Writing a Basic Paragraph

One of these things just doesn't belong here

Once students start reading on their own they will quickly notice that printed materials are divided up into paragraphs.  I found that my own children naturally adopted this practice and only needed a little instruction to point out some of the finer points.  Although there are workbooks geared to teaching children to write carefully constructed paragraphs by filling out graphs, I have found a more organic method works better.

Instead of having my sons fill out workbook pages with contrived writing exercises, we just wrote about what we were reading.  If we were studying flowers in science, we wrote about flowers, if we were exploring the American Revolution, we wrote about it, if we were reading an exciting book…well, you get the idea.  One of the hardest things about writing is getting started and feeling as if you have something to say.  When we give children an assignment to…write a paragraph, they often hit a blank wall and have no idea how to start.  It is much easier when they have just interacted with some material and then are asked to tell about it.

Once your children have had some practice writing about what they are learning,  transitioning to paragraphs is easy.  You can begin to show them how to group their thoughts into cohesive paragraphs. Just as a sentence expresses a complete thought, so paragraphs should be grouped around a central idea.  I use the following to illustrate this concept.

Gather together some random items from your kitchen: a measuring cup, spoon, cheese grater, egg slicer, spatula etc.  Put all of the items in a brown paper bag, and then, throw in a toothbrush.  Now gather your students around and start producing each of the items.  As you do this continue to ask questions…what is this, what is it used for, etc.  Once all of the items are on the table ask; Which item doesn’t belong?  Hopefully they identify the toothbrush.

Next, explain that a paragraph is like this bag of stuff.  Everything in the paragraph should revolve around one theme.  While the items are different, they are all used in the kitchen to prepare food, except for the toothbrush.  Now, when we write a paragraph, we don’t want any toothbrushes thrown in, no random thoughts or unrelated trivia.

As our year progresses, when I come across a random sentences in my students work I ask them ‘Why is there a toothbrush in here?’  They laugh and know exactly what I mean.  It’s a quick easy reminder for them, equally helpful with the elementary kids as it is with the high schoolers.

If your children need another illustration you can use the picture of a house.  First we lay the foundation…or tell what we are going to talk about.  Then we build up the walls…or support what we are saying by explaining further and adding in facts and details, and lastly, we add the roof…which is the summary  or concluding sentence. If children are older and will be moving on to another sentence we show them how to write a summary sentence that transitions to the next paragraph.

Some children are comfortable expressing themselves in writing and naturally begin to move from sentences to paragraphs…others resist this process.  For many, especially young boys, the resistance is not to composing a paragraph, but to the actual process of picking up a pencil and putting it to paper.  They find physically writing challenging.  For these kids, you might want to try writing every other sentence for them.  I’ve found bearing the burden with the child, and taking over some of the writing produces better paragraphs.  The reluctant writer is more willing to put forth a greater effort and write longer, more complex sentences, when they know they will not have to write the whole thing.

Some children are just plain stumped when asked to write a paragraph.  They don’t know where to start.  For those kids, having a pattern to use at first can be quite helpful.  (A word of warning, this pattern is meant to be used as a tool…the goal, however, is to move beyond the need for it.)  First, pick a topic that interest them.  Then have them tell you  three facts about that topic.  Once they have  that done they should be able to write 5 sentences…one introducing the topic, one about each of the facts, and then a summary sentence.  There you have it, a good basic paragraph.  After children have mastered this type of paragraph you can expand the lesson by having them vary the sentence structure or choose more descriptive vocabulary.  (More on this later.)

When looking through writing programs or workbooks you will find that most of the books lean heavily toward ‘creative’ writing.  The pages are filled with topics such as ‘What did you do last summer?’ ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ ‘Describe your pet dragon’ etc.  Some kids love these types of assignments…but I’ve found that those kids are in the minority.  Most of the children I’ve worked with find that kind of writing prompt frustrating and a waste of their time.  The prompts rarely involve anything they want to talk about.  That is why I generally tied our writing into something else going on in our day, whether it be schoolwork, a trip, or a book they were reading.

