Week 1 ~ Cliche' and Metaphor
A cliche' is so easy to write. It requires no thinking on the part of the writer. It also requires no thinking on the part of the reader. I decided to start this class with a discussion of cliche's and how I will bleed red pen all over their papers if I find any. Kidding. Just kidding.
We also discussed metaphor. Metaphors usually require much thinking on the part of the writer and reader. It's a win-win. I honed in on Emerson's great quote, "The poet has a new thought . . ." I also gently pointed out that their metaphors must make sense. You could write, "Love is a refrigerator." But, um, you better be able to make a logical connection between the two, and that would be a difficult connection to make. We read through many poems with examples of metaphor (and simile) and talked about why/how they work.
Week 1 ~ Teacher's Notes
1. Discuss what a cliche' is and why you should avoid them like the plague.
2. Complete cliche' page.
3. Discuss metaphor/simile and why they are grand.
4. Read "A Cliche'" by Eve Merriam.
5. Read "Metaphor" by Eve Merriam. (I used a file folder and piece of paper to demo this poem as I read it.)
6. Read "Words" by Pauli Murray (I used real money to illustrate.)
7. Read "A Loaf of Poetry" by Naoshi Koriyama and discuss it.
8. I read the "Metaphor Poems" page to them (without giving them the hand-out and without telling them the titles of the poems). They tried to guess the title of each poem.
9. We read over the assignment sheet for Week 1. I made sure that they all understood the requirements of each assignment.
Click on the image below for a bundle pack of everything I created and printed for the first day. It includes the syllabus, poems for discussion, cliche' worksheet, assignments for the first week, and quotes for copywork.
Please let me know if you have any questions about this class; I will be happy to answer!
YOU ARE AWESOME!!!!! I love the idea of this and that I can add this to my regular english stuff. Thank you so much! I am pinning this right now. =0)
You are great! Thanks for sharing!
Thanks, Kelly! Don’t miss the other 8 weeks — coming soon to a blog near you! 🙂
Thank you so much for sharing this! We are going begin using this next week. It comes at a perfect time in our homeschool.
Thank you! This looks great! 🙂
I love this! Thank you so much for sharing !!
I know it is probably me but when I click on the image for this or any of the other weeks I can’t get it to download. I think my son will like it.
Thank you for sharing.
Lori
Emailing you! 🙂
Hi Ami,
This is fabulous! Thanks for sharing.
Could you tell me what program you used to create your image display of the pdf pages?
April 🙂
Genius-man (aka my husband) wrote a program to do that for us for Homeschool Share. 🙂
He might be willing to share it. It just depends on how much instruction is necessary to explain it to others. He isn’t big on tech support! LOL 😉 I’ll ask him. 🙂
Ami,
I love this site. I travel all over the U.S. teaching writing to teachers and modeling in classrooms. What a fabulous resource for teachers everywhere. I will add your blog address to my power point. Thank you!
Hi Ami, this site is absolutely amazing! I was pulling my hair out on where to start with my 7th graders creative writing lessons. Then happened upon this wonderful site ^___^ ! I am curious to know, what copy work and copy work quotes are? Is it possible to use other quotes from other sources, aside from the ones placed in the 9 week lesson plan? Thank you so much for sharing this!
Thank you so much for sharing such a wonderful resource!
Thank you SO much for sharing this – I appreciate free resources so much and you find so many that are just a tidbit, but you shared the whole thing! It looks very worthwhile, I'm looking forward to using it this year. Just really wanted to say thank you.
I can’t get the bundle to pop up when I click on the image
🙁 any clues on how to get it!?
Thanks so much
Looks great!!
Are you on a computer or a phone? Thanks!