Revise for Line-breaks and Stanza Breaks Objectives: To understand how line-breaks and stanza breaks affect the meaning and overall effect of a poem.  To revise poems to ensure that line-breaks and stanza breaks enhance meaning and overall effect. Focusing Question: How can you create effective line and stanza breaks in your poems? http://www.writingmatters.org Focusing Question | Mini Lesson | Writer’s Work Time | Lesson Summary

Mini Lesson Line-breaks and stanza breaks clue the reader into the pace, feeling and meaning of a poem. How do the line-breaks in “Listening to the Grownups Quarreling or Teenagers” by Ruth Whitman add to the poem’s meaning and pace? What words do the line-breaks highlight? Handout 3.1a: Line Breaks “Listening to the Grownups Quarreling or Teenagers” by Ruth Whitman “We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks Focusing Question | Mini Lesson | Writer’s Work Time | Lesson Summary

Writer’s Work Time Login to the Online Classroom. Go to Step 2 and download your document from the activity Submit Your First Draft Poems. Resave your document on the computer’s desktop. Select a poem and revise line and stanza breaks. Think about your poem’s meaning, pace and rhythm. Re-read your poem and decide if the new breaks improve the poem. Revise your other two poems following the same steps (not the Surroundings Poem.) Resave the poem and submit it to the Step 3 of the Online Classroom activity Submit Your Revised Poems. Focusing Question | Mini Lesson | Writer’s Work Time | Lesson Summary

Lesson Summary What makes line and stanza breaks effective? Go to the Online Classroom and click the Step 3 activity Share Your Revised Poems. Post a revised poem and comment on your classmates’ poems. Think about: How did the breaks influence the pace of the poem? How does the poet use line and stanza breaks to help express the meaning of the poem? Lesson Summary Focusing Question | Mini Lesson | Writer’s Work Time | Lesson Summary