First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out–
because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out–
because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out–
because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out–
because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me–
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

–Martin Niemöller

April 16 is Holocaust Remembrance Day. What can we do to honor the lives of those who died at the hands of the Nazis?

Elie Wiesel, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, wrote Night, Dawn, and Day (originally entitled The Accident), fictionalized accounts of his experiences surviving imprisonment at Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps during World War II. Night has entered the canon of literature taught in American schools, as has Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl.

Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston records the experiences of another ethnic group mistreated during World War II — Japanese Americans. While their experiences were not as severe as those of Jews, Gypsies, and the disabled under Hitler, the fact remains that they were mistreated because of their ethnic background. Discrimination can exist anywhere and at any time, as we see in news from eastern Europe and Darfur.

Many teachers will work with these themes today, possibly interviewing survivors from their community.

Because discrimination can begin subtly, we might also consider teaching about the power of language today.

Hate speech doesn’t need to be as blatant as recent celebrity examples. It can be as simple an insult among friends: “That’s so gay!” or “What a retard!” Our students don’t think about the power of their words, and they need to. They need to reconsider some of the jokes they tell. They need to know how to watch for bias online and in the media.

Call it rhetorical analysis; call it remembering the Holocaust; call it simple courtesy. Talking about discrimination and teaching students to watch their language can also be a way to honor Holocaust victims.

The world as students have explained it to their teachers …

• Mushrooms always grow in damp places, which is why they look like umbrellas.
• Momentum is something you give a person when they go away.
• Some people can tell what time it is by looking at the sun, but I have never been able to make out the numbers.
• When planets run around and around in circles, we say they are orbiting. When people do it, we say they are crazy.
• One of the main causes of dust is janitors.

Since April is Poetry Month, let’s look at a humorous verse form that will develop students’ sense of rhythm and diction. I refer to the Double Dactyl, which takes its name from its rhythm: two dactylic feet per line (DUM dah dah DUM dah dah).

This form is also known as a Higgledy-Piggledy from its typical first line. Say it aloud a couple of times, and you’ll hear the rhythm.

The requirements for this form are simple. It has 8 lines, divided into 2 stanzas of 4 lines each.

• Line 1 is a double dactylic nonsense word, often “higgledy-piggledy,” though many variations exist.
• Line 2 is a double dactylic name, usually that of someone famous. Sometimes syllables are added to make the meter work. Here are some examples of double dactylic names, some with variations:
  

  Emily Dickinson
  Booker T. Washington
  Pamela Anderson
  wily Odysseus
  Borat from Kazakhstan

• Line 3 continues the thought begun in line 2, which will continue to line 5. Line 3 must be a double dactyl.
• Line 4 breaks the rhythm (DUM dah dah DUM). This line will rhyme with line 8.
• Line 5 continues the thought and returns to the double dactylic rhythm.
• Line 6 is traditionally a single, double dactylic word. A certain poetic license in inventing this word is common.
• Line 7 continues the thought and rhythm.
• Line 8, like line 4, breaks the rhythm (DUM dah dah DUM) and rhymes with line 4.

The possibilities abound:

Higgledy-piggledy
Angela Lansbury
Solved crimes each Sunday on
Murder, She Wrote:

More than a decade spent
Opportunistically
Getting confessions by
Rocking the boat.

Jed Hartman wrote a double dactyl about writing a double dactyl. Note the invention in line 6:

Higgledy Piggledy
(First name and last name here,)
Then something clever on
What he/she did.

Stanza two uses a
Hexasyllabicword;
Finish it up with a
Topper or lid.

Anthony Hecht and Paul Pascal invented this form in 1951. Hecht and John Hollander published some in an article in Esquire magazine in 1966. Their book, Jiggery Pokery: A Compendium of Double Dactyls, was released later that year and included contributions from poets Donald Hall and James Merrill, among others.

A student who can craft a good Higgledy-Piggledy will have no trouble with iambic pentameter when it’s time to write a Shakespearean sonnet. Have fun with it!

On this date in 1949, Dorothy E. Allison, author of Bastard Out of Carolina, was born. On this date in 1987, Erskine Caldwell, author of Tobacco Road and God’s Little Acre, died. Today in 1997, Michael Dorris, author of The Broken Cord and A Yellow Raft in Blue Water, died. And today in 1999, William Armstrong, author of the children’s classic Sounder, died.

It sounds like I’ve spent entirely too much time getting ready to play Trivial Pursuit. Actually, I’ve just been clicking around on the eNotes Calendar of Literary Facts. ENotes has categorized more than 6500 births, deaths, publication dates, and other information here.

Looking for a bit of trivia to open class tomorrow? Click on tomorrow’s date and follow a link. Looking for something about a specific writer or title? Use the search box at the top.

What a great timesaver!

Let’s say you’re teaching Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, and you want your students to have a sense of the history related to his experience. You want them to see maps and pictures, to trace the route from Wiesel’s childhood home in Romania to Buchenwald. Wouldn’t it be great if a detailed map and related historical photos were available for you to project onto a screen and show your class? Might your students want to use those materials for research?

Enter Google Lit Trips. Google Certified Teacher Jerome Burg and friends are using Google Earth technology to help students see literature from another perspective. Teachers need to have Google Earth installed on their computers already. (The free version will do.) Teachers also need to download a KMZ file from Google Lit Trips.

