"It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea That a maiden there lived whom you may know By the name of Annabel Lee." Hey, that sure is a great poem to read out loud with 90 young people! Edgar Allan Poe could sure write beautiful, rhythmic, rhyming, creepy poetry. It's neat how it starts out like a fairy tale and then becomes progressively darker, sadder, angrier, and weirder, till it ends with the speaker of the poem lying down by the side of Annabel Lee every night in her tomb (I hope he doesn't mean literally beside her bones...). After introducing the poem, explaining what happens in it and so on, and covering a bit about its rhyme and rhythm patterns, I read it out loud for the class (showing off by doing it by heart without the book:-), and then had them repeat the lines after me, and then had us all read it together. And by the last reading, I think many of the students were keeping up and reading loudly and getting into it. And we finished by listening to a dramatic reading of the poem (with creepy animation of creepy Poe and Annabel Lee dolls) on Youtube by Rogue (the singer of the Cruxshadows or something...), and to the beginning of a sweet melody song some girl and her sister performed on Youtube of it. I never have enough time in class to comfortably and coherently and clearly tell the students about the topic or poet or poem etc. we're covering... but I hope they get excited or interested in some things we're doing! Next week: Emily Dickinson's "A Bird came down the Walk."
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Jefferson Peters (JP)
Can you find me in the picture above? Archives
December 2023
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