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Friday Hodgepodge
Freewrite prompt: What is the best birthday present you could receive?
I’m out of town for the weekend to go to the Indiana Homeschool Support Convention. I’ll be in New Paris, IN.
On Monday, we have our Spring Class Registration. Be sure to sign up early, if you are concerned about getting into a class. We filled every one in winter quarter and some were filled within days of registration opening. We’ll keep registration open until a class fills.
Last thing: keep trucking! I’m getting a lot of email lately from moms worried about teens who are late in developing their writing skills. Not to worry! If you start over (take me seriously on this – go back to the very beginning, a very good place to start), you’ll find that your smart teen who is simply a damaged writer, will rebound and develop at a much faster rate than your younger kids. You can start at age 16 and get all the way to college prep by 18 if you address the fact that your teen has been damaged by the programs you’ve used to date. If you take his or her writing voice seriously, you can re-boot the system and help your teen unclog the passage through which his or her words will flow.
Start with Kidswrite Basic. It will change how both of you see writing and will put you in the right space to be that coach and ally for the rest of your teen’s academic career at home.
I’ll check in over the weekend, if I can get some computer access. Have a great Spring Forward (clocks change on Saturday night!). Hurray for sunshine and temps over 60!
Email: Freewrite poem
Freewrites are Wacky
Freewrites are Weird
Freewrites are funny
They’re worse than you feared
Freewrites are writing the stuff in your mind
When the timer rings then you might find
you’ve a poem ’bout pliers
a book about tops
You know you’ll have something when the timer stops!
Sam Morris (12)
—
I love when your kids send me their writing. How delightful is this? Thanks Sam for letting me share it with the world.
If you have a child who needs some writing encouragement, send me their work and I may share it here just like I did Sam’s. Could be a great way to connect the power of writing with the power of publishing.
Friday Freewrite: Song lyric
Turn up your iPod or radio. The first song that pops up on shuffle or on the station, use it to freewrite. Listen to it and write as you listen. Or you can listen all the way through, turn it off and start writing.
Lucille Clifton (Poet, RIP 2/13/10)
Today I’m reading some poetry by Lucille Clifton, an African American poet whose work is bright with the power of self-creation, triumph and the fierce embrace her female-ness. I want to share a couple with you:
won’t you celebrate with me?
won’t you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay.
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.
—
hips
these hips are big hips
they need space to
move around in.
they don’t fit into little
petty places. these hips
are free hips.
they don’t like to be held back.
these hips have never been enslaved,
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do.
these hips are mighty hips.
these hips are magic hips.
i have known them
to put a spell on a man and
spin him like a top!
—
my dream about being white
hey music and
me
only white,
hair a flutter of
fall leaves
circling my perfect
line of a nose,
no lips,
no behind, hey
white me
and i’m wearing
white history
but there’s no future
in those clothes
so i take them off and
wake up
dancing.
