Warm-ups

1. Warm-ups Week of 26 March 2012

2. Monday, 8th Grade • Please come in, sit down quietly, and correct the following sentences. • Robert Frost is well know for poems like “The Road Not Taken. • His poetry celebrates the beauty of nature, not only in the warmer months, in New England’s harsh Winter, also. • Skills practiced: inclusion of closing quotation marks, correct use of correlative conjunction, correct capitalization.

3. Monday, 7th Grade • Please come in, sit down quietly, and correct the following sentences. • Before Karen wrote her haiku she read about her topic and outlines her ideas. • 1. haiku 2. describes a moment in nature 2. has a specific number of syllables *Skills practiced: use of comma after introductory subordinate clause, verb tense compatibility, use of capitalization in an outline

4. Tuesday, 8th Grade • Please come in, sit down quietly, and correct the following sentences. • Frost unlike many other modern poets, always used traditional poetic forms. • Writing free verse was he said “like playing tennis with the net down” not much of a challenge. • Skills practiced: use of commas with interrupter, correct use of commas with a split quotation, use of dash before explanatory information.

5. Tuesday, 7th Grade • Please come in, sit down quietly, and correct the following sentences. • The second line has seven syllables, the third line has five syllables. • “Haiku have only these characteristics,” said cousin Jamie. • Skills practiced: use of coordinating conjunction to correct run-on sentence, correction of misplaced modifier, capitalization of title before person’s name.

6. Wednesday, 8th Grade • Please come in, sit down quietly, and correct the following sentences. • Robert Frost wrote narrative poems in blank verse but the dialogue always sounds naturally. • No poet is better than him at creating informal-sounding speech within the formal rules of poetry. • Skills practiced: use of comma before coordinating conjunction in a compound sentence, use of predicate adjective, correct use of pronoun after than.

7. Wednesday, 7th Grade • Please come in, sit down quietly, and correct the following sentences. • Traditional haiku are about nature and these poems often describe weather, the seasons, and natural images and these topics affect many people deeply. • In a haiku by a skilled writer a vivid image or mental pictures is portrayed with just a few words. • Skills practiced: revision of stringy sentence, use of comma after introductory prepositional phrase, verb agreement with a compound subject.

8. Thursday, 8th Grade • Please come in, sit down quietly, and correct the following sentences. • Frost’s poem’s seem simple and clear on a first read. • However he always likes to leave you wondering just what he means. • Skills practiced: correct use of gerund form, use of comma after introductory word, correction of you without a clear antecedent.

9. Thursday, 7th Grade • Please come in, sit down quietly, and correct the following sentences. • The reason that haiku are so famous is because they provide readers with good mental pictures. • After reading the haiku in the book, Debbie and me went to the library to get more of these poems. • Skills practiced: correct use of conjunction because, use of precise adjective to improve style, correct pronoun case in compound construction.