Poem

Some of you are aware of the new exercise I'm been doing this year in my English classes. It's called "The Reading Minute" (although, honestly, I hardly ever manage to keep it to just a minute), and I got the idea from this book.

Basically, 3 times a week I share something interesting I've read. Just an excerpt, usually. The kids copy down the name of the piece and the author, then use that information to write a short, 1-3 sentence summary of what I read to them. Simple, but they're getting tons of practice that way at summarizing AND they're being exposed to the many, many, many wonderful things that are out there to read. Because I'm trying desperately to get them to not hate reading.

I've shared a variety of things - a few parts of Twilight; excerpts from The Princess Bride, Love That Dog, Bronx Masquerade, and other YA books; poetry like "Child" by Sylvia Plath or "Bolivia" by Gwen Head; nonfiction like Anthony Bordain's account of eating a cobra heart; some internet articles and blog posts about inventions or interesting places to travel, and so on.

Today I shared this video for the Reading Minute (if you can't get it to work here, you can also watch it here):



It was one of the kids' favorites so far, and it's probably one of mine, too. Taylor Mali's dear to my heart, but this guy, Rives, might be a serious rival for my poet affections. Especially when I watched another of his poems here(that one's NSFW, though).