I've got to teach year 9 for 35 minutes about 'anything of my choice' it does not need to link to anything they have been doing in class. They are very bright independent school children, boys and girls My ideas so far:
- lesson looking at the sonnet form - teach them the traditional features of a sonnet and look at several modern sonnets to find their features. Start with clapping out syllables and discussing stress and then moving onto couplets.
- Haikus - teach/ remind them of the features of a haiku. Work in groups to make their own haiku.
3.Poems as puzzles - I quite like the idea of looking at a poem like Sylvia Plath's morning song as a puzzle whose similes and metaphors need to be unravelled. It's a fledgling idea but I've got some ideas about making it like the children are detectives and need to work out the answer to who the poem is about.
- My other idea was looking at the strips Dulux and other paint companies produce as a way of improving descriptive writing. I thought we could have pictures of sunsets, rainforests, waterfalls and use paint chart descriptions and create our own colour descriptions to write more vivid descriptions.
All of these are only initial ideas so please be kind. Would really welcome some views on my ideas, thanks.