Week 78: College Reading and Writing: Taylor and Salgado

Week 78: College Reading and Writing: Taylor and Salgado

Tess Taylor and Renan Salgado: Annotating, Summarizing, Analyzing, Imitating

to annotate: to make notes on something to help you understand it better

to summarize: to put something in your own words

to analyze: to consider a question on the text, providing supporting examples from the text

to imitate: to create an original piece of writing based on something you have read

We are doing the poem and response in the book today, starting on page 156. 

Exercise: Read and annotate

1. Read the poem and response out loud and underline any words you need to look up.

2. Write any questions you have in the margins or in your notebook.

3. Put tricky parts into your own words in notes in the margins or in your notebook.

Exercise: Questions for Comprehension of the poem

1.     Why is the setting of the poem significant? A middle school?  

2.     What do you think it means “we all fumbled towards one another/ and waited on the bleak tarmac of our lives/ to be let in”?

3.     What is the significance of a “conquistador” in the last line?

Exercise: Summarize the poem

Write a paragraph summarizing the poem with quotations, in-text citation, and a Work Cited Page.

example too-short summary, incorporating quotation and in-text citation:

Tess Taylor’s poem “Memory with Handgun and Tetherball” begins with the speaker recalling where she went to middle school “Portola Middle School they called it” (156). She then describes the kids she went to school with, “In long hallways in classes of 42 students we learned our codings, locker numbers, gangs” (156).  She describes the conditions of the school: “Our district skidding forward, bankrupt—our lunches rancid in their plastic, our buses idling in blaring heat” (156).

Work Cited Page (for today’s poem)

Taylor, Tess.. “Memory with Handgun and Tetherball.”  Bullets Into Bells: Poets and Citizens Respond to Gun Violence. Ed. Brian Clements et al. Beacon Press, 2017.

Exercise: Questions for Comprehension of the response

1. How does Salgado describe middle school?
2. Where and when did Salgado grow up?
3. How old was Salgado when he met his first killer?

Exercise: Summarize the response

Write a paragraph summarizing the response with quotations, in-text citation, and a Work Cited Page.

Exercise: Analysis

Question for analysis: In his response to Taylor’s poem, Salgado describes the many times he witnessed violence as a young child growing up in Brooklyn in the 80’s. At the end of his response,  he writes, “Today at work, I see through the eyes of twelve-year-old unaccompanied minors who rode on top of commercial trains from Central America, through Mexico, running away from gun violence in their countries, to arrive here, a country also filled with gun violence” (158). Using the poem to describe some American middle schooler’s daily experience, what do you believe Salgado is asserting here?

Exercise: Imitation

Write a poem about a middle school memory you have. Write in tercets!

Homework:

1. Summary of Poem
2. Summary of Response
3. Analysis of Poem and Response
4. Imitation of Poem

About this class:

In this class, you are welcome to submit homework for a grade.  If it’s not strong enough to earn an A, I’ll give you some comments to help you revise it, and let you do it over again. You have as many chances as you want to complete and perfect the work in this class, and you are welcome to do more than one week’s worksheet for homework at a time; ask me for sheets you’ve missed.  Students who complete 15 weeks of graded assignments and a longer paper can qualify for college credit.  When you get close to completing 15 weeks, I’ll help you get started on your longer paper.