Friday 19 September 2014

Ambleside Online Year 7 - Creative Narrations using Alliteration

Many children write verse as readily as prose, and the conciseness and power of bringing their subject matter to a point which this form of composition requires affords valuable mental training. One thing must be borne in mind. Exercises in scansion are as necessary in English as in Latin verse. Rhythm and accent on the other hand take care of themselves in proportion as a child is accustomed to read poetry.
A Philosophy of Education Pg. 193


Bengy is working through The Grammar of Poetry and I asked him to use write a narration based on the Battle of Bosworth (covered in AO Year 7) using alliteration:



Lesson 23 is on Alliterative Imitation and the student is asked to read some excerpts from Beowulf and then write an alliterative poem with a similar sound and feel. Bengy chose to base his poem on Ivanhoe.



We're not rushing through The Grammar of Poetry but it's been interesting to note that this is my son who would choose to do a poetic narration any day over any other kind of narration but he struggles with the more formalised presentation in this book. I have the older spiral edition which doesn't have a great deal of practice in some sections where it would have been helpful but there is a new version with additional aids that I haven't seen. The book does go in to quite a bit of technical detail on the different types of 'feet' which is probably the hardest part and there are numerous exercises in scansion. I like how the tropes or pictures such as similes, metaphors etc are presented but more ideas for practice would have been helpful. The book is easy to use and so far I haven't seen a book that includes both the writing of poetry and the appreciation of poetry that I like better.
Bengy says of the book: 'Some parts of it are interesting but some I find extremely boring.'




4 comments:

As He Leads is Joy said...

My son likes alliteration. He found a street name the other that was alliteration. We have not done much with poetry.Ambleside looks interesting.

Carol said...

Alliteration is a lot of fun. One thing my children enjoyed doing when they first started to use alliteration in their writing was coming up with book titles using alliteration. Ambleside has been a good fit for us and is a wonderful free resource.

Amy Maze said...

Thanks for sharing about this resource!

Catherine (Alecat Music) said...

Loving reading this example of your children's applied work. Very encouraging! Thank you for sharing. :)