At this writing, the following titles are available, in addition to Night:

• Traveling with P. G. Wodehouse
• Virgil’s Aeneid
• Voltaire’s Candide
• Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath
• Shakespeare’s Macbeth
• Homer’s Odyssey

Other titles are being developed.

Literature, history, geography, and student engagement — no charge! Life is good!

On this date in 1962, West Side Story won 10 Academy Awards, including including Best Picture, Best Director (Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins), Best Supporting Actor (George Chakiris), and Best Supporting Actress (Rita Moreno).

West Side Story is essentially Romeo and Juliet set in inner-city New York, with music, dancing, gangs, and rumbles. This film gave teachers another way to bring Shakespeare to life in the classroom. After all, the plot lines weren’t new when Will used them. Why not adapt them to circumstances that students understand better?

Since that time King Lear has been rewritten as A Thousand Acres; Macbeth, as Men of Respect; Othello, as O!, not to mention several productions using Shakespeare’s script, such as the version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream that was produced in 1999. Rewriting a scene from a Shakespearean play and placing it in a modern setting has become a standard practice. The process helps students appreciate Shakespeare’s insights into people and situations.

Final note: In an incredible oversight, the Academy failed to nominate the Bard for Best Screenplay in 1962. That nomination went instead to Ernest Lehman.

The world as students have explained it to their teachers …

• You can listen to thunder and tell how close you came to getting hit. If you don’t hear it, you got hit, so never mind.
• There are 26 vitamins in all, but some of the letters are yet to be discovered.
• Vacuums are nothings. We only mention them to let people know they’re there.
• The cause of perfume disappearing is evaporation. Evaporation gets blamed for a lot of things, like when people forget to put the top on.
• Water vapor gets together in a cloud. When it is big enough to be called a drop, it does.

The Academy of American Poets has declared April National Poetry Month. How can we get kids excited about poetry? “April Madness.”

April Madness is like March Madness, but it uses poetry instead of basketball teams. Two students each day read or recite a poem. After they finish, the class votes on which they prefer, and the winner advances. The rounds continue until a winner emerges. Students may repeat poems or change them for each round; in addition to canon poetry they may use song lyrics, religious poems, or something they have written themselves.

To add incentive, I offer a few bonus points each time a student advances, and the overall winner receives a gift certificate to a local eatery.

Today Adam won with a reading of a Shel Silverstein poem, “Stupid Pencil Maker.” Yesterday Brittany won, reading Dickinson’s “Because I could not Stop for Death.”

This activity brings poetry to kids through the back door. While they focus on the competition, they don’t notice that they are researching poems and developing presentation skills. Work disguised as play – what more could we ask?

in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman
whistles far and wee
and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it’s
spring
when the world is puddle-wonderful
the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing
from hop-scotch and jump-rope and
it’s
spring
and
the
goat-footed
balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee

e.e. cummings

[NB: this idea did not originate with me. Someone shared it a couple of years ago on a listserv I subscribe to, but I have forgotten whom to credit! If you see this and it’s your original idea, please identify yourself, and thank you!]

The bell for passing period rang. I grabbed a large stack of student portfolios and maneuvered down the hallway toward class. One of my eighth graders saw me coming and opened the door for me.

“That’s very chivalrous of you,” I said, my chin holding the top journal in place.

“Aw, Ms. Beard,” he said, disappointed, “what did I do wrong now?”

Poor guy — he was trying to do his teacher a favor and ended up a victim of vocabulary. Of course I immediately explained what I meant, and as he smiled I realized that we had both learned something. He had picked up a new word, and I had gained some insight into teaching vocabulary.

We learn new words in context. My eighth grader didn’t recognize “chivalrous,” so he had gone to my body language to help him. Unfortunately that awkward stack of portfolios up to my chin had left me with clenched teeth, and my attempt at a smile looked more like a grimace. My student guessed at a negative meaning for the word. Once he had the correct meaning, however, he had a context for it: he had opened the door to be helpful.

English teachers are adept at pulling meaning from context, and we tend to read widely, giving us multiple contexts from which to learn. We gain new words sometimes without even realizing it. Because our vocabularies are so well developed, new teachers are sometimes surprised by the words our students don’t know and by their lack of skill in acquiring new words.

Research suggests that the best way to learn vocabulary words is a combination of reading widely and direct instruction.

Teachers often introduce unfamiliar words as a prereading activity. Frontloading vocabulary helps students negotiate an unfamiliar passage successfully. This should be a standard practice acorss the curriculum as we introduce new texts.

Vocabulary workbooks may be the most consistent source of direct instruction. They have come a long way from “Memorize this list of 20 unrelated words.” Most now provide a variety of contexts for each new word, including a reading selection that uses the words, exploration of roots, and practice with synonyms and antonyms. Teachers often provide additional classroom practice by asking students to illustrate their words or to create mnemonics.

Combining wide reading with direct instruction produces better readers and writers. After all, the real test of vocabulary isn’t the one on Friday but the one that takes place the next time the student encounters the word.

I learned one more thing from my experience with those journals: if the stack is that big, it might be better to make two trips.

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