Unit Content
General Timeline
The arc of this unit will span approximately five weeks. The first section of the unit will explore prose and the love letter through mentor texts and literary devices. During the second section, students will move onto poetry (specifically, odes, the poetical equivalent of love letters written in prose), following a similar structure. The final part will offer students an opportunity to workshop and revise one prose piece and one poem to be assembled into a classroom anthology at the end of the unit.
As each mentor text is studied, students will focus on identifying a specific literary device within the story and then using that same literary device in a piece of writing. These literary devices will be catalogued on a unit wall so that students can refer back to them throughout the unit. Following are the pairings of mentor texts and specific literary devices or strategies.
Fry Bread & Use of Senses
The first mentor text used in the prose week will be Fry Bread by Kevin Noble Maillard. This picture book, illustrated by Juana Martinez-Neal, explores the Native American food (fry bread) through multiple senses: how the dough feels as it’s kneaded, how it looks and sounds as it’s cooking, and how it tastes once it’s being shared.3 Even beyond physical senses, Fry Bread also offers the connections that can be made between food, heritage, and community. Food so often is representative of culture: its ingredients can have ties to a specific location, its preparation can relate to cultural practices, and its consumption is integral to spending time with those who belong to a certain community. I might exemplify this for students by selecting several foods that are specific to culture and explaining how they were born out of necessity (due to circumstance or location) but also evolved into cultural traditions. For example, in contrast with Native American fry bread, the tradition of matzah during Passover in Jewish culture was born out of necessity (the Israelites did not have time to leaven their bread as they escaped Egypt) but has also become an integral part of Jewish culture and is eaten in remembrance of history as well as observance of more modern traditions. In the words of Kevin Noble Maillard, “Fry bread is time,”4 “art,”5 “history,”6 “place,”7 and “nation.”8 Fry Bread as a mentor text will model for students how to engage all of their senses while studying an object or place as the subject of their letter and how food connects outward to broader cultural and familial traditions.
Naming what we can see, hear, smell, touch, and taste has long been a strategy for grounding ourselves and quieting anxieties. This is a social-emotional technique second graders learn in our class and use before assembly performances or any other situation where anxiety might be prohibitive. Getting in touch with all of the many stimuli around us focuses our minds on the present moment, but it also makes that moment come alive for our readers when we engage the senses in a piece of writing. Additionally, the sensory experience of an object or place has a direct effect on how we feel about the object or place. When we feel pleasurable sensations, we generally have positive associations with those stimuli and associate comfortable feelings with whatever produced the stimuli. Positive emotions are the driving force behind love letters, so engaging senses will be a gateway to exploring emotions in these writing pieces. For example, in Fry Bread, I will have students notice how a singular food item is experienced through all of the five senses and described using sensory words.
After reading this mentor text, students will write their own love letter to a favorite dish or food item with special attention to the use of senses and sensory words.
Hello, Ocean & Personification
The second mentor text that models engaging the five senses is Hello, Ocean written by Pam Muñoz Ryan and illustrated by Mark Astrella. In this text, a girl returns to a favorite place– the ocean. The words describe the “briny air,”9 “bubbly waves,”10 “reeky fish,”11 and “squishy, sandy, soggy ground”12 and the many ways the ocean looks, sounds, smells, tastes, and feels. Even the less pleasurable sensations are still something the character loves because they are part of this familiar place. In addition to using senses, this text personifies the ocean as something that “whispers,”13 “tells rumors,”14 “chases,”15 and “kisses.”16 Furthermore, Ryan writes the words of this story in a style that straddles the line between prose and poetry. It has a simple rhyme scheme and a beautiful rhythm yet ties all fragments together in complete sentences.