My second son, Levi, didn’t like creative writing (or reading) he preferred reality.  Instead of writing stories, I would have him choose a page in one of our large Eyewitness books (non-fiction books on a variety of topics) and write about what he discovered on that page.  While he didn’t want to write a fairy tale he was perfectly happy to read about polar bears and then write a paragraph about them.  The point is to get children writing, be flexible about the content.

Grammar Basics

The following is a review of  the basic parts of speech.  We’ve been going over some of these in my classes.  Once I’m sure students have some of these basics down we can move on to review some of the tricky grammar rules that occur on the SAT and ACT tests.

If you have elementary school kids this is a good list of starting concepts.  You can review by printing up  worksheets or purchasing a workbook…or have students list all the nouns (or verbs, or adjectives) out of a book they are reading.  Even a very young child can ‘bring you a noun’ or illustrate a verb by jumping in place.  Introducing prepositions is as easy as having your child go…under the table, by the table, around the table…etc.   There really isn’t a need to spend a lot of money for these early lessons.

This site has free, printable worksheets

Parts of speech

Nouns – A person, place, thing, or idea.  Make sure kids understand that a noun can be an idea, concept, or belief.  Truth, peace, love can all be nouns.   Proper nouns are naming nouns, like Kelly, Los Angeles, or The Hobbit.  In the following sentence the nouns are bold.

Joseph angrily kicked the soccer ball over the  dilapidated fence.

Adjectives - Words that describe or modify a noun.

Joseph angrily kicked the ball over the dilapidated fence.

Verb - An action word, or a word which shows state of being or occurrence.  (Verbs that show state of being would be words like: is, are, am, was etc.)

Joseph angrily kicked the ball over the dilapidated fence.

Adverb – A word that describes or modifies a verb, adjective, or another adverb. (and frequently ends with an -ly.)

Joseph angrily kicked the ball over the dilapidated fence.

Preposition - a function word that combines with a noun, pronoun or noun phrase to form a prepositional phrase.  (Here is a  list of frequently used prepositions.)

Joseph angrily kicked the ball over the dilapidated fence.

Article - words that make a noun specific…the, a, an.

Joseph angrily kicked the ball over the dilapidated fence.

Pronoun - A word that takes the place of a noun in a sentence.  Pronouns would include I,we, you, he, she, it, they, them etc.  A pronoun must have a clear antecedent…more on this later.

He angrily kicked the ball over the dilapidated fence.

Writing Poetry

Joseph

In honor of National Poetry month (April) my writing classes will be working on poems for the month. We will be reading many different poems and working on writing our own.  To help get everyone off to a good start I’m going to post an article from a past newsletter…most of this was written, a few years ago,  by my son Tim to my son Joe.  (Tim is my eldest, Joe is the baby)  Enjoy.

Timothy

This is going to be a longer than usual newsletter article. Joseph left his e-mail open on my computer so that I could help him with something and I noticed that he and his oldest brother Tim and been corresponding. Many of you don’t know Tim…he’s 23, has an English degree and enjoys writing poetry. Joseph has recently been trying his hand at poetry and decided to enter one in a contest. He evidently sent some of his poems to Tim to get his opinion. They have since continued writing back and forth exchanging poems and feedback. If you are like me teaching your child how to write (or even read) poetry can be difficult. I found these thoughts from Tim quite helpful so, with his permission, I’m passing them on. (I started to edit Tim’s thoughts to make it shorter…but it wasn’t working so you are getting the e-mail in it’s entirety.)

Hey Joe, first off I think it is great that you are writing poetry, secondly, don’t stop. I’ll start with a few general poetry suggestions (things I had to have people tell me when I started writing), and try to weave in specific things about your poems.

1. Poems, especially if you are just starting to write them, should be narrative (i.e. they should tell a story, the more concrete the better). Pick a subject–a person an object a place–and try to describe that thing as vividly as you can. Tell the story of the thing. Give it a name, a personality. Avoid generalizations. Be extremely specific. Poems about philosophical themes are particularly hard to write well, and harder to make interesting. Poems, as a rule, are about the love of language and how words can work together to make unique new combinations. They are not so much about ideas. Poems convey ideas, but it is always more about how the idea is conveyed than what the idea actually is.

Forget, for now, what you are trying to say; concentrate on how you are saying it. For example, Pockets Empty seems like somewhat of a credo against alcoholism. You have a person in the poem, but he is nameless and peripheral. He is a tool that you are using to make a point. Make him the point. Forget for a moment about trying to tell us how alcoholism is bad, we know it’s bad. Who is this guy? What does he look like? Does he have kids? What does his daughter think he smells like? Who were his parents. Write his story in strange, unexpected words.

2. Don’t use experimental punctuation. Only e.e. cummings is allowed to do that, and even he is annoying sometimes. Make your words and how you use them what is interesting.

3. To be a good poet, you need to read good poetry. Find writers you like, and try to write in their style (not forever, but to learn things). Read: William Carlos Williams, T.S. Eliot, Pablo Neruda, Seamus Heaney, Billy Collins, E.E.Cummings Eavan Boland, Philip Larkin, Gerard Manley Hopkins, etc.

For example, I really like this poem by William Carlos Williams:

This is Just to Say
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

So I wrote this poem, kind of in the same vein:

Fruit Flies
Ahhgh! Fruit Flies
in the oranges again!
They were stacked
so nicely–a pyramid
in the wicker basket.

I had a bar of Ecuadoran
chocolate to go with
them. 77% cacao.
Mmm. Right there!
On the coffee table.

You’d've sliced them
when you got back
this weekend, and
slurp the juice out.
The chocolate could’ve
slowly melted down
your throat.

But oh! Oh! Those
fruit flies mucked
it up. They’re in there
now, screwing inside
your Welcome Home
oranges!

Writing is a craft, and like most crafts you learn by emulating others. Then once you know how everything fits together, you can push off on your own. I mean hopefully your emulations contain a lot of your own style, and aren’t carbon copies of others. But Picasso wasn’t Picasso until he could do the classics.

4. Not many serious poets write rhymed poetry anymore. Probably because it is very difficult to write poetry that sounds serious in rhyme (read T.S. Eliot for someone who knows how). Rappers of course would be the exception to the rule. Another reason rhymed poetry is rare these days is that tends to work best in poems written in verse (in iambic something in other words). Writing in verse has gone somewhat out of style, therefore so has rhyming. Writing a poem in meter is one of the hardest things a writer can do. I have only tried it a couple times, and it took forever, and it wasn’t that good, and I got a lot of the meter wrong anyway.  If you want to write in meter, I would suggest writing in a very strict controlled format (try writing a sonnet).

I would stick to free verse if I were you. Use alliteration and assonance and good words as your poetic tools, and leave off meter and rhyme until a later date.
Another side-note: rhyme works really well in comic poems, see Dr. Suess.

5. Structure. I went and looked at the guidelines for the poetry.com contest, and it strikes me that they are looking for a very specific format (i.e. a long-lined block poems). This is fine, but it might not be the best for your writing to try to write specifically with the contest in mind. Your best work will come when you write simply because you enjoy it. If you try to write in a specific format, according someone’s guidelines, you might not end up with your best effort. For example, I tend to write in short lines. Most of my stuff would not fit the contest parameters. Maybe your best style would be tense, terse, sparse bundles. Who knows? You certainly won’t if you only write for the contest. Long lined poems are hard to write because poems are about compression, saying as much as you can with as few words as possible. Long lines make you subconsciously use unneeded words and phrases.

Remember that in poetry, the line is very important. Where you choose to end a line, what word starts a line, matters in poetry. In prose it doesn’t.

6. Content. I touched on this slightly. Write about whatever you want. Just because it is poetry doesn’t mean it has to be serious. Just make sure of two things: it tells a story and it is written with words in mind.

Be flexible. If you write a poem, and there is only one line you like, don’t be afraid to throw everything out but that one line, or even that one word. Build a new poem around that line or word. It might look very different from the first one.

Most often when I write something, I work on it till I think it is done. Then I store it away for a couple weeks or a couple months, before I read it again. That way I can get a little distance from the writing and detach myself. Even when I really like something I write, most of the time, I don’t like it a month later. Except maybe that one line or phrase or word. Maybe not even that. But if I can salvage just the pieces that were good enough to be striking after the pet status wore off, then I’ve got something worth keeping. And I can rework around the strengths.

