Wordy Wednesday

Let's use Wordy Wednesday to talk about POETRY. I am very excited to see so many of you using your time wisely to create your own poetry.  Poetry is often a way to express your feelings which would otherwise go unnoticed.  Soon we will be reading published poems, as well.  When you read a poem, it enters your being and rests inside  you as you think about what it means.  If you "get it" it will explode inside  you and its meaning will stay with you forever.  If it doesn't mean anything to you, then it will just fizzle out and make room for a new poem to enter.  I hope you will find many poems exploding.  It's exciting.

Let's use our blog to "publish" some of your original poetry.  You can post your favorite so far and let others experience your thoughts and feelings.  What a great way for us to really get to know you!  Enjoy the experience. 

I will post a few of my favorite published poems here for you all to enjoy too. 

Japanese Haiku by ISSA (Translated into English)

In this world                                                               A kitten
     even among insects                                                       stamps on falling leaves,
          some sing well, some don't.                                              holds them to the ground.

Emily Dickinson

I ’M nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there ’s a pair of us—don’t tell!
They ’d banish us, you know.
How dreary to be somebody!	5
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog! Whispers of Mortality by E. E. Cummings old age sticks up Keep Off signs)& youth yanks them down(old age cries No Tres)&(pas) youth laughs (sing old age scolds Forbid den Stop Must n't Don't &)youth goes right on gr owing old Robert Frost Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf's a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay. Edgar Allan Poe Annabel Lee  It was many and many a year ago,           In a kingdom by the sea,     That a maiden there lived whom you may know           By the name of ANNABEL LEE;     And this maiden she lived with no other thought           Than to love and be loved by me.     I was a child and she was a child,           In this kingdom by the sea;     But we loved with a love that was more than love-           I and my Annabel Lee;     With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven           Coveted her and me.     And this was the reason that, long ago,           In this kingdom by the sea,     A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling           My beautiful Annabel Lee;     So that her highborn kinsman came           And bore her away from me,     To shut her up in a sepulchre           In this kingdom by the sea.     The angels, not half so happy in heaven,           Went envying her and me-     Yes!- that was the reason (as all men know,           In this kingdom by the sea)     That the wind came out of the cloud by night,           Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.     But our love it was stronger by far than the love           Of those who were older than we-           Of many far wiser than we-     And neither the angels in heaven above,           Nor the demons down under the sea,     Can ever dissever my soul from the soul           Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.     For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams           Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;     And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes           Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;     And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side     Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,           In the sepulchre there by the sea,           In her tomb by the sounding sea. How to Eat a Poem by Eve Merriam Don't be polite. Bite in. Pick it up with your fingers and lick the juice that may run down your chin. It is ready and ripe now, whenecver you are. You do not need a knife or fork or spoon or plate or napkin or tablecloth. For there is no core or stem or rind or pit or seed or skin to throw away. Enjoy!

Fictional Friday

Fictional Friday is back.  Our lessons are deep into fiction with your free reading novels and your original short stories.  It's time to get back to the blog and post some of your favorite fictional books.  Write a short review of a book you think others will enjoy reading.  If you think one of your nonfiction selections was noteworthy from last marking period, by all means, write a review so others will know. 

If you have questions on your literary analysis, you can post them here.  Other students may also give an alternate perspective on your issue.  Let's help each other and let's talk about books.  I was happy to see that some students challenged themselves with classic writers such as H.G. Wells, Agatha Christie, Louisa May Alcott, Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, Jane Austen, Jack London, Jules Verne, and J.R.R. Tolkien.  Contempory writers like Gary Paulsen,  Lois Lowry, Robert Cormier, S. E. Hinton, Walter Dean Myers, Jerry Spinelli, and  J. K. Rowling continue to be middle school favorites. The newest author to entice middle school students such as yourselves is Suzanne Collins.  I look forward to reading all the literery analysis papers, especially those written on The Hunger Games.  I know Suzanne Collins' books are rich on thematic ideas.

Time Travel Tuesday

Welcome to marking period 4, the final marking period.  Are you all cheering now?  I was just wondering.  I know many eighth graders start to show signs of sadness during this final marking period since leaving Brackman is so bitter sweet.  You want to move on to bigger and better things as a high school student, but you are leaving the comfort and security of your middle school years too.  It's tough.

Well, I hope our last marking period together will be the start of a new and exciting journey though language arts literacy.  Even though we are reading a drama now in class, I decided to deviate from Theatrical Thursday and go back to one of my favorite topics, Time Travel.  After all, we are reading about the past.  I'd like to see how creative you can be by starting some ideas here for an historical fiction short story.  After standardized testing is finished, we will be able to devote more time to writing  original short stories.  The blog is a perfect place to try out some ideas.

Time Travel Tuesday will allow you to use your imagination and jump back into a time in the past that interests you.  Imagine yourself in the 1940's.  Maybe you want to create a story of a German soldier or maybe a young Jewish boy caught in the termoil.  Since we are reading Anne Frank's diary, I think WWII would be a perfect place to start our time travel. 

Here are some pictures to get you started.  Feel free to write the opening paragraph of an original short story based on one of my pictures or maybe describe a character complete with feelings and emotions.  Description of setting will work here too.  Just remember the time reference, somewhere in Europe or the Pacific circa 1940.  You decide.