Personification is the act of “animating” inanimate objects, in order to give them human qualities. Because the love letters in this unit will be to inanimate objects rather than people, this will be a particularly useful device. Students will ask themselves, “if this thing was a person, what would it say? Do? Think? Feel?” Similar to the use of senses, the way an object could be personified can make clear how the author feels about that object. For example, if someone were to write about a favorite blanket “hugging” them, this offers the image of someone feeling comforted and loved by the blanket, which is likely why they love the blanket back and might choose it as the subject of a love letter. Personification also offers an avenue to explore how we are in relationship with objects, just the way that we are in relationship with people. With respect to Hello, Ocean, students will examine what the personification tells the reader about the subject. For instance, Muñoz Ryan describes the water as something that “chases”17 and “kisses.”18 While we know that the ocean is not actually capable of doing these things, it makes us understand the ocean as something playful and fun because a person who chases and kisses might be someone considered playful or fun. We also come to understand that the reason the young girl in the book loves the ocean is because of its playfulness– it is a place to go to have fun.
After studying Hello, Ocean, students will employ personification in their own writing with the focus on making their subject appear a certain way. They will once again be writing a love letter, this time to a favorite place (e.g. neighborhood, park, school, room, natural area, etc.). Their choices about personification will help show the reader that their selected place has a purpose: fun, comfort, or learning, as some examples.
The Word Collector & Diction and Oxymoron
The final prose mentor text is The Word Collector by Peter Reynolds. This beloved children’s book is about a character named Jerome who delights in collecting words he hears and reads around him, words like “emerald,”19 “candid,”20 "kaleidoscope,"21 “symphony,”22 “effervescent,”23 and “guacamole,”24 to name a few. What draws Jerome to these words is not only the way they feel in his mouth, but how they perfectly describe certain objects or situations. In the story, he uses the words to create poems, placing unexpected words side by side, which is what makes this text a perfect example of both diction and oxymoron (a technique that falls under the larger literary umbrella of juxtaposition). For the purposes of this unit, diction will be defined for students as “choosing words that accurately describe the subject,” and oxymoron will be defined as “two words next to each other that mean opposite things.” Students are often amused by the literal definition of oxymoron meaning “sharp dull.”
Choosing the right words for a piece of writing can be very intimidating. The options seem endless, and the selection seems crucial. Word Choice is one of the six writing traits that Ruth Culham highlights in her book and curriculum, 6+1 Traits of Writing.25 According to Culham, in an elementary context, Word Choice is about “selecting words carefully to craft fluent sentences and create a lasting image in the reader’s mind.”26 Particularly for younger students (and students learning English as an additional language) who are only beginning to build up their vocabularies, Word Choice might look like attempting to write words they’ve heard before, using the “perfect word in the perfect place,” or using sensory words.27 It’s important students understand that they’re not being asked to use a lot of high-register (“fancy”) words that they don’t actually understand. Instead, they should challenge themselves to work from their own existing vocabularies to think of interesting words to use and occasionally challenge themselves to incorporate one or two new words they might have heard before. The purpose of using precise diction is to help a reader understand exactly what an author wants to convey, without leaving room for misinterpretation. Additionally, more exacting word choice creates more evocative text that transports the reader.
Oxymoron is the placement of opposing words or ideas next to each other or in close proximity. The effect of an oxymoron can be humor or irony, but it can also be a captured complexity about a given topic. Things and places in our lives are not one-dimensional; they have many facets and can exhibit multiple characteristics at once. Of course, it is essential that oxymorons and juxtaposition are not used just to be contrarian. Oxymoron has to make sense to be effective for the reader. So while it is great for young students to explore and experiment with different techniques, its ultimate purpose is to capture complex ideas for the reader.
In The Word Collector, Jerome enjoys putting opposite words next to each other, such as “electric” and “peace.”28 As a class, we will discuss the connotations of each of these words to understand why they don’t normally belong together. “Electric” might conjure up images of an electric shock or electric currents, something buzzing or sparking. “Peace” is, of course, associated with calm and stasis, which are at odds with the idea of a current sparking electricity. This is an example of oxymoron, a particular type of juxtaposition. Furthermore, the effect of putting them together creates an innovative idea that the calm of peace might actually be something exciting and energizing. Jerome also combines the words “whisper” and “symphony,” another instance of oxymoron.29 In examining this example, I might ask students what words they associate with “whisper.” Likely, they would say “quiet,” “hushed,” or maybe “secret.” Then repeating the same with “symphony,” they might say “loud,” “big,” or “exciting.” We would talk about how these two concepts could work together. Other examples of oxymoron can be found in the final pages of Fry Bread:
Fry bread is everything
Round, flat, large, small
North, South, East, West
Brown, yellow, black, white
Familiar and foreign, old and new30
These opposite words, such as “old” and “new” used together to describe one food show the complexity of that food. How can something be old and new at the same time? But fry bread is both a tie to history (old) and a way to commune with living people (new).
