Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Performing Poetry: Managing Tone, Pitch, Volume And Rate, Erin Micklo

Understanding Poetry

This lesson teaches students the importance of varying the tone, pitch, rate and volume of their voices when performing a poem. Emphasizing different words and varying the delivery will alter the meaning of the poem that the students are reading. This is in preparation for the Poet Laureate presentations, when they will read aloud their poet’s poem, reflecting their group’s interpretation of the poem.

A Poet’S Cento: Reflecting On The Written Word Through Writing, Nicole Trackman

Understanding Poetry

Students will create their own cento using lines from poetry discussed in class during a poetry unit. In a short analysis, students reflect on the lines of poetry that they chose to include as well as their process as a poet. This lesson allows the students to become even more familiar with their previously studied work while working through the writing process as an author. The short reflective analysis prompts students to be metacognative about their process and product. This lesson is best used at the end of a poetry unit.

The "Purposes" Of Poetry, Tracy A. Townsend

Understanding Poetry

This classroom discussion-oriented lesson, which takes between sixty to seventy minutes, exposes students to two very different poetic styles and voices (William Carlos Williams and T.S. Eliot) and challenges them to think about their own relationship to poetry. This is a useful lesson to work into the beginning of a longer unit on poetry, and can be used as a preparatory discussion for unveiling the Laureate Project assessment to your students (also available on the Digital Commons). This lesson is suitable for grades 9-12.

Name That Invention: Examining Connotation And Sound, Dan Gleason

Understanding Poetry

This exercise engages students with questions of diction, connotation, and sound patterns. Students discuss the field of product branding, and learn how much certain product names (e.g., Blackberry, Pentium, Swiffer) were considered in light their denotative, connotative, and aural elements. Then, in groups, students devise product names for four imagined products; afterward, as a class they debate the virtues of each name rate and choose a winner for each product. Such close attention to meanings, buried implications, and sound cues encourages students to adopt a very poetic form of word analysis, a skill that transfers nicely to more literary areas.

Determining The Tone In A Poem, Erin Micklo

Understanding Poetry

This lesson instructs students how to do a close reading of a poem, using clues within the poem to determine the tone of the poem.

Manipulating Tone, Margaret T. Cain

Understanding Poetry

Tone, of the emotional weight of a poem, is difficult for many high schools students to apprehend, in part because they've had little practice, and in part because they have a limited affective vocabulary. One way to work successfully with tone is to ask students to create it for themselves by modeling--but in opposition--the work of a poet, in this case, Edgar Lee Masters.

America In Verse: The Laureate Project, Leah Kind, Dan Gleason, Erin Micklo, Margaret T. Cain

Understanding Poetry

The purpose of this project is to allow students to use their (developing) skills of poetic explication and close reading, combined with research and analysis, to discover and establish a solid case for a poet they will nominate as the next American Poet Laureate. Working in groups of 3-4, students will identify a published, living American poet who has not yet been designated a laureate. The project demands a wide array of skills as the students research bibliographic information on the poet: read and analyze the poet’s body of work and select one central poem to represent that poet; amass …

Chaucerian Self-Portrait, Margaