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Poetry - Central Ideas and Theme: Lesson 4 Friday, October 28th, 2016

Ms. Madison Myers


Knowledge Quest Academy: Language Arts Period 4 and 5 (7th and 8th Grades)

Objective for the unit: How do literary elements add greater meaning to a
text?
Todays Objective: How do I recognize different literary devices in a text or
poem?
Standards:
By the end of today, students will begin to be able to:
Explain how authors use language to influence audience perceptions of events, people, and ideas (CAS: L.8.a.ii)
Determine a central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text, including its relationship to supporting
ideas; provide an objective summary of the text. (CCSS: RI.8.2)

Agenda: (52 minutes)


3 minutes: Come into class, grab binders from shelf and sit quietly in their seats. I will take
attendance and instruct students to begin working on their warmup.
5 minutes: Students will complete journal entry #4. I will walk around and give completion stamps
for their homework.
15 minutes: Mini-lesson on literary devices. Skeleton notes. I will go through different different
literary elements found in poetry and literature, specifically: metaphor, simile, personification and
imagery. Students will fill in skeleton notes throughout the mini-lesson. For simile and metaphor, we
will watch a short video of songs from popular culture. Students will be asked to recognize which
literary device is being used in the song and how they know it is simile or metaphor.
17 minutes: Go through What the Living Do as a group. I will ask students to share with me their
responses from their homework. I will add in notes in blue on the projected screen as modeling for
them. They will be adding notes on their papers with their blue pens. We will briefly discuss steps 15 and also look specifically for the literary devices of the poem, that they found together. This is
completing steps 7 and 8 on the Analyzing a Poem handout.
2 minutes: Homework Calendars. I will go over the homework for tomorrow with students. They will
be reading Funeral Blues and filling out the entire Analyzing poetry handout.
8 minutes: Writing literary device tweets. Students will come up with with tweets that help them
remember the different literary devices in their table groups. Tweets must be 140 characters or less,
and the punnier the better.
2 minutes: I will remind them of our learning target today and for the unit. I will remind them, that
literary devices are used to evoke the senses and create mental pictures in our heads while we are
reading.

Poetry - Central Ideas and Theme: Lesson 4 Friday, October 28th, 2016
FA: As students explain where they see different examples of literary devices, I will be checking to
see their understanding of what we have been doing so far. I will know that students understand tone,
mood and theme if they can identify them throughout the poem that they read for homework. I will
know that students understand the definitions for simile, metaphor, personification and imagery, as
they go back to their poem for homework and begin looking for these devices. Though I do not
expect mastery, I will know that they are beginning to understand based on discussion that occurs as
they try to decide which literary devices are present.
Accommodations/Modifications: For my students on IEPs, they only need to complete one tweet per
category instead of two. They are still receiving the same content, the work load is just less rigorous.
This should help them focus on understanding the content, rather than producing larger amounts of
work.
Notes on Today:
Today was the ultimate teaching moment. I was able to use this poem to have a discussion about
suicide with the students, which I found to be meaningful and purposeful in my job as an educator. A
teacher was out sick, so it was just me in the classroom with the students all dayAshley subbed for
the teacher that was out. I felt like I connected with the students and had a break through with them
about the importance of poetry, as well as being able to show them that I care about them beyond
language arts class. Although suicide is a sensitive subject and I was a bit nervous to talk about it
with middle schoolers, I was able to make my teaching relevant. This poem was the perfect example
to use for imagery and theme, as the theme is not directly stated and the students had to do some
analyzing to come to their own conclusions. I would have also given more clear instructions on the
literary tweet sheet. I have found that, even though I write very clear instructions on the paper, if I do
not go over them aloud at least twice, the students have no idea what to do. This is something that I
need to continue working on.

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