Sound Writing with Marcia Daft

First off, I want to apologize for the long hiatus. I took a vacation with friends and got away for the weekend, plus two school days! It was much needed and I am very refreshed!

I came back to school today to a half day training by Marcia Daft. I spoke of her in a previous post about the syllabication which you can view here.

Marica has been focusing on reading and writing fluency at our school since we haven't met AYP for a few years now. Today, we talked about Sound Writing and Word Painting, but I am going to share with you some information about the Sound Writing. I will post more on Word Painting later!

Sound Writing focuses on the aesthetic beauty of language. You can arrange words and sounds in patterns so that it is pleasing to the ear. This is why most people really enjoy poetry because it is beautiful and it's nice to listen to!

Some ways to make your poetry more aesthetically pleasing:

• repitition of important words
• rhyme (duh) - internal, end, and rhyme scheme
• alliterations - alliteration, assonance, and consonance
• rhythm - all language has accents and syllable which form a rhythm
• form - organizing writing into a predictable pattern (ex. Do you see what I see? story)

Here is the link to several of the poem templates we were given by Mrs. Daft. I think you will find them to be extremely helpful when teaching different types and elements of poetry. There are examples from real classroom students in each template.

Also, I know I still owe some of you an email about the using food in math lessons! I promise I will get those out as soon as I find the time!