Shift in Perspective OER

As you read the text, "A New Beginning" and "Stop the Violence," concentrate on isolating topics or themes (jealousy, love, greed etc.) which will help you answer short answer or Open Ended Response (OER) questions. Using your pseudonym, or if you choose, your actual name, please enter your OER's on this page. Remember to use the ACES strategy (see below).

In comparing these two selections, explain the shift in perspectives of the authors of “A New Beginning” from the author of “Stop the Violence.”


Suggesting a shift in perspectives, respectively, the authors of “A New Beginning” and “Stop the Violence” express the light of positivity, a new day, in contrast to the darkness of negativity, a community under siege. While “A New Beginning” personifies the sky, clouds, and dawn, conveying hope when “night, taught me to never give up,” the speaker of “Stop the violence” illustrates the darkness of her neighborhood being consumed by death and pain as “drugs…people crying…and mothers stand in silence.” Action versus faith. Shifting from hope to action, both poems reflect the two sides of a coin, a transformation.

Syntactical Structure: Participial phrase, adverb, article subject verb (metaphor), appositive phrase, prepositional phrase (metaphor), appositive phrase. SC S + V SC "S + V," S + V....SC drugs...people crying...and mothers stand in silence (elipsis)." Fragment. Participial phrase, S + V, appositive phrase.

A: Answer the question

C: Cite Evidence

E: Elaborate on the first piece of evidence (method and meaning?)

C: Cite Evidence

E: Elaborate on the second piece of evidence (search method and meaning?)

S: Summarize (careful: summarize both--the link/connection or the disconnect)

Stop the Violence
by Anonymous

Drugs all over under the ground.
Guns, people crying, putting each otherdown.
People every day do crazy things.
Buying fancy cars and a lot ofrings.
You have nothing to show for yourself.
You're dying on the inside,and you have bad health.
I wonder what the community can do.
I have noidea, not even a clue.
I look in the paper and I see someone dead.
They layon the stretcher like it was a bed.
The mothers stand in silence.
Peopleshould think TO STOP THE VIOLENCE!!


A New Beginning
by Jasmine1782

Today is a new beginning
Dawn told me this once
As the glow of the rising sun grew closer
The dancing starts faded
When I felt like giving up,
The morning air reminded me that today is a new day,
Night taught me to never give up.
Because tomorrow is a new day.