Teacher's Guide:

What Else could
Love Be?

showing tone while
extending a unique metaphor about a chosen emotion

This lesson was created by Northern Nevada teacher Corbett Harrison during the Northern Nevada Writing Project's iPods Across the Curriculum workshop for teachers.

This writing prompt inspired by

Pat Benatar's song "Love Is A Battlefield"

Click here to do a Google search for the lyrics.

Teacher Instructions & Lesson Resources :

Step one (sharing the song and brainstorming original ideas):  Tell students you are going to share a song with them from the 80's--a song they have probably heard before.  Tell them it's called "Love is a Battlefield," and that it was sung by Pat Benatar, who--interestingly enough--was a classically trained opera singer who became a popular rock star.

Tell students, "Even if you've heard the song already, you've probably never thought about the lyrics closely.  Before listening to the song today, I want you to discuss with a partner what you think the song is about, knowing the title is Love is a Battlefield.  What does that title make you think the song might talk about?  Is it going to be about a battlefield in a desert or a meadow or somewhere else?  A battlefield moments before a battle begins?  A battlefield that has recovered from a war and is now a peaceful place? What attitude about love do you think the writer of this song had? Good attitude or bad attitude?"

Let students generate multiple answers in pairs.  Share them out loud, and celebrate ones that are different from others.  Say, "A metaphor is great tool for writers, but sometimes you need to extend them so your audience knows exactly what kind of battlefield you mean, if you compare something to a battlefield."

Play the song.  Show its lyrics on an overhead while students listen; you can find the lyrics on-line by using the Google link underneath the picture of Pat Benatar above.  After listening, have students discuss what kind of battlefield the entire song makes them see.  Talk about who is fighting.  Talk about who is being fought.  Ask students to visualize what the battlefield looks like after hearing the song.  Ask students what kind of attitude (tone) do they think the song is saying about the emotion(Information just for teachers: To me, the song is about young love fighting a battle with an older generation.  Although there is no real clear picture given of the type of battlefield the "war" is happening on, encourage your students to visualize the battlefield based on this information).

Next, introduce a new metaphor about love to your students:  Love is a swimming pool.  Write it where everyone can see it. Ask students to brainstorm and shout out modifiers (adjectives: single-word ones or adjectives in the form of prepositional phrases) that could be attached to the metaphor to give us an extended idea of what the metaphor means.  Love is an empty swimming pool.  Love is a swimming pool in winter.  Love is a crowded swimming pool.  Love is a swimming pool with a bear in it.  As a class, generate twenty or so.  Talk about how each modifier leaves a completely different impression of the type of love we might be talking about. Talk about how each could lead us to think about a different attitude about love.

Have students, in small groups, choose one swimming pool modifier from the class brainstorm.  They should write their modified metaphor down on the top of a piece of paper.  Next, have the group brainstorm four or five detail sentences that might be used as extensions to the original metaphor.  Insist that their sentences purposely share more specific details about the type of pool they have chosen, but they must also be indicative of love too...or at least the attitude towards the love.

To give them the idea of how detail sentences can extend their swimming pool metaphors, feel free to share the example below on your overhead projector. Challenge your students to come up with three additional, interesting details that could be added to this overhead; then, have them do the same to their original metaphors:

• Love is a wild bear in a swimming pool -- five good detail sentences

Step two (introducing models of writing):  While students are brainstorming details for their original swimming pool metaphors, keep re-reading detail sentences from the overhead above; this should help your students create quality detail sentences.  When all groups have generated four or five detail sentences for their own swimming pools, have them share (only appropriate ones) with the whole class.  With each shared detail, ask, "So how is that detail also like love?"  If they can explain how it's also like love, tell them, "Excellent metaphor extension!"

After groups have shared quality details with the whole class, explain that students will individually be writing a poem about love that extends on a different metaphor.  They will not use a swimming pool or a battlefield.  They will choose a different element to compare to love. And they will attempt to make their readers understand their personal attitude towards love with their poems.

To show them what the poem can look like, tell them that you have a "Love is a Swimming Pool" poem based on the overhead from above.  Show this poem, and talk about how it's so close to the original poem that it could almost be sung to "Love is a Battlefield."

• Love is a Swimming Pool (with a bear in it!)

You can also have students read (and explore for tone) any of the student models that come with this lesson. If you have students of different grade levels write poems, consider sending us one or two to publish here to further inspire student writers.

Step three (thinking and pre-writing): After looking at the example poem(s), have students re-visit their detail sentences for revision ideas, and have them create as many new sentences as they can.

Once students have created a good list of high quality detail sentences, challenge them to create an original poem about love that uses just their best ideas from their group's thinking and pre-writing, or uses an original brainstorm the students create on their own.

Remind them to insert hints that would lead a reader to understand their tone about the emotion of love.

Step four (revising with specific trait language):   To promote response and revision to rough draft writing, attach WritingFix's Revision and Response Post-Its to your students' drafts.  Make sure the students rank their use of the trait-specific skills on the Post-Its, which means they'll only have one "1" and one "5."   Have them commit to ideas for revision based on their Post-It rankings.  For more ideas on WritingFix's Revision & Response Post-Its, click here.

• Sheet of 6 Voice Post-It Notes
• Sheet of 6 Idea Development Post-It Notes

Step five (editing for conventions):  After students apply their revision ideas to their drafts and re-write neatly, require them to find an editor.   If you've established a "Community of Editors" among your students, have each student exchange his/her paper with multiple peers.  With yellow high-lighters in hand, each peer reads for and highlights suspected errors for just one item from the Editing Post-it.  The "Community of Editors" idea is just one of dozens and dozens of inspiring ideas that is talked about in detail in the Northern Nevada Writing Project's Going Deep with 6 Trait Language Workbook for Teachers.

Step six (publishing for the portfolio): The goal of most lessons posted at WritingFix is that students end up with a piece of writing they like, and that their writing was taken through all steps of the writing process. After revising, invite your students to come back to this piece once more during an upcoming writer's workshop block.  The writing started with this lesson might become even more polished for final placement in the portfolio, or the big ideas being written about here might transform into a completely different piece of writing. Most likely, your students will enjoy creating an illustration for this writing as they ready to place final drafts in their portfolios.

Interested in publishing student work on-line? You might earn a free classroom resource from the NNWP! We invite teachers to teach this lesson completely, then share up to three of their students' best revised and edited samples at our ning's Publish Student Writers group. Fifty teachers a year who do this will receive a complimentary copy of one of the Northern Nevada Writing Project's Print Guides.

To submit student samples for this page's lesson, click here. You won't be able to post unless you are a verified member of this site's Writing Lesson of the Month ning.

Learn more about Pat Benatar by clicking here!