So I guess that would be my advice. Write often, but don’t spend too much time on one thing. Write something til its done (that’s important, finish it even if it sucks and you don’t know why). Then move on to something else. Keep writing. Then come back to the old stuff and pick through the wreckage to find what’s salvageable. Every once in a while, you’ll find something. That’s what writing is mostly, failing most often, and waiting for the unexpected surprising good things.

Long, and not very specific to your poems, but that is what I think. Keep writing, maybe even with my suggestions in mind, then send me more stuff. I’ll try to be more concise and text focused next time.

Your rambling brother,
Tim

As long as I’ve started this long article…let me go on to show you the poem Joseph ended up writing after reading this e-mail. As you can see he picked a much simpler topic than alcoholism.

Bermuda

Green Bermuda, rangy, unkempt
thicker than Belize.
Rumbling machine, hot, half spun blades,
coughing black pollution.

A cloudless, torrid summer sky
will see ferocious battle.
Valentine prepares pink lemonade, hair pulled up,
cheeks pomegranate red from heat.

Children playing, splashing and racing
in the above ground pool.
I release the sunflower seeds, masterfully cracked,
by the thirties from my mouth.

More antagonized with every failed
attempt to start the mower.
Chuckling Valentine appears with drinks:
Is there any gas?

I look at her with arrogant eyebrows
and open up the tank-
Empty echoes the merciless jab at my manhood.

Essay Writing class update.

My Essay writing class has been working on writing explications. For the first few assignments students were free to choose which pieces their would explicate.  This week they were to work on either Psalm 1, or a poem called ‘Peace Wall’.  If you are choosing to use Peace Wall you will probably need to google and get some basics about the conflict in Northern Ireland as that provides the background for the poem.  Apologies, due to illness this wasn’t up earlier in the week.

Peace Wall  by Tim Bagdanov

Hail Mary - where a passing bus

swirls gutter leaves to air;

and where shards of brick and glass

are spread over gravel like un-

answered prayers.  Here,

one avoids windows by night

and herds kids to bed

through bleating sirens.

Full of Grace - over there

is a park where no children

play, spine of cement

and barbed wire down the center.

Here, rosary beads are never

innocuous; they scream and wriggle

out prayers of their own.  Here,

it is never known when Peace

will be shattered with a yell

and the yellow stare

of a tiger.

Writing an Explication

Teaching students to write is to teach many subjects at once.  Writing an essay involves more than knowing how to spell and construct sentences.  Students have to develop logic and thinking skills so that they can make reasoned arguments.  They need to learn to do research and assimilate knowledge so that they have something meaningful to communicate.  For each student these blending of skills will result in a unique writing style and each student will struggle with different aspects of writing.

One method to help students work on all of these skills at once is to ask them to write an explication.  Due to the nature of an explication, students are asked to closely examine the writing of someone else, to pay attention to literary elements, images, and themes so that they can clarify them in a concise, clear manner.  In doing this they are not only learning about the passage of literature they are explicating, but they are also learning, by carefully observing writing, to be better writers themselves.  Generally explications are relatively short, so along with understanding a passage, students must also develop a sharp focus and be concise and clear.  These are skills that will carry over into other areas of writing.

I’ve asked my students to write a one page explication this week about any passage of literature they are currently reading.  I know that the idea is still fuzzy to many of them, and to many of their parents as well, so I hope that the following will help to clarify what is expected, along with the benefits of doing this type of essay.

An explication is one of the most important papers that students will be assigned in college literary classes. In short, an explication is to make the implicit…explicit.  In an explication the student slowly reveals the meaning of a poem, text, or passage by providing literary analysis.  Examining the literary elements used by an author, we can make the purpose and meaning of a story or poem clear.  A well done explication will help the reader gain a deeper appreciation and understanding of the passage.

The first step is to choose a passage of literature, short story, or poem, (often these choices will be made for the student by the teacher) and to read it carefully.  Generally a passage will need to be read several times, along with taking notes.

Next the student should make note of the various literary devices used.  Note down the figurative language.  Does the author use similes or metaphors?  Are there any recurring words that suggest a theme?  What is the tone of the piece, the overall mood?  Who is speaking, whose point of view is prominent?   Do the authors words conjure up images in your mind that shed light on the passage.  What descriptive words are used?  How do they contribute to the overall message the author is conveying?  Consider the verbs carefully.  Does the authors word choice affect how you feel about the characters in the story?  Are the characters believable?

