LANGUAGE ARTS ONLINE LESSON: T3 Wk 5

Poem: Snapshotland

In Snapshotland everyone is happy all the time.
It is the promised land where people sit with flasks of tea
on smooth sand by a flat sea and smile and smile and smile.

The sun shines all day long and every day in Kodachrome
or sepia on sandboys and sandgirls who never
stop smiling from the time they first appear, with buckets,
in crisp, gingham pinafores and bonnets on the sea-shore.

Lovers stay in love forever; married couples never
grow tired of each other; everything is always just right.
The dolphins know exactly when to leap into the air
and stay there for the permanent delight of passengers
aboard the pleasure-boat which never passes out of sight.

Nobody in Snapshotland grows old unless they want to,
judging by the way they go on smiling so, in deck-chairs,
on the beach, or in old-fashioned gardens with lavender
and grandchildren here and there - and no one dies, ever.

Even if they don't appear later, the people are still
always there, smiling through the lavender and dolphins
and the buckets full of pebbles on the same sea-shore.

By
Sylvia Kantaris

Step1: Forget what the poem may or may not mean, or what it may be about.

Step 2: cameras, pictures. a unique place, a moment, flash, certain time.

Step 3: Read the poem once quickly, and then several times more slowly. Try to hear the poem aloud in your head. DO NOT recite the poem aloud in class; if you must hear it aloud, read it quietly to yourself.

Step 4:
Promised land
Kodachrome
Sepia
in crisp gingham pinafores and bonnets
all the time
forever
stay there
permanent delight
never passes out of side
always

Step 5: Every stanza has only one or two full stops.
There is alot of use of adjectives and adverbs.

Step 6: The words that describe never happening or happens the whole time
are "all the time", "forever", "stay there", "permanent", "never" and "always".

Step 7: Every sentence describes a place.

Step 8: The poem means that photos always depict a scene and the scene will never change. Photos will bring back memories.

Step 9:
a) Persona
b)The audience are people who like photos.
c)He is friendly and showing his liking to photos.
d)He is friendly to the audience, he wants eveyone to treasure the photos.
e) It wants to show the different scene and moments in photos such as happy moments.
f) It is to help me understand more about the poem.

Step 10:
I guess he hoped to tell everyone that photos were very precious as they could depict the wonderful moments of the past.

LA: Listening to sounds

I heard the owls hooting in the dark.
I heard the sheep bleating beyond the hill.
I heard the the wolves howling under the full moon.
I heard the sparrows chirping in the blossomed tree.
I heard the dogs wining in the corner.
I heard the horse neighing in stable.
I heard the bulls troting in the fields.
I heard the bees buzzing by the flowers.
I heard the frogs croaking on the lily pad.
I heard the mice squeaking from the mouse hole.
I heard the roosters cock-a-doodle-do the farm.
I heard the turkey cluck in the pen.
I heard the pigeons cooing over the hedge.
I heard the ducks quaking in the lake.
I heard the pigs oinking in barnyard.
I heard the cats purring on the couch.

LA Assignment: Poem

Life is like a journey,
that one makes in a car.
Sometimes you travel on a highway,
Sometimes on a lonely path.

The speed of one's car is ever changing,
It can be fast; it can be slow.
At times your car is plaqued by a punctured tire,
At times an engine failure.
It's up to you to fix it, and get a move on again.

Everyone drives a different car,
You decide the car you drive.
Some people take the fast lane,
Some people take the slow one.

Whether one drives a horse-carriage,
Or a Ferrari or a Lamborghini.
In the end, the car completely breaks down.
And the journey ends.

While everyone has the same destination,
your journey may well be different than mine.

LA lesson: Poetry

Yesterday, during Language Arts lesson, we learnt about poetry. We went through similes and metaphors and how they were used in poems. I wasn't very sure about what was the difference between similes and metaphors were before, but now after the explanation of similes and metaphors I am know the difference. Metaphors are a comparison of two things while simlies use "like" and "as". Let me give you an example of a simile, "His face was as pale as a ghost." I guess using similes and metaphors aren't that hard but I'll try not to overuse them. Our teacher gave us us a handout that allowed us to view more examples of similes and metaphors. I found the page titled "Funniest similes written by high school students" rather awesome. I had a good laugh reading the similes! The page after that was metaphor poems. We had to read the poem and guess what the poet was talking about. This exercise was fun as I had to think hard to guess what the poet was talking about. Our teacher left us with an assignment over the weekend. It is a complusory blogpost. We had to write a poem about about life and post it on our blog. I hope I will enjoy composing this poem!