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 idea development as well.
Step three (thinking and pre-writing):The interactive button choices on the Student Instructions Page can certainly inspire your students to choose a poem to make a parody of, but you can certainly inspire them to choose a poem without being on the computer.
Tell students they will be writing their own impersonations of famous poems today. The three-page attachment below contains tools to help your students ready for this task. Print and show as overheads the first two pages of the attachment below. The first overhead shows two famous poems, one by Emily Dickinson, the other by Gwendolyn Brooks. Read these poems together as a class. The second overhead is a student sample (written on this lesson's graphic organizer) that shows a student impersonating both poems from the first overhead. Show this second page on the overhead. Laugh at student-writer Joey's humorous use of the original poem as his inspiration. Talk about how Joey included lots of good details about his topic--teeth--as he wrote his parody.
The third page of the attachment below is a blank graphic organizer for students to plan their own impersonation.
Instead of giving them free reign to use any poem, you might select one poem for the whole class to impersonate, and allow them to all write about any topic they have interest in. You can also let students write these impersonation with partners or with small groups.
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.
