Enjambment: Day 144

1. Quiz review. Students received their quizzes from yesterday and we clarified some information.

2. Sound quiz. Students took a quiz on sound devices.

3. Enjambment notes. On the back of L24, students wrote:

Enjambment

definition: line breaks, especially in the middle of a sentence

Uses:

– DIVIDE the poem into rhythm or rhyme scheme

– put the same # of syllables in certain lines

– rhyme at the end of each line

– EMPHASIZE a single word or phrase by putting it on its own line

– DOUBLE MEANING

– Meaning #1: a line on its own, without the rest of the sentence

– Meaning #2: the line and the rest of the sentence

– Example:

In health class,

we had sex

education

The reader sees two meanings:

– #1: In health class, we had sex. Oh no!

– #2: In health class, we had sex education. Oh, that makes sense.

– POINT OUT SIMILARITIES by making the line structure similar (same number of syllables, words, or similar phrasing)

– Example:

I hate

babysitting kids

getting up mornings

vacuuming the floor

[insert the rest of poem here, blah, blah, blah]

Later, I will be

calling my boyfriend

– Four lines are formatted the same, using initial -ing words and five syllables each. The result? Even though I don’t say I think calling my boyfriend is unpleasant, or a chore, I am implying that it is similar through my enjambment.

– UNIT OF MEANING: each line has its own meaning, is its own idea. Group ideas in lines, start a new line with a new idea.

If you were absent, download and print out all these notes here: Enjambment Absent

4. Enjambment practice. Using the laptops, students copied and pasted one of the paragraphs below into a MS Word document. They then had to add line breaks to create a certain meaning from the prose. Some examples are posted below.

HW: Honors only – Find a paragraph in a book, magazine, newspaper, or website (or somewhere else). You can use anything you didn’t write and that’s not already a poem or a song. Then, type it up or rewrite it, adding line breaks in meaningful places to turn it into a poem. You should not add, switch, or remove any words, but you can add, switch, or remove punctuation and capitalization. Due tomorrow.