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This Lesson's Title:
How Do I Love Sonnets...
exploring sentence fluency and word choice by creating sonnets
This lesson was created by Northern Nevada Writing Project Teacher Consultant
Amie Newberry. |
T his on-line writing prompt is based on the poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Before writing to this assignment, students should hear and discuss the poetry of this great poet.
Click here to learn more about this poet.
If you are a Washoe County teacher, click here to search for a collection of works by this poet that you can check out from the county library. |
Teacher Instructions & Lesson Resources:
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Pre-step…before sharing the published model: To get students prepared for the lesson, and more importantly, to disarm their preconceived ideas about poetry, ask them to brainstorm the things that were important to them when they were five years old. What was interesting and exciting when they were five? I would write this list on the overhead and let them enjoy the childhood memories.
Step one…sharing published sonnets:
- Next you want to share contemporary poet Scott Ennis' (www.sonnetwriters.com) children’s sonnets. I use “Shadow Rabbit”, “Elephant Dreams”, “I Grew Today”, “The Color of Friendship”. Students get a handout of these poems, and I read these poems out loud and let them laugh and enjoy the sound of the phrases. I also put them up on the overhead and ask them to underline the phrases they like. Talk about what is effective in the writing and what images it brings to mind.
- Then I want them to discover the meter and rhyme scheme in the poem. I ask them what they notice about the sonnets. Together, we decide what a sonnet must have to make it a sonnet. In a poem that only has 14 lines, sentence fluency and word choice are very important, because there is a limited amount of space to write about one’s point. The word choices must be just right.
- Once students understand the simple aspects (such as 14 lines and rhyme scheme), they create a sonnet in groups using the brainstorm from the beginning of class. The groups write their own silly sonnets. We publish them out loud in class.
After we’ve had fun with the sonnet form and discovered the general pattern of the poem, I will put up Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s sonnet “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways” and William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”
- While I read the classic sonnets out loud, I will ask them to underline words and phrases that appeal to them.
- Then we will discuss the similarities and differences between the first set of contemporary children’s sonnets and these two classics sonnets. After brainstorming this idea, I will then ask them to think about the differences and similarities between the two classic sonnets. This will lead into a discussion about the differences between Italian and English sonnets. Sentence fluency is an important factor in the difference between the two models.
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Step two (introducing student 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 it’s the focus of this lesson. You might prompt your students to talk about each model's word choice as well.
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Step three (thinking and pre-writing):
- After reviewing our notes and thoughts on the lesson, I will ask students to compose their own sonnet using an Italian or English form on any subject they choose. If they are unsure of a subject, I will suggest they fall back on a love sonnet (similar to Browning’s and Shakespeare’s). They will focus on sentence fluency and word choice. They may even mimic some phrases and word choices from any of the authors we read.
- Publish in class out loud.
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Step four (revising with specific trait language): 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.
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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.
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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.
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Learn more about poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning by clicking here.
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