Tuesday, December 8

Today, we began class by asking you a question we had asked you last week:

"What makes a group of words a poem?"

We gave you another sheet -- of course -- that asked you to list some criteria (at least three) that define a poem. You worked on this for a bit and we discussed your criteria.

Then, we asked you to consider whether Subtotals, the piece of writing that we had looked at the week before, is a poem. To do this, we asked you to match up each of your criteria to some aspect of Subtotals, and to fill in a sheet accordingly (if there were two poem criteria that fit Subtotals, you'd fill them in on the "is a poem" table, and if there was one poem criterion that did NOT fit Subtotals, you'd fill it in on the "is not a poem" table). We also pushed you to provide a direct quote from the writing to support your criteria. Here's a copy of the sheet:

Is Subtotals A Poem?

You worked on this for most of the period. When you finished filling out the sheet, you wrote a content sandwich paragraph that defended a specific claim: either "Subtotals is a poem," "Subtotals is not a poem," or some variation thereof ("Subtotals is mostly a poem," "Subtotals is mostly not a poem," etc.).

The 8A group also had an introduction to a Talib Kweli poem, which we'll be studying in more depth next week.

No homework, save for the usual 30 minutes of reading per night.