We talked about the organizational structure of Neruda's three odes. Don't forget to do this as well so that your poem does not end up sounding simply like a list of nice attributes. Other than that, today was a work period dedicated to writing a draft ode. The assessment rubric for the ode is in the links section of this blog.
Thursday
We looked over some ideas on about what an ode is, what to include in one and tips on writing one. I gave teams of two one jelly bean in preparation for the Jelly Bean Ode Competition! Teams had 25 minutes to write and print their ode. The winner was selected by student vote. Congratulations to the boys who won the bag of beans. I read through the odes after the class left. They were really well done. Every single one had moments of sheer brilliance and great poetry. Well done everyone!
Wednesday
Many students were absent today due to the band trip. We extended silent reading by ten minutes. I then explained my current addiction with the podcast "Serial". We looked at two more of Neruda's poems in order to pull out what makes a quality ode. I will type these up in class tomorrow while you write some practice odes to jellybeans with a partner!
Tuesday
We tried another Surrealist "parlour game" at the beginning of class. As we did with the drawing activity yesterday, we passed a paper, but this time rather than drawing, I asked you to tell a story about a dermatologist at a petting zoo. The results were "interesting". Next we looked at Neruda's poem again and looked for poetic devices such as simile, alliteration, metaphor, etc. At the end of the class we began the criteria process by again identifying what makes a great ode using Neruda's poem as an example. Tomorrow we will look at a few more odes and complete the criteria so you can begin writing your own odes!
Monday
We continued with a look at odes today. I read aloud one of my favourite poems: Ode to My Socks by Pablo Neruda while the class drew some of the elaborate images the speaker of the poem mentions. Neruda's poetry was at least partially influenced by the Surrealist art movement of the 1920s. The Surrealists took some of their inspiration from the weird imagery provided by dreams. For fun we tried a common surrealist game called the Exquisite Corpse, where three different people participate in the drawing (or writing) of a collaborative piece without knowing what the others have drawn (or written). The results were very entertaining and I think we will have to try a second round using words next time.
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