Classroom Activities
Week 1
Essential Question: Who is the speaker in the poem? Why do we have speakers in poetry?
Day 1-2
Opening Activities: After the essential questions, the teacher will ask who has heard of Robert Hayden? The teacher will provide background information on the author and tell students that one way to determine the speaker in a poem is to learn about the author's background.
Work Session: The teacher will read Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden. Provide a copy for students. Students will re-read the poem and try to determine the speaker. Use a close activity to analyze the poem. Explain the significance of knowing the author's background to determine more information about who the speaker is in the poem.
Closing: Create a constructed response. Have students begin to write a brief analysis of Those Winter Sunday's in their own words. Explain in the response whether or not they believe the poem is about the author based on classroom conversation and author's background.
Day 3-4
Essential Question: Does the author of the poem know something that the speaker does not know? What views or feelings are presented in the poem?
Opening: Explain to students that the reader should connect the poem's plot and conflicts with the structural features. Teacher will instruct the students to re-read the poem from the previous day. This time we will use who, what, when, where, and why to analyze the poem.
Work Session: Conduct a classroom discussion using the following questions?
What is being dramatized? Who is the speaker? What happens in the poem? When does the action occur? Where is the speaker? Why does the speaker feel compelled to speak at this time?
Closing: What can you add to your constructed response from the previous day?
Day 5
Essential Question: How do the poem's parts help dramatize conflicts or ideas in the language?
Opening: After reviewing the essential question, the teacher will explain how the structure and support evidence in the poem reinforces the interpretation of the poetry.
Work Session: The teacher will introduce the words Form, Rhetoric, Syntax, and Vocabulary. Ask the students if they know what each word means. Explain how each of these play a major role in explicating the poem Re-read the poem and look for form, rhetoric, syntax, and vocabulary.
Closing: Which vocabulary words have multiple meanings?
Week 2
Essential Question:
What are literary devices? Why is the understanding of literary devices essential in interpreting poetry as a literary form?
What role does the author's background play in understanding the speaker in poetry?
Day 1-2
Essential Question: Who is the speaker in the poem? How do the literary devices used in the poem assist in the meaning?
Opening: Use a K-W-L Chart to determine the student's familiarity with literary devices. Once students have provided their responses, Provide additional information to students about each literary device you will introduce in the lesson.
Work Session: Provide students with a copy of the poem Still I Rise by Maya Angelou. A Inform the students that today they will use the reading skill Marking the Text to analyze the poem and locate literary devices used in the poem. Explain the procedures for marking the text by modeling the task. Allow students to review the chart with the steps for marking the text and ask any quest ions for clarification.
When students mark the text, advise them to divide the poem every four line to look for information in the poem. In lines 1-4 discuss who the speaker is addressing? Allow students the opportunity to jot down answers in their writer's notebook or any notebook. What are the key words in lines 1-8 that indicate the speaker's attitude? Underline these words. What is the metaphor used in lines 33-34?
Closing: Who is the speaker in this poem? How do you know? How did marking the text help you understand the speaker in this poem?
Day 3
Essential Question: What is a sonnet? What is the difference between an Italian sonnet and an English sonnet? What is an octave? What is a sestet?
Opening: Allow students the opportunity to answer the essential questions. After students have provided responses, provide background on the sonnet.
Work Session: Discuss the difference between the Italian sonnet and the English or Shakespearean sonnet. Students should take notes and be able to refer to this information later. Use the overhead projector to provide a model of both sonnets. For the Italian sonnet, we will use On the Grasshopper and the Cricket by John Keats. For the English or Shakespearean we will use Sonnet 18 Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?
Allow students the opportunity to examine both for similarities and differences. Explain in detail the differences in the two sonnets.
Closing: What are some characteristics of the English Sonnet? The Italian Sonnet?
Day 4
Essential Question:
What is the rhyme scheme? What role does it play in the form of a sonnet?
Opening: Review the essential questions with students.
Work Session: Using the same two poems from the previous day, allow students to attempt to locate rhyme scheme in the English sonnet and the Italian sonnet.
Closing: Write a constructed response about the two poems similarities and differences. You may add to your work from the previous day.
Day 5-6
Essential Question: What other methods can we use to analyze a poem?
Opening: Explain to the students that today they will learn a new method for analyzing poetry. Introduce the TP-CASTT. Explain the meaning of each letter.
Work Session: Students will work with a partner to explicate the two poems from the previous day by using a TP-CASTT to analyze the poems. Each group will present their findings and create an electronic document using TP-CASTT on each poem. Students will cut the information out and paste to a sheet of construction paper for display.
Closing: Presentations from each group
Week 3
Day 1-2
Essential Question: What is theme? Can we compare poetic forms by theme to determine the reader in the poem?
Opening: Provide students with background information on both authors. The teacher will introduce the two poems The Road Not Taken and Sir Walter Raleigh to his Son.
Work Session: Using an anticipation guide, survey students to determine their feelings about warning to teenagers about the dangers of life. Determine if parents have ever given them stern warnings. Read both poems and allow students to determine what the warnings are in each poem. Is anything symbolized in the poetry? Students will work with partners for this activity.
Closing: Who was the speaker in the poem? Who is the implied reader in each poem? Are you sure? Allow the class to debate.
Day 3
Essential Question: What types of lessons have you taken in your life? How did these lessons help you with other areas of your life?
Work Session: Continue reading of the two poems from the previous day. Allow students to identify the theme by using inferences.
Day 4
Essential Question: What is free verse poetry? How can we analyze different forms of poetry including free verse?
Opening: Review essential questions with students. Discuss figurative language, imagery and symbolism. Provide students with the historical prospective on Walt Whitman and Langston Hughes.
Work Session: Read aloud I Hear America Singing by Walt Whitman. How does repetition help shape this poem? Who is the author addressing? Who are the people he is referring to in the poem?
Closing: What is the collective image produced by the poem. In other words, what do you imagine or visualize in each poem?
Day 5
Essential Question: How does imagery play a role in the interpretation of the poem?
Opening: Review the poem from the previous day. Now read I, Too by Langston Hughes.
Work Session: Continue to compare and contrast the two poems. How is rhythm used in each poem?
Closing: Write a free verse poem about sounds you hear around you. Use repetition.
Week 4
Day 1-5
Opening: How can I use what I know to create a variety of poetry?
Work session: Students will select various poems we have studied for the creation of a poetry notebook. The first section will be used to demonstrate their knowledge of shared work in the classroom. The second part of the book will be used to create poetry.
Closing: Turn in a completed collection of poetry both studied and created for your poetry notebook.
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