Odes & Anti-odes

Years 7 - 8

Three Week workshops

In this workshop series students will dig deep into their opinions, creating odes and anti-odes. Students will have the opportunity to learn about the poetic form of the ode,  language features and as well as some useful strategies for idea generating using mentor texts. Topics explored will draw from everyday life ranging from food, seasons and celebrations to mild annoyances, such as self-checkout machines and daylight savings. 

Students will develop key skills in playfully debating their opinions with these literary techniques from hyperbole, alliteration, simile, rhymes and imperatives. They will be encouraged to address their subjects in second person and experiment with spacing for their poems.

• Australian Curriculum Outcomes

  Create literary texts that explore students’ own experiences and imagining (ACELT1607)

  Create literary texts by developing storylines, characters and settings (ACELT1794)

  Create texts that adapt language features and patterns encountered in literary texts, for example characterisation, rhyme, rhythm, mood, music, sound effects and dialogue (ACELT1791)

• NSW Syllabus Outcomes

  Plans, creates and revises written texts for multiple purposes and audiences through selection of text features, sentence-level grammar, punctuation and word-level language (EN3-CWT-01)

  Extends Tier 2 and Tier 3 vocabulary through interacting, wide reading and writing, morphological analysis and generating precise definitions for specific contexts (EN3-VOCAB-01)

• Sample Student Writing

  Love/ Hate ode to rain  

                             Dear remarkable and rebellious rain…

                      You have decided to come once again.

  Your wondrous water sparkles as it falls,

  Making lovely sounds echoing through the halls.

  You are like a symphony of drops,

  I am sad when your performance stops.

                                   But sometimes rain, you are a pest,

                                    Just one sunny day is my request.

                                     One sunny day to have some fun,

                                  Please dear rain, don't hide the sun.

  -Jasia, Year 8, HERRD Homeschool Group, T2 2024
  

  Some days you decide to be polite

  And let the sun shine in sight.

  Those days give me such delight,

  Days when you and sun don’t fight.

  Both your water and the sun’s light,

  Make a rainbow both colourful and bright!

                                  Other days you are angry and roar,

                       Growling with thunder that shakes my core

                               Won’t you pause your powerful pour,

                                           As I leave the grocery store?

                             So when I enter through the front door,

                                 There won't be puddles on the floor.

                             Goodbye dear rain as you go away.

                             I hope to see you another day.

Available in Semester 2, 2025.