This Lesson's Title:

Hubris at the Bat

writing a parody of Casey at the Bat about a modern day character

This original writing lesson was proposed by Northern Nevada Literacy Trainer Desiree Gray.

This on-line writing prompt is based on a poem by Ernest Lawrence Thayer, which has been lovingly celebrated in a picture book illustrated by Christopher Bing.

Click here to view this book at Amazon.com

If you are a Washoe County teacher, click here to search for this book at the county library.

Pre-step…before sharing the published model:   Before teaching this lesson inspired by Casey at the Bat, be sure to review the poem's vocabulary words: patrons, eternal, preceded, stricken, melancholy, lusty, dell, doffed, ‘twas, writhing, haughty grandeur, visage, tumult, bade, spheroid, and sneer.

You might also go over baseball terms like: died (picked off, outs, etc), lulu (humdinger), latter (later), cake (vain but unmanly man), and any other phrases your students might not know.

It would be helpful to have your students read other ballads and lyrical poetry before this lesson to familiarize them with the format and structure. First, teacher will put an overhead up of a picture of Casey copied from the cover of a picture book. Students will answer the journal prompt, Who is the man in the picture? Study the picture carefully and write down five phrases that describe him, what he’s doing, what he might be thinking, and what kind of person he might be. Teacher will discuss all possible answers and give a brief idea of what the poem is about. Next teacher will put up an overhead defining the term hubris and prompting students to complete a literacy activity by writing their own definition of hubris and drawing a non-linguistic representation of the word. Teacher will ask students to predict what the poem might be about based on the picture and the word hubris of a ballad.

Step one (sharing the published model):  Casey at the Bat is a great poem to read aloud together as a whole class. Teacher can model reading one line and then have the class repeat together or even cut the poem into strips and assign parts to teams of 2-3 to read. One fun twist is to omit the last stanza and have students make a prediction about how the story ends based on what they know from our hubris discussion and from the phrases they underlined. The guesses build the excitement for the story’s ending.

• Casey at the Bat (handout or overhead copy)

Step two (introducing student models of writing):   In small groups, have your students read and respond to any or all of the student models that come with this lesson.  Encourage the students to talk about the organization in each poem, and then to talk about how idea development was accomplished by the writer.

• We're looking for student samples for all grade levels for this prompt!  Help us get some, and we'll send you a free resource for your classroom!  Contact us at publish@writingfix.com for details.

Step three (thinking and pre-writing): Students will brainstorm times when they or someone they know displayed hubris. If they don't have enough ideas to choose from, they can use the interactive choice button on the student instruction page for ideas.

Using the graphic organizer, students will write a five stanza poem modeled after Thayer’s rhyme scheme (AABB) and 14-syllable pattern.

Encourage students to use the framed opening and closing lines from the graphic organizer, so that their parody is recognizable to most.

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

Step six (publishing for the portfolio):   When they are finished revising and have second drafts, invite your students to come back to this piece once more during an upcoming writer's workshop block.  Their stories might become a longer story, a more detailed piece, or the beginning of a series of pieces about the story they started here.  Students will probably enjoy creating an illustration for this story as they get ready to publish it for their portfolios.

Interested in publishing student work on-line?  We invite student writers to post final drafts of their original at WritingFix's Community of Student Writers.  This is a safe-to-use blog for students and teachers. No writing is posted until it is approved by the moderator. Contact us at publish@writingfix.com if you have questions about getting your students published.

Learn more about poet Ernest Lawrence Thayer
by clicking here.