Now students may need to do a little research.  Is there background material that would be helpful to know?  Is the piece written in a different era with different vocabulary?  What is the historical context, if relevant?  Would understanding the authors background give clues as to the meaning?

Another line of thought and approach if a student is explicating a short passage or idea within a larger work, is to demonstrate how the crafting of the overall plot is illuminated and moved along by the selected passage.  How does this passage shed light on a conflict, a character, or a theme in the book?  Does it foreshadow or provide clarity about a characters motivation or actions?

An explication of a poem will probably involve moving line by line, because by it’s very nature, a poem is condensed speech and each word is important.  Breaking down a short passage within a larger work will require the student to ask different questions, showing how the selected passage is related to the whole.  As students are moving toward the actual writing process of their explication they should have a sharp focus on what they are trying to express.  Typically, students will not try to analyze the whole of Hamlet, instead they will pick a theme, an image, or a key passage to explicate that will provide the reader with valuable insights.

After all this initial work is done the student is ready to begin writing.  In an organized fashion, students should explain all that they have discovered so that the reader will have the necessary information to fully appreciate and understand the piece.  It may help to point out to students that often an explication is exactly what a good literature teacher has done for them.  Have they had someone explain a passage of Shakespeare to them providing vocabulary help, pointing out the use of images etc.  That is really all an explication is.

These types of writing exercises help students to hone a variety of skills necessary, not just in college literature courses, but in life.  Students must pay thoughtful attention to what they are reading, note details and connections, and present their findings in a logical, concise manner.   While students of a wide range of ages will find this type of writing challenging. it is also a great way to prep Juniors and Seniors in high school for  further studies.

Writing Exercise Number 5

Here is a fun writing exercise that I did with some of my writing students last week.  This exercise can be adapted for elementary through high school students.   I brought a bag full of a variety of knick-knacks to class.  Collect a mismatched group of things you have lying around the house.   My bag included: an old TV remote, the jaw of a shark, a key, a guitar pic, a stuffed animal, a tiera, a bottle of nail polish, a paint brush…you get the idea.    Now, I had a class full of kids so we drew numbers to decide who got what to avoid squabbles.  If you are doing this with just a few children you could let them choose.

Once the students were staring at their new treasure I told them they were going to write a one page story from the perspective of their item.  This can be a difficult concept, especially for younger students so take some time to explain.  Being able to tell a story from a different perspective is a useful tool for  children to develop.  Beyond the fact that it’s fun to pretend to be a quarter traveling around experiencing the world, writing from another perspective encourages students to think outside of themselves.  This is a non-threatening assignment that they can have fun with…but it is also a lesson in  viewing events and problems from another’s eyes…even if the other eyes are a TV remote.

My high school kids were coming off a longer, more intense assignment so I gave them a break and we did this the same week as the younger students.  For your more advanced students this would be a great warm up to having them try their hand at a more serious topic.  If you are studying WWII maybe you could have them tell about the war as if they were a German soldier, or a Jewish child.  Perhaps writing a diary entry of a mother trying to help her child deal with peer pressure, or a disabled student starting at a new school.  There are so many ways to incorporate this idea into your school day, that will not only improve writing skills, but expand your students understanding and compassion for people with different life experiences.

From this exercise I got a couple great stories.  The student who had the TV remote told the sad tale of being poked all day long, lost in couch cushions, yelled out and banged for not working properly and then (sigh) being replaced by a younger, newer model.  Oh, the unfairness of it all.   The Guitar Pick had the fabulous story to tell of being used by a famous Rock star, going to concerts, flying across strings to produce outstanding guitar solos…and then…being tossed into the crowd to become the souvenir of a some sweaty fisted teenager with dreams of being the next music sensation.   Our paintbrush had a celebrated life in the studio of Picasso, and so it went.  Each everyday item had stories to tell and once the kids got started the ideas started flowing.

