“We Didn’t Start the Fire” is a song by Billy Joel which catalogues historical events that happened during a period in his life, between 1949 and 1989. Some say that Joel grew tired of older generations saying that nothing important had happened during his life, while others say the song is a rebuttal to other generations that blamed his generation for all the problems in the world. This lesson calls for students to take a closer look at some of the important historical events in their own lifetimes while also closely examining the traits, creating an original poem inspired by Billy Joel's song. Teachers: Click here to see the entire lesson plan.
6-Trait Overview for this Lesson:
The focus trait in this writing assignment is sentence fluency, specifically the musical quality of sentence fluency; teachers will need to talk to students about how text plays to the ear and the musical quality that sentence fluency can produce in text. The secondary trait is idea development; emphasis will be placed upon the fact that ideas can be developed with a word or a sentence and that authors make important choices in how many words to use to create a message.