As a class, we will experiment with this by choosing a topic to write about and making a list of words we associate with that subject and then noticing if any of the words are at odds. We can even work backwards by choosing one word and thinking of its opposites, then asking ourselves if those opposites also apply to our subject. In studying oxymoron, the overarching question we will ask ourselves, both as readers and writers is, “If both words are used in combination, what does the reader learn?”
An additional way students can implement oxymoron is by paying attention to how words sound. Some words use sounds (particularly those made by the letters t, k, or g) that evoke harsher images because the sounds themselves are harsher. Conversely, some sounds sound smoother (those made by letters l, m, and n). When these types of sounds are used in close proximity to each other, the result is dissonance. Furthermore, when harsh sounds are used to describe a “smooth” topic, or smooth sounds are used to describe a “harsh” topic, the writer is juxtaposing sound and concept, another form of oxymoron.
At the conclusion of this case study, students will once again return to the love letter on their own. This time, they can write a love letter either to a word or another object they see as representing an oxymoron, making sure to use an example of oxymoron somewhere in the letter.
“Ode to the apple” & Enjambment
Two of the mentor texts used in our poetry study are odes by Pablo Neruda. Odes are traditional poems that praise a chosen subject, sometimes with elevated language. Neruda’s odes are particularly relevant to my classroom, in which half of students speak Spanish. Working with both the native Spanish and English translation gives students multiple access points and a way to leverage their native language as a strength. The first of Neruda’s odes we will study is “Ode to the apple.”
In this ode, Neruda describes the apple as fresh and innocent, as compared with the other fruits of the world:
muted
mangos,
bony
plums, and submerged
figs.31
Neruda employs very short verses, often with a peculiar word chosen to stand alone in its line, such as “are” in the third stanza: “the fruits of the earth / are / so awkward.”32 He uses repetition to emphasize his words and anaphora to create momentum, exemplified in the last stanza:
I want
a city,
a republic,
a Mississippi River
of apples.33
These short verses punctuated by a turn in line are referred to as “enjambment.” Enjambment is a technique in which the end of a verse of poetry is not actually the end of a sentence or phrase, creating the effect that the phrase is “spilling over” into the next line. Enjambment often leads to a breathless quality in the poem, but it also inspires curiosity in the reader about the missing part of the phrase, and they are compelled to read on.34 Enjambment can also place particular emphasis on the word that turns the line, which is a helpful tool for drawing attention to something specific.
When it is their turn, students will write their own ode to experiment with enjambment. Their ode will be written to a favorite belonging– a toy, a comfort item, a piece of clothing, or any other item they cherish in their home. Students will begin by writing one sentence about their subject all in one line. Then, they will create verses by splitting the sentence in various places through trial and error, asking themselves, “How does it change the rhythm or the sound if I turn the verse here? Or here? Or here?” They will repeat this process several more times to create a poem with at least three stanzas. This is similar to a strategy described in Susan Perabo’s Writers in the Schools.35 Enjambment is not only an effect for the sound of a poem, but it is a visual effect. In “Ode to the apple,” the varying line length is apparent to the eye as well as the ear.
All of this said, what comes through most strongly in “Ode to the apple” is not the literary devices and tight craft, but the overall message that an apple is common, that eating an apple is a shared experience that unites all humans. What Neruda enjoys most is something that connects him to the world. This offers another entry point for students– considering how their object connects– or doesn’t connect– them to the world around them.