One aside to this story…sometimes when we are asking our students to work we want them to be quiet and ‘concentrate’.  While I understand that that will be necessary I tend to allow some chatter as students are beginning these types of assignments.  They need to brainstorm, toss out a few ideas, hear a friends flippant comment back that sparks another idea.  All of this chatter is not meaningless, it’s part of the process.  I find if I let it go for 5-10 minutes it dies away as students begin to get into their stories, then things quiet down.  You’ll have to decide in your own situation how much of the ‘chatter’ is helpful and how much is a ploy to avoid writing.

Book Fair

Grace Prep will be hosting a Book Faire on March 26th.

Details are still being nailed down, but I wanted to give parents a heads up.  We will be doing some projects for the Faire during Friday classes.  Students will be writing up some reviews, making posters about favorite authors, and taking surveys of friends and family on their reading habits.

In two of our Friday classes we are focusing on writing skills.  We all know that one of the best ways to become a good writer is to….READ!!!  So, for the next two months we will be focusing on developing a love of reading amongst our students.  Students will be encouraged to read a wide range of materials, including but not limited to: biographies, autobiographies, collections of short stories, poetry,  non-fiction works, how-to books, newspapers, magazines, and of course, novels.  I’ll be asking students to keep a reading log and their homework assignments for writing will involve interacting with what they have been reading.

I’ll continue to post details, and our progress right here.  To kick things off I’ll be posting several student written book reviews over the next two weeks.  Two are already in and just need a little proofreading and then I’ll put them up.  In the mean time…get reading.

SHAKESPEARE FUN – Writing Exercise

Yesterday my Shakespeare class had some fun with Shakespearean insults. While none of our children would ever think…of course they wouldn’t…. of being insulting, this exercise provides an excuse to be silly and insulting. (Our rule at our house is that for a comment to be funny it must be funny to EVERYONE. This exercise produced a lot of giggles, as it should. Only you know your kids, or the group you will be working with, so provide some guidelines if you feel there is a chance the exercise could become mean-spirited. That is certainly not the intent and should not be allowed.)

First, I had two of our more dramatic students take some index cards with insults from the play we are currently working on, A Midsummer’s Nights Dream, and hurl them at each other. This had everyone laughing. Then I gave everyone an index card with various insults from lots of plays and we tossed around a haki sack (Thanks Stevie) When a student caught the haki sack they needed to insult the person, using the provided insults, that tossed the ball to them. They got into the exercise and were quite insulting. We had a few moments of concern because one of the insults included the word ‘whoreson’ (which you could obviously skip) and the student who got this one said he wasn’t comfortable insulting anyones mother.

After playing with Shakespeare’s insults for a bit the kids sat down to write some of their own…sounding Shakespearean of course. Now we have students from about 9 years old through High School so there was a wide variety of results. Below I’ve given you some Shakespearean insults and some my students made up. If you decide to try this exercise with younger kids pick some of the more obvious insults as some of Shakespeare’s language can be confusing…or google the words that baffle you. There are many great Shakespeare sites on the net that can offer explanations.

Before having students write their own insults explain that Shakespeare was known for making up words when he didn’t have one that worked for him. (Knotgrass for instance, although I found this one in the dictionary I didn’t need to know what it was to know I didn’t want someone to call me that.) Generally, the context and sound of the word makes clear it’s intended meaning. Allow (or encourage) students to do the same.

Shakespearean Insults

Go thou and fill another room in hell. King Richard

Let vultures gripe thy guts! Merry Wives of Windsor

Vile worm, Thou was o’erlooked even in thy birth. Merry Wives of Windsor

You, minion, are too saucy. Two Gentlemen of Verona

You juggler, you cankerblossom, you thief of love! A MIdsummer Nights dream

A pox o’ your throat, you bawling, blasphemous, incharitable dog! The Tempest

Come: you are a tedious fool. Measure for Measure

What, you egg! Young fry of treachery! Macbeth

Why you bald-pated, lying rascal. Measure for Measure

Out of my door, you witch, you rag, you baggage, you runnion. A Midsummer Nights Dream

Get you gone, you dwarf: You minimus of hindering knotgrass. A MIdsummer Nights Dream

Students Insults

Die, you hideous baboon! You lowly parisite!

You hast earned a royal room in hell, and shall tend to the royal king.

Thoust are nothing, a slave, in comparison to me.

You blueberry stock stealer!

Thou dirty pig-wench. The hogs wouldst welcome thee with they slanderous, sneaky, conniving ways into their muck pen.

