Part Two - Figurative Language - Usual and Extraordinary - With Free Lesson Plans Ideas from PerfettoWritingRoom(c)

Yesterday, if you recall - and I hope you do! - we began an overview of figurative language.

      It began slowly with cliche and idiom. We will perhaps go BACK to that later.
      We ended with what I HOPE was an enlightening definition of hyperbole and an extension into its uses in fiction writing.

      Today, WE will discuss some of the other types of figurative language. Ones that you clearly know, and ones that you might not have heard of.

Let's start where we left off yesterday. With good old #4. PERSONIFICATION!

4. Not your Daddy's Personification. Personification is supplying inanimate objects and abstract ideas or actions with human characteristics. This is done in poetry, fiction, and more often than we think, in our ordinary day-to-day speech.

• Traffic is just crawling!
• I would have called you sooner but my cell phone wasn't cooperating.
• Time just flew.
• Why don't you wear this hat until the wind calms down?

All of these have the element of personification, even though you would never really think of them as such.
Really these are just examples of ordinary speech - idiomatic expressions even. Because each of these inanimate objects is doing something a human would do, it is considered an example of personification. Generally speaking personification is used in poetry and fiction for effect. Personification can be a a few words or a few sentences.
         Technically (and don't go crazy over this one) personification is a type of metaphor, because it compares one thing to another. We aren't even doing metaphor for a day or two though, so don't worry.

HOWEVER - there are other types of PERSONIFICATION!

5. The Pathetic Fallacy - ahhh. Doesn't that just ooze intellectual gravitas? The pathetic fallacy is a very specific type of personification, coined by John Ruskin and refers to the sentimentality found in poetry when all of nature and weather is imbued with emotion. When flowers dance and clouds sulk and rocks ponder in a stoic silence, you can be sure you have stumbled onto the pathetic fallacy.
        Now, critics and writers argue that the pathetic fallacy can be found in fiction as well, and that nature mirrors the feelings of the writer or narrator. Remember in poetry that the speaker may often be the writer, though in fiction the speaker is referred to as the narrator.
          Classically, the pathetic fallacy is considered an "error in reasoning" simply because weather and nature does not have emotion at all, let alone the emotions of the character. Despite the bad rap, writers may use the pathetic fallacy with subtlety to great effect. It is quite easy to see how it can become maudlin and overwrought, however.
            "The Friday funeral for Charlie dawned gray and colorless. Mabel looked out the window, then up at the sky which cried out its sadness for her and the world. The clouds unleashed a torrent of teardrops onto the soil, mourning alongside Mabel, but offering her no comfort."

If you think "Ugh. Maybe that is a bit much," we agree with you. Remember though you can use the pathetic fallacy carefully and in the right spots to strengthen your writing. So don't let my lousy sentence get you down. And don't let the word "pathetic" get you down either! It derives from the word pathos, or emotion. How about:

            "Charlie had always loved this sky. The vast heaven that only Oklahoma could show off, with its blazing blue dome.
        'Thanks for nothing,' Mabel said, and her eyes flew open as her lips moved. Had she really said the words out loud? What did her in was the smell. That ozone smell. She lifted the lace curtain and peered out to sky beyond. Not five miles away they'd be burying him, and out here, you could nearly see that far. The rain was coming, whether to laugh or cry at Charlie's death, she wasn't sure, but big, black thunderheads were forming, and she saw them now at the far edge of the world coloring the world an inky gray."

        EVEN IF you don't love this. . . you have got to admit this is a much BETTER example of the pathetic fallacy if I do say so myself. I'm here all week. Don't forget to tip your servers. . .!

6. Anthropomorphism - another form of figurative language, and subset of personification that applies human traits, behavior, and characteristics to non-humans, usually to animals. This is useful for many reasons. It creates wider audience appeal (Mighty Mouse can be enjoyed all over the world not just by a single race of people), enables the writer to handle upsetting topics (such as death in Charlotte's Web), or for satirical purposes (Animal Farm, anyone?). Lastly, anthropomorphism can be used as an educational device. There is no end to the list of children's books that use this technique to help young kids understand the world around them a little better.

                                                                   SO WHAT's NEXT???

PART THREE of Figurative Language, The Usual and the Extraordinary!
P.S. If you're waiting for Simile and Metaphor, don't worry, it's coming.

Poetry UNITS, And the Value of talking to other Teachers. . .

Today I was on LinkedIn.

I had the good fortune of falling into a group - teachers anonymous of something silly like that. One of the benefits of helping other people is that it really benefits you MORE, almost all of the time. You feel good about yourself, you feel inspired. It feels good to do good. And then there's the fact that you read about all these other fascinating ideas teachers have for poetry units.

The found poem is always fun. The acrostic? - why not... One professor suggested giving each student half a line, and having that student meet up with his or her "other half" in order to discern the line's meaning. Still another teacher suggested drawing the impression or meaning the poem has for them. A final one I read thought a variation on the "cut up" poem would be fun. Instead of cutting up the entire poem, just cut out certain phrases. Students can fill in what they believe would work provided they can justify it.

I've always thought the Exquisite Corpse works well, whether you are doing it for the short story or for the poem. Most people don't call it the "Exquisite Corpse" because it sounds eerie and odd, but most of us have done it before. If you use rows, and have five students in each row, each has a sheet of paper. The entire class begins their versions of a story, OR a POEM.
      When they have gotten a stanza or a few good lines down, each person passes it back (well, except for the poor people in the back who must run very fast up to the front. Now, everyone quickly reads the first stanza, and continue the poem, until it is time to pass back again. When each person has the honor of getting back his or her paper, let everyone read, and then finish their own poem. This round will take the longest.  Everyone may share out loud afterwards.

If you want a longer more far-reaching and skills-based poetry unit....

An idea I have had much success with is using the Romantic Poets. This is nothing I am currently working on for the PerfettoWritingRoom. If and when I do, it will be a full unit. Whether you do one poem from each: Shelley, Wordsworth, Blake, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and Keats, use the poems of the Romantic poets that are available in your text, choose your favorite or have the students choose their own, it can be very successful, and will have a different slant.

Once the poems are chosen, create a prompt for each poem. Assignments can vary and can be: personal reflection, close reading, summarizing the poem but moving on to a related writing topic, or a targeted writing activity geared towards studying the poems' literary devices, structure, pacing, symbolism, tropes, or other goal you may have. Ideally, you may want to do a variety of each of these, not just summaries, or reflections, etc. I always got permission to take the student out of school for one or two periods, to sit outside and read poetry as the Romantics would have done. This was Grade 11, and they appreciated it and as a result were reasonably well behaved!

The Unit grade is based on a major test that includes all of the poetry and information covered, all of the writings done in the "Poetry-prompt journal," as well as one-two poems they must write that use the style and the subject matter of the Romantic poets. Lastly, there is a small art component: some students take pictures of nature, other draw, sculpt, do computer renderings or animation. For those who "swear" they are completely dull at art, an extra poem or two may be submitted.

Outside of the unit itself, there is a major poetry analysis paper in the works; this is not included in the unit grade, but shows that the students have a very well-rounded activity and lesson load during the spring. I feel it is very holistic, or "whole-istic."

I hope you think this is a useful approach to teaching, not just "a few poems" but the style and structure of poetry, and background of the poets, all the while giving the students some time to slow down and soak up some sun, time to reflect and write as the Romantics themselves would, before quizzing, testing, and writing an analytical paper and some poems of their own. Who knew you could be so industrious in March?

I hope you enjoyed my idea for the Romantics teaching unit. So in the spirit of talking to our teachers and yes, our writers too, any other ideas for great poetry units? I'm all ears. Stop by and drop me a line, or visit my store, posted on the side bar of my main page.
Best,
Gina
PerfettoWritingRoom

When Can One Writing Activity Be Used 900 Times?? Well (if you Really Push Your Limits)

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/PerfettoWritingRoom

Yes, Yes, this is ONE page. A mere single page. On the left are positive attribute adjectives, and on the right are potentially negative attribute nouns, or at the very least nouns that are frustratingly ill-fitted (on purpose, I assure you) to the words on the left!

The ENTIRE activity is SIX pages. A writer, teacher, lecturer, professor or coach, can do SO MUCH with an exercise like this!!

I have used this activity for years, and writer always always love it, not to say they don't sometimes HATE it first....but they are allowed to choose again. The light bulb always goes on.

Whether you give one page to each row or aisle, or cut them into squares and have one "noun" bag and one "adjective" bag and let the writers choose until they have a suitable pair that makes them suitably excited and inspired, it almost always leads to something bizarre, outrageous, beautiful or at least beyond what a writer felt he or she was capable of writing before attempting such an extreme assignment.

I have named this the "Extreme Perspective" Writing Activity. In total, there are up to 900 possible adjective-noun matches. Here are the directions, knowing FULL well that if you wanted, you could all just shut off the computer and make it on your own. While I am admittedly selling it (yes, the amazingly high price, if I recall properly of $5.00 bucks?), the idea, work, effort, directions and embedded freebie alone (which you'll never really know about unless you buy it, so ha) is more than worth it....

Back to the Directions -

While you have chosen a bizarre, odd, or unlikely adjective-noun scenario, write a scene in which the pairing you have chosen not only is feasible, but is downright believable and likely given your setting, atmosphere, narrator, or all three. In short, what scenario can you create in which the unlikely pairing you have makes perfect sense?

Just a few of the 900 pairings could be

Brilliant Industrialization
Fascinating Agony
Glorious Destruction

As you can already guess, such pairings have the potential to PUSH writers into lesser traveled genre or historical eras, can force writers to make less safe writing topics, choose more interesting narrators or unreliable ones, and in general make writing choices and decisions far away from what they normally would. The fact that a writer can go back every week and choose a new possibility is exciting, lending itself to portfolio or even story collection possibilities.

See the link to my store at Teachers Pay teachers at the top of this post. Happy writing, and happy teaching.