“Ode to the cat” & Repetition
In “Ode to the cat,” Neruda takes a different approach. Instead of enumerating all the wonders of the cat, he confesses how little he truly understands about the cat, how mysterious and enigmatic an animal it is. As Neruda describes it, the cat is singular, and it does not desire to be like any animal other than itself. In this ode, Neruda once again uses repetition to emphasize his point: “But the cat, / only the cat.”36 He often ends lines with the word “cat” or repeats it within a line, which is referred to as epistrophe. Also once again, he varies his line length and intersperses shorter lines into his longer lines, which creates a varied rhythm:
There was something wrong
with the animals:
their tails were too long, and they had
unfortunate heads.
Then they started coming together,
little by little
fitting together to make a landscape,
developing birthmarks, grace, pep.37
The effect is that the shorter lines stick out: “with the animals,” “unfortunate heads,” and “little by little.”38 Some of these line breaks raise the question: Why did Neruda choose to break the lines in these ways? We would ask and discuss this question as a class, keeping in mind that while each poetic decision was an intentional choice, no interpretation of its effect is “wrong.”
For emerging writers, repetition may be the technique that is most accessible and easy to employ. Repetition can take any number of forms: repetition of a single word, a phrase, a syntactical structure. Returning to this word, phrase, or structure alerts the reader of its importance and centrality, but it can also draw attention to subtle differences each time the repetition is done. In “Ode to the cat,” he repeats the word “cat” multiple times, drawing attention to it as the subject of the poem. However, when he writes, “But the cat, / only the cat,” he is drawing attention to the singularity of the animal by repeating the same line and changing “but” to “only.”39 Once again, this is a technique that should be used intentionally and maybe even sparingly, as it can lose its potency when overutilized. While reading this mentor text, students will consider why certain words are repeated. Even in informative text, a word being repeated over and over is usually a clue of its importance or its relation to the central idea and topic. As a model, I will write a poem about an elephant, narrating as I do so that I want this poem to emphasize the elephant’s color. This means that I will be choosing to use repetition of the word “gray” to emphasize how all of an elephant is gray. For example, maybe I would write:
Gray ears,
Gray trunk,
Gray tail.
All of the elephant is
gray.
This example repeats the word gray (as well as uses enjambment in the final two lines) to emphasize the color of the elephant. Additionally, the use of “gray” as both the first and last word of the poem further emphasizes this color– from beginning to end, an elephant is gray. Following that, we would select a different animal as a class and write a poem as a class activity, choosing another feature to emphasize through repetition. In their own ode, written to an animal of their selection, students can choose one or two words they want to consciously repeat in their piece to emphasize them.
Additional Poetry Mentor Texts
While students will study Pablo Neruda’s odes as master works, they will also examine examples of odes written by elementary students in the style of Neruda. This is to show students that brilliance is attainable at any level. The student work shown will be excerpted from Ann Keniston’s work at the Jessie Beck Elementary School in Reno, Nevada as a volunteer poetry teacher that she described in an article for Teachers & Writers Magazine. For example, one, entitled “Ode to a Door” was written by a second-grader and was modeled after Neruda’s “Ode to a Lizard.” In “Ode to a Door,” the student uses the word “burglar” rather than “thief” in a display of relatively sophisticated diction.40 This same student also uses enjambment to emphasize words such as “slam,” which is fitting for a poem about a door.41 Not only are these poems impressive examples of work by young writers, they also are great models of the very strategies students will be studying in this unit.
Finally, although they will not be studied in depth, this unit will feature two brief but famous poems, “The Red Wheelbarrow” and “This is just to say,” both by William Carlos Williams. It can be incredibly intimidating as a young student to look at works written by poets that are immense and complex (think: Eliot’s “The Waste Land” or Whitman’s “Song of Myself”). But these Williams poems are both works of poetry that are revered for their brevity and, arguably, simplicity. Additionally, both poems use no punctuation, which is an ideal example of how authors break and manipulate grammar rules intentionally once they know how to use them correctly.
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