![]() ![]() Their building is known as "Slaughterhouse number 5". The Germans put Billy and his fellow prisoners in a disused slaughterhouse (although there are animal carcasses hanging in the underground shelter) in Dresden. ![]() He does not like wars and he is captured by the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge. 5.2 Allusions - historic, geographic, scientificĬhaplain's Assistant Billy Pilgrim is a disoriented, fatalistic, and ill-trained American soldier.How do you celebrate and call attention to beautiful language in your classroom? I’d love to find out. ![]() “What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at once…they produce an image of life that is beautiful and surprising and deep.” One of my favorite, favorite lines from Slaughterhouse Five that I find particularly moving, especially now, says… – This lesson hit the head and the heart. – Although “beautiful” is a subjective term (in the eye of the beholder and all that), this lesson forces students’ hands in categorizing and articulating beauty in language, a frequent sentiment in AP Literature. I suspect there’s beautiful language in unsuspecting places, and if we can get students to notice that and pay attention, that’s a win for the good guys. There’s something fun and interesting about that for me. – I happen to be teaching Slaughterhouse Five now, but this activity can be done with any text anywhere. So ignite.įor Hope by Madison B: The potential was proven when all at once, humanity became whole.įor Despair by Sydney B: At night she navigated the den that was her mind the wolves would arrive soon. Sometimes it cannot be sold or borrowed or stolen. Here are a few beautiful sentences written by a few of my very lovely students (who I am grateful to for allowing me to share here):įor Warmth by Jillian C: Warmth is something that cannot always be found under blankets, or in front of heaters, or between the arms of another. With this scaffolding and rule of thumb in mind, we wrote about WARMTH, about HOPE, about DESPAIR, about SATISFACTION, and about INEVITABILITY. As always, I asked my students to let the mentors be their guide and to use their list of “noticings” to inspire their work. I tell my students over and again that this is how we become more mature, sophisticated, and intentional writers.įor this portion of this activity, I gave students a series of abstract words and asked them to conjure up a sentence or two that somehow conveyed the feeling or idea of the word. You read the literature, you practice close reading, you read like a writer, and you try your hand at crafting your own beautiful sentences by making concious choices. I write about this often, but this is the beauty of literature as mentor texts. Then, we built our list of mentor text “noticings.” What is special, exciting, powerful, or summoning about this sentence?.Are literary or rhetorical devices present?.Is there anything significant about connotation?.What feeling, idea, or event is the sentence conveying?.“The creatures can see where each star has been and where it is going, so that the heavens are filled with rarefied, luminous spaghetti.”Īfter that, we read like readers and then read like writers. ![]() We always let him and we always will let him. “He has always pressed it, and he always will.“The queer earth was a mosaic of sleepers who nestled like spoons.”.“But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human.”.“Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.”.“And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.”.Here are some some very recognizable, albeit beautiful examples, that emerged in class: We then went around the room, student to student reading aloud our beautiful sentences. I gave students 5-6 minutes to thumb through the text for examples of “beautiful language,” and then write down a few examples. Here’s what they said makes sentences beautiful… After our routine writing, turn and talk, and share out, I asked students to post their best responses on the board. I gave them a few minutes of notebook time to write down their thoughts. So, here’s what we did… First, I asked students: What makes a sentence beautiful? Each year, my students and I tag the quotable, the tattoo-able, and the indelible.Īfter some student requests for mini lessons that “focus on beautiful language,” I decided that there was no better moment than the present. Each year, I teach this novel and find some new, exciting sentence I get all shivery and weird over. And frankly, I’m not over it, have never been over it, will never be over it. My AP students have been fixated on the weird and wonderful language in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. As I was adjusting my classes this week, I thought, why not beauty? Enough to last us all for a good long while. ![]()
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