I want this unit to equip my students with strategies, skills and knowledge that they can apply across all content areas. I want my students to read challenging sonnets and be able to discuss them, question their premises, think through the problems they pose, and make inferences about what is happening in them. I also want them to understand why the development of interpretive skill is important for them, and this unit is meant to help them reach that understanding. Keeping the focus on sonnets, I will frontload information about the poem and background information about the poet. We will learn how to look for, identify, and interpret elements of figurative language in the poems we read.

(Developed for Middle School Language Arts, grade 8; recommended for Middle School Language Arts and Special Education [Self-Contained], grades 6-8)