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This Lesson's Title:
Poems of Condition
a how-to-be poem
that is built with conditional clauses
This lesson was created for WritingFix after being proposed by Northern Nevada teacher
Rebekah Foster. |
T his on-line writing prompt is based on the poetry of Rudyard Kipling. Before writing to this assignment, students should hear and discuss the poetry of this great poet.
Click here to learn more about this poet.
If you are a Washoe County teacher, click here to search for a collection of works by this poet that you can check out from the county library. |
Teacher Instructions & Lesson Resources:
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Pre-step…before sharing the published model: Before delving into this writing activity, you will need to teach and/or review with students clauses, subordinating conjunctions, and punctuation. An adverb clause is a subordinate clause that modifies a verb, and adjective, or an adverb. Adverb clauses are introduced by subordinating conjunctions such as: after, although, as if, because, before, even though, unless, until, once, and most importantly for this lesson, if. In terms of punctuating suborindate clauses, an excellent resource can be printed by clicking here.
Step one…sharing the published model: After reviewing and practicing adverb clauses, you should share Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If”.
Students will immediately notice the listing of “if” clauses which instruct the reader on how to be a certain person—in this case a man. Have them circle the “if”s and notice how the text is punctuated. After discussing the sentence fluency and format of the poem, direct students to finding the character traits and qualities that a man must have. Have them pay special attention to the balances that are found and developed in the qualities—“trust yourself when all men doubt you / But make allowance for their doubting too,”—highlighting or listing all the elements Kipling believes a grown man must have.
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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. The groups will certainly talk about the sentence fluency, since it’s the focus of this lesson. You might prompt your students to talk about each model's idea development as well.
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Step three (thinking and pre-writing): Either use the online interactive button game on this lesson's Student Instructions Page or brainstorm a class list of careers or people that students might want to write about. Have students list all the character traits and qualities (using the contrasting model concept from Kipling) that one would need to have in order to effectively become that individual or occupation. Once they have their list of qualities or character traits, have them draft three sentences that begin with the conditional “if” adverb clause. Use the [overhead for Punctuating subordination conjunctions that still needs to be tweaked] for guidance. Once they have reviewed and practiced writing their adverb clauses, let them draft and write their Kipling-esque conditional poem.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Learn more about poet Rudyard Kipling by clicking here.
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