Thou breath smells of heated dung.

You blasphemer of all decent things. You sniverous serpent. I entreat thee to swallow thine own forked tongue and rid thyself of our kind world.

Thou hast the brain of a city rat, and thoust also hast the courage of a chicken and thoust smells like it too. (this one is by a 9 year old)

This one requires the knowledge that one of our local high schools is Paloma and the student who wrote this father helps coach basketball at the rival high school…Perris.

Thine empty existence, be more lacking in purpose than a talent scout at Paloma.

I have many more, but you get the idea. So have fun insulting everyone.

Easy Writing Exercise Number 5

One of the marks of the truly educated person is not that they can spout off random facts and memorize details, it is that they are able to see the links between areas of knowledge. All knowledge is connected, each discipline we study adds understanding to other related disciplines. The study of philosophy can bring clarity to art or history. Grasping mathematical concepts aids us in understanding science and the world we live in.

In school we are often taught to think in terms of… Algebra, Biology, English Lit etc…and it can seem each class is an entity unto itself. That is a false view of the world however and we should rejoice each time we see our child make a connection between disciplines. It is being able to recognize and develop these connections that leads to progress and gives us fresh insights into problems that have stumped us.

That is the big picture. Working with metaphors is a small, manageable exercise in making connections between unrelated subjects. When we spend time working with words and making up new combinations it helps us to think outside the box, to let our imaginations run a bit and find a fresh perspective. So, while we may do these exercises to help our children develop into better writers, there is a larger goal being worked on here. We are also helping our children pay attention and notice connections. In the words of J.D. Casnig, “The Metaphor reminds us that the universe is full of cousins.”

Okay, enough of that, let’s move on to the exercise. (If you haven’t read Easy Writing Exercise Number 4, you need to back up and read that first, it is foundational for the exercise that follows.)

When we did exercise Number 4 we were writing metaphors that were phrases or sentences. In this exercise I would like to challenge your student in two ways.

First, if you have begun to keep a notebook of metaphors, or if you have a list of some metaphors that you have spotted during your hunting in Exercise 4 I want you to go back over that list and highlight those metaphors that are a bit tired from overuse. For instance, a knife in the back, might have been quite clever when first written but now it is a cliche. Once you have identified those make a pact that you will avoid using them for the next 3 months in your writing, instead try to come up with some new fresh metaphors of your own. Revisit Exercise 4, only this time make your list with more intentionality. Look at your list of overused metaphors, identify what is being communicated, and then see if you can come up with a new, fresh metaphor that would work better.

Second, try developing a metaphor through an entire paragraph rather than just a phrase as we did earlier. There are times when a metaphor brings clarity to a difficult subject and it is beneficial to develop it a bit further. In the following lines from Shakespeare we see him comparing our lives to a drama being enacted upon a stage.

“All the World’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances.

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,”

(William Shakespeare, As You Like It. Act 2, Scene 7)

As you can see it would be possible to continue to play with this metaphor for awhile. If you have children who love sports that is an easy place to begin. Compare their life, friendships, or family to their favorite sport or team. A child with a perennially messy room may want to use that to illustrate some other facet of their life. Growing a garden, riding a bike, or doing the laundry could all be used for an extended exercise.

A word of warning to the Type A personalities out there. I would resist getting hung up on whether or not your child is mixing metaphors, simile’s, comparisons, or idioms. Yes, there are differences, and depending on the age of your child you may want to go into them, however, the point of this exercise is to improve their writing by using a new tool. In exercising that tool they may cross a few lines not sticking strictly to the narrow definition of a metaphor, let it go for now. If they are using comparisons to bring clarity and creativity to their writing we’ll call it a success.  (Of course if they are actually using a mixed metaphor you may want to point that out, and if you have no idea what I’m talking about…don’t worry about it.)

More Metaphors

I found this list of metaphors used in high school papers on english@kcc’s blog. Although many of these are technically not metaphors they are still worth a laugh. Only high school students would have come up with some of these…gotta love it.

1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli, and he was room temperature Canadian beef.

5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

7. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.

8. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.

9. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.

10. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.

11. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

12. Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.

13. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.

14. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

15. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.

16. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.

17. The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

18. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.