I've finished project number two at last!
Our six year anniversary will be
On Sunday, and I've made a gift for Matt:
A lovely stripy scarf to keep him warm!
It's loosely based on one I found just here,
But with a few small changes of my own --
The colours, fringe and gauge are not the same
And all the increase stitches turned out wrong.
He doesn't seem to mind at all. In fact
He rather likes it -- luckily for me!
And hiding in the background you will see
The quilt I made for Matt a year ago.
[/pentameter]
I'm reading "The Ode Less Travelled" by Stephen Fry, and thought I ought to have a go at iambic pentameter since he's spent two chapters insisting that I try it. It's kind of fun, although I do feel a little bit like I'm back in primary school, chanting along with the rest of the class, "Good MORning MISter DENard!" All that di-DAH di-DAH di-DAH stressing.
He (Stephen Fry, not Mister Denard) makes the obvious point that we aren't taught how to write poetry; we're only taught how to READ it. It's so obvious, and yet I'd never noticed.
He keeps making comparisons with learning to paint, or play a musical instrument. I suppose a better comparison would be with learning to COMPOSE for a musical instrument. And that's part of what I do when I teach music theory. From the earliest grades I have to teach my little kiddies how to write their own rhythms, and the easiest way to get them to learn a rhythm is to associate it with a word or phrase.
weetabix
bread-and-butter
cornflakes
toast
pineapple (with lots of emphasis on the 'pine' part)
Once they've learnt the words, and can say them while tapping a steady beat, we have a bit of fun.
ME: weetabix weetabix cornflakes toast
KIDDIE: toast toast bread-and-butter toast
ME: pineapple weetabix pineapple toast
KIDDIE: cornflakes cornflakes weetabix weetabix
...and so on. Generally there's lots of muddling of words and giggling and laughing and missing the beat but in the end they see that words have rhythm and that rhythm makes music.
In the intermediate grades (4 and 5) I have to show them how to set words to music, which means taking a piece of poetry and finding out where the stresses are. My most unrhythmical pupils have the greatest difficulty with this. They'll stress the first syllable of 'remember' without even noticing how weird it sounds. The only way to fix this is to get them to say the words out loud (something else that Stephen Fry insists on) while tapping a beat -- and magically it all falls into place.
I can see how this aspect of music theory would be much easier for me to teach if they were already familiar with the different metres of poetry. I wonder why poetry writing isn't taught in schools. Odd.
On Sunday, and I've made a gift for Matt:
A lovely stripy scarf to keep him warm!
It's loosely based on one I found just here,
But with a few small changes of my own --
The colours, fringe and gauge are not the same
And all the increase stitches turned out wrong.
He doesn't seem to mind at all. In fact
He rather likes it -- luckily for me!
And hiding in the background you will see
The quilt I made for Matt a year ago.
[/pentameter]
I'm reading "The Ode Less Travelled" by Stephen Fry, and thought I ought to have a go at iambic pentameter since he's spent two chapters insisting that I try it. It's kind of fun, although I do feel a little bit like I'm back in primary school, chanting along with the rest of the class, "Good MORning MISter DENard!" All that di-DAH di-DAH di-DAH stressing.
He (Stephen Fry, not Mister Denard) makes the obvious point that we aren't taught how to write poetry; we're only taught how to READ it. It's so obvious, and yet I'd never noticed.
He keeps making comparisons with learning to paint, or play a musical instrument. I suppose a better comparison would be with learning to COMPOSE for a musical instrument. And that's part of what I do when I teach music theory. From the earliest grades I have to teach my little kiddies how to write their own rhythms, and the easiest way to get them to learn a rhythm is to associate it with a word or phrase.
weetabix
bread-and-butter
cornflakes
toast
pineapple (with lots of emphasis on the 'pine' part)
Once they've learnt the words, and can say them while tapping a steady beat, we have a bit of fun.
ME: weetabix weetabix cornflakes toast
KIDDIE: toast toast bread-and-butter toast
ME: pineapple weetabix pineapple toast
KIDDIE: cornflakes cornflakes weetabix weetabix
...and so on. Generally there's lots of muddling of words and giggling and laughing and missing the beat but in the end they see that words have rhythm and that rhythm makes music.
In the intermediate grades (4 and 5) I have to show them how to set words to music, which means taking a piece of poetry and finding out where the stresses are. My most unrhythmical pupils have the greatest difficulty with this. They'll stress the first syllable of 'remember' without even noticing how weird it sounds. The only way to fix this is to get them to say the words out loud (something else that Stephen Fry insists on) while tapping a beat -- and magically it all falls into place.
I can see how this aspect of music theory would be much easier for me to teach if they were already familiar with the different metres of poetry. I wonder why poetry writing isn't taught in schools. Odd.