Strategies
Audio-visual recordings of poetry
Having students listen to a recording or watch a video of a poetry reading will engage them and provide access to the course content for struggling students. While students listen or watch, they should always be urged to keep their minds focused on a task. Students should be provided with a copy of the text. Some examples of listening tasks include underlining words that the poet emphasized, identifying figurative language, or underlining words that suggest mood. This strategy will help students understand how a poem is meant to be read. This strategy would work well to introduce the Maya Angelou and Gary Soto poems. Students can listen and note examples of imagery and figurative language on their copies of the poems.
Preview and Predict
This is a pre-reading strategy designed as an anticipatory exercise before reading a poem or selection from the textbook. Students will be paired off, and each student will receive a line from the poem or textbook selection. Students will read their individual lines and work as a pair to make a prediction about the poem. The pairs will then share their predictions with the entire class. The predictions will be posted in the classroom. After reading the poem or selection, students will compare their predictions with the text once they've read it. This strategy will be especially useful before reading the sonnet. Students might have difficulty approaching the whole poem, and this task of focusing on one line and sharing with the whole group will serve as a way to scaffold.
Venn Diagram
A Venn Diagram is a tool to help students compare and contrast information. Students learn better if they can make connections, and I often ask them to compare and contrast concepts to deepen their understanding. Venn Diagrams can also serve as a tool to organize thoughts before completing a writing exercise. At such points the diagram can be used to have students elaborate on the similarities and differences between two pieces of writing, time periods, or characters. As students compare and contrast the Renaissance and Middle Ages, the Venn Diagram will help them organize their thoughts.
Two Column Notes
This is a system of note-taking that allows students to organize information by keeping main ideas and headings on the left and details on the right. Students summarize at the bottom of the page the information they gained from the notes. As students read from their textbooks, this strategy will help them organize and summarize information. These notes will also serve as a tool to help them study and review information.
Structured Discussions of Key Terms
Students need meaningful ways to practice new vocabulary words. Flashcards and memorization might give them some familiarity, but in order to truly internalize a word and understand how to use it, students need practice. Structured discussions provide scaffolding and context for students to use new vocabulary words. Students are first provided direct definitions. They are then given examples and practice with the teacher, paying close attention to the part of speech and syntax. Then they are given sentence frames with meaningful context through which they can practice using the words. Structured discussions can help students talk about poems in a meaningful way. Students will be given a protocol including questions and sentence frames containing vocabulary that they need to internalize to show their mastery of the content.
Cloze
A cloze passage is a selection in which certain words are omitted. Students need to carefully read the passage and use context clues to determine which words should go in the blank. This strategy can be modified to provide clues for students who need them by giving them a word bank. A cloze passage is an effective way to monitor comprehension and challenge students to read carefully and critically. This strategy is useful to help students read closely as they will need to demonstrate a certain level of understanding to fill in the blanks. The blanks can also be strategically selected to target a particular skill. For example, when analyzing figurative language, words can be taken out of similes and metaphors to see if students can select words that are appropriate to the meaning and cultural context of the poems.
Character journals
Students are assigned a particular character (historical or fictional), and they write first-person journal entries from that character's point of view. Students are given specific journal prompts related to events or problems, and they write using as much detail as possible. After students are finished writing, they read these entries aloud. Since students are assigned different characters, the readings provide a rich sampling of different perspectives responding to the same topic. This strategy can help students understand characterization as they read poetry. For example, as students read Gary Soto's "Ode to Los Raspados," they can write journal entries from different points of view. Students may be assigned to write from the point of view of the speaker, her father, or another child waiting referred to in the poem. This strategy can also help students understand historical circumstance. They can be given a fictional prompt related to history. For instance, students might be assigned different characters such as a peasant, a lord, the king, etc., and write about one situation from these different points of view.
Gallery Walk
Students are divided into small groups, and in the room there are as many posters with questions on them as there are groups. The questions on the posters concern different aspects of a common reading assignment. For example, one poster might pose questions about characters while another addresses vocabulary and yet another asks students about historical context. Each group will receive a limited amount of time at each poster to respond to the questions. Once time is up, the group rotates to the next poster, reads what the group(s) prior to them wrote, and adds to or revises the answer on the poster. This strategy will work well to review a poem or concept from the textbook. Students should have spent a few lessons studying the topic, and the gallery walk serves as a tool to reinforce material through group work and whole class review.
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