My Fair Rat

So, today the students took those freewrites that they did on Tuesday and cut 'em down to the first draft of a free verse poem. How lovely some of their images were, and how poignant some of those poems. One of my favorites was an elegy to a pet ferret. Although very rough, this draft showed much sophistication, too. In it, the poet explained how he thought of his pet "pherret" as more of a "fair rat." He proceeded to write three great similes comparing his pet to a fair and then ending each stanza with, and she looks like a rat. A collective sigh of sympathy rose from the class when that fair rat met her maker, because the grief in the poem was genuine.