This is me with the Yellow Star. I had to carry this picture around with my identity card.

You have some things to think about. Which direction will you take your story? Will you write about an army man, a woman who supports the troups, or a Jewish child in a concentration camp?  You can even take on the task of being a world leader making the decisions.  You decide.

Theatrical Thursday

This may be our last opportunity to talk about The Giver on the blog. There are a few possible endings.  I guess it depends if you are an optimist or a realist. We will definitely discuss the ending possibilities in class. I think some of you will be shocked at the ending as described by many of the realists in the group. 

If you research Lois Lowry's website, you can read some of her answers to questions posed by students about the ending.  She is very evasive, indeed.  Feel free to check it out.  Here's the link.

http://www.loislowry.com/  Retype if it does not post as a link.  :(

Now it's time to get down to work for today. I have a very interesting reason why I decided to post this page on Theatrical Thursday.  Imagine....you are the director of the new movie, The Giver.  How would you cast the characters?  Here are some possibilities as I see them:



Paul Newman as THE GIVERReese Witherspoon as Rosemary Chord Overstreet as Jonas Isla Fisher as Fiona   Brian Jones as Asher
and introducing  Jeremy James as  baby Gabriel




So what do you think of my cast of characters so far?  Now it's your turn.  Explain who you would choose to play the most important cast of characters in the movie version of The Giver.  If you would like to cast the entire movie with characters played by your peers or others from the Brackman School, go right ahead.  I am curious to see how you do as a director. 
For some extra credit print pictures of your cast of characters and create a movie poster to show the class.  Have fun!

Wordy Wednesday

I hope you all have been checking the blog even if you have not been contributing.  The last Fictional Friday had to do with The Giver, as I am sure you have figured out by now.  Please go back and look at the pictures again to see if you can make a connection to the text yet.  Some will still be a mystery until we reach that section in the text.  Now that you have more information, though, you can make educated guesses and/or predictions for the novel. Have fun trying to figure them out.

Now, let's get to the task at hand---Vocabulary. There are many interesting vocabulary words that you will encounter as we read The Giver.  You have already worked with a few.  I am going to post some pictures that may help you define some of the new words on our list.  This will be a challenge to get just the right picture to show the meaning, since I don't have the capability of sketching exactly what I want.  Let's give it a try.

Exuberant or Excruciating









Anguish  or  Conspicuous

Meticulous or Transgression

 Buoyancy or Crescendo

  Interdependent or Independent

Easy, right?  Let me know what you think of the exercise.  Please create a post using some of the words in context too.  I'd be interested in seeing how they fit together in a paragraph.  Feel free to find some pictures on the Internet for the words that were not represented in illustration above.  Print and bring in for extra points.  Have fun with words. 

Factual Friday

Let's stick to the facts.  We talked about changes that need to be made in school, in Barnegat, in New Jersey, and in our nation or the world.  It's important to strengthen your writing style when dealing with persuasive essays.  Be creative but be logical too.  Let's get down to business and iron out some issues right here on the blog.  I will post some of the most common complaints expressed about our school. Try to think logically and present your best reason to support or refute the given issue.  If I remember correctly, some of the popular complaints involved gym class,  cafeteria food and eating locations,  a lack of electives, the dress code, gum chewing, a need for recess....the list goes on and on. 

Let's start with cafeteria food.....

Here's what the school lunch is like in Korea.  Better?


Many of you expressed complaints about the food not being healthy.  Will the Korean menu work here to solve that problem?
How about this image?


The caption on this picture below mentioned mystery meat?  Is that fair?

The caption on the picture above reads....

Kids who ate school lunches like this one regularly were 29 percent more likely to be obese than those who brought their lunch from home.

The caption  for the picture above reads....

Health researchers typically focus on improving the quality of foods served in school cafeterias. But what about improving a child’s whole dining experience. Turning the school lunch into a real sit-down meal, rather than a minutes-long eating frenzy, is just one way to begin improving the health and eating habits of the nation’s children, says Dr. Arthur Agatston.

What do you think about time?  Do you feel rushed at lunch?  Does the time issue cause you to eat all the wrong foods?  Let's just think a minute.  Do we have a minute?

Let's talk about the improvements you would like to see on the menu or during lunch and why they are necessary. Be logical and prove your point.  We will take on another issue next week so check back often.

Fictional Friday

Fictional Friday is back.  I hope you are all ready to once again be creative.  As you work on your memoir project, I want you to consider some other possibilities for expressing your imagination.  I realize that for your free reading you will be concentrating on nonfiction and planning your "talk show" interviews for the end of the marking period.  That does not mean you should completely forget about fiction and creativity. We will be starting a very bizarre novel shortly and I want to ease you into it.

Our new novel will have a touch of science fiction so be ready for anything and everything, as they say. To get you started and thinking along the lines of the weird and the seemingly impossible, I am posting some pictures that may or may not have something to do with our new novel. I would like you to preview the pictures and see if you can develop your own story line fitting each picture somewhere into the plot.  You have my permission to be as weird as you like. Remember, this book will be science fiction.

Spoiler alert>>>  Anyone who has already read our new book or has been told anything about the plot from an older sister/brother (Allan) make sure you do not ruin the surprise or shock value of the novel for the rest of the classes.  Thanks

Okay, enjoy the pictures and let your imaginations fly.....