Lesson 3

·         Begin by asking the children what they remember from last time and refreshing their memory. Ask them if they would like to share what they worked on last time and have them explain what they did.

·         “Every piece needs a background. It doesn’t necessarily need to be a background you might see in real life like a hill. It could just be a couple different colors blended together. There just needs to be something behind the subject. You should also shade the background, though remember to use contrast to highlight the important part.”

·         Tell the children that putting an object on top of another object, such as painting a person with the ocean in the background, is called overlap. Overlap is important because it makes the painting more interesting and it makes it seem more real because it looks more 3D.

·         “If you decide to draw a horizon, keep your subject’s feet below the horizon line. The earth continues beyond where the person is standing and you can still see it. The closer a person is to the horizon line, the farther away they look.” Show them a drawing that demonstrates this.

·         Give the children some time to make a drawing with a background. When they’re finished, ask if anyone wants to share.

·         Explain the rule of thirds. This means the piece is usually more interesting if you divide it into thirds, so you can either put the horizon line at the top third or bottom third of the page. It also means that people’s eyes naturally move towards the corners of the page, so you’ll usually put your subject in a corner. However, there are exceptions to every rule, and if you’re painting a portrait the person is usually going to go in the center.

·         “Remember the background is still important and it should still reflect the subject of your painting. The background is used to create something called context. Context is the background information that helps explain what something is about. For example, if I were to just draw a portrait with a blank background, you would know what the painting was about: the person. However, if I added a background it might tell you more about the person. For example, if I painted a church in the background it might make you think that I go to church with that person. The background is context that tells you more about the relationship.”

·         Tell the children that context is also used in poetry. Setting a scene for something to happen is context. This can be done through the description they practiced.

·         Remind them that the main goal of poetry is to make a reader feel something. This can be done through description. Always try to make your descriptions unusual. Something a reader hasn’t heard before will mean more to them then something they’ve heard a thousand times.

·         A phrase that’s repeated over and over in writing is called a cliché. Clichés should be avoided. An example of a cliché would be writing “tears stream down my face”. This has been heard many times before, and it loses its meaning. You want to make it clearer why you’re crying and what it feels like. Remind them of the Sylvia Plath poem and her tears like vinegar.

·         Tell them that Plath’s description works better because it creates a more specific feeling. Ask them what feeling it creates.

·         Give the children time to practice unusual descriptions.

·         Another tool of the poet is rhythm. Read “hospital bar”:

i'm pouring thick
from a wineglass maroon bruised
fingertip serenade across this
hospital white corridor
floor a splash watery dense
like hard hat hands shatter
break crack eyelids open like
crusty aged underwater sea
urchins in the shell of something
so forgotten even forget-me-nots
can't remember what it felt like to
be flowers so green was the ocean
floor like the hospital scrubs
on tenured physicians or the crinkling
vines of a grape arbor trilling
into a cloudless sky what sky what
sky what sky the sky is
dead like the staining drink escaping
this broken flute that plays only flat
melodies of what it meant to be a
woman in a twenty first
century age of the innocent i think
not i think not only of emergency
room tabloids of slicing hearts on grey's
anatomy but of the feet it takes
to create a burgundy glass of bitter
wine that's pouring
thick i am

·         Ask the children if there are any words they don’t understand

·         Point out that this is an example of an ending that looks like the beginning

·         “Now, I don’t know what this poem is about from looking at the words. However, it does give me a sense of how the poet is feeling. What feeling does this poem give you? How would you describe it?”

·         Point out that the poem is 28 lines but one sentence. Ask the children what they think this does to the tone and remind them what tone is.

·         Point out that the poem is not a proper sentence and it doesn’t have any capital letters. Tell them that in poems, they don’t have to follow the rules, they just have to find a way to get their point across.

·         “Another part of this poem is repetition, or the repeating of phrases. Where do you see that in this poem? What do you think the repetition accomplishes or means to the poem?”

·         “In this poem, I think the repetition of “what sky what sky what sky” creates a build-up leading to the changing and ending of the phrase “the sky is dead”. You can repeat things in poetry when you want to emphasize certain phrases, like in a chorus.”

·         Tell the children that rhyming also helps create rhythm and read a stanza from one of the previous poems. Ask them if they think the poem is fast or slow and what that means for the feeling of the poem.

·         Tell the children that rhythm is also created by the number of syllables per line. Write syllable on the board and explain that it means the number of vowel sounds in a word. You can do the clapping exercise with a few words (e.g. dog, puppy, Labrador) to show them what a syllable is.

·         “The fewer syllables per line, the faster the poem goes. In “hospital bar”, the poet has very few syllables per line even though it is only one sentence. She breaks her lines in the middle of the sentence to do this. Breaking lines like this creates tension and makes the reader want to go to the next line. The more tension there is, the faster the poem reads. Slow poems will have longer lines that seem more like full sentences while faster poems are short and choppy.”

·         Give the children time to practice rhythm. When they’re finished, ask if any of them want to share and ask what rhythm they wanted. 

Find "hospital bar" here: http://www.fictionpress.com/s/2301753/1/hospital-bar