Proform Practice
by Kathleen Eilers Crandall
Directions:
· Text with blanks.
· Use WL book to figure out content words for pro-forms.
[Who?]______woke in the night to hear someone crying, "Fire! Fire!" In a second, Anne Bradstreet was out of bed. Now she could smell smoke and hear the crackling of wood. She reached into the cradle beside her bed and lifted out the baby. She ran into the next room, calling the names of her older children. "Get up! Get up quickly!" she cried.Soon Anne Bradstreet was pushing her children out through the door into the warm, windy night. The flames of their burning house made the sky red. Some neighbors ran to [whom?]______ to make sure they were all right. [Which people?]______were running from the well to the house with buckets of water. But it was too late to put out this fire. As they watched the roof fell in, and the house became a heap of burning rubble.
It was a hard blow to Anne Bradstreet. She thought of how long it had taken [whom?]______ to build this house. She thought of how her husband would feel when he came home to Andover from his trip to Boston. Then she looked at her children and smiled. Nothing that really mattered was lost [by whom?]______. She began to think what she must do next.
There was [much what?]______to be done. It was some time before Anne Bradstreet began to write a poem. A poem? Yes.
Anne Bradstreet could no more help writing poems than a bird can help singing. She had written poems to tell her love for her husband . . .
If ever [who?]______were one, then surely [who?]______.
If ever man were lov'd by wife, then you . . .
She had written poems about her children too, and the happy life of her family. Now she wrote about the fire.
In silent night when rest [who?]______ took,
For sorrow near [who?]______ did not look. . . .
Then she went on to tell about the frightening happenings of the night when [what happened?]______ .
Anne Bradstreet was fortunate. Nobody said, "You are not supposed to write poems. You are a woman, a wife, a mother. Leave poetry for men to write."
Anne Bradstreet's husband, Simon, was a generous, intelligent man. He thought his wife's poems were beautiful.
And so it happened that when Simon's brother had to make a trip to England, [who?]______ took along a number of Anne's poems. He found that the people in England admired [what?]______also. Someone said [what?]______ should be put in a book. Soon [what?]______ was done. The little book of Anne Bradstreet's poems became very popular. Hers were the first poems from America that the people of England had ever seen.
Years later, people would discover that the Indians, the very first Americans, had composed many poems. But after [whose?]______ songs, Anne Bradstreet's poems come next in almost every collection of American poetry.
3/20/2011-WL3-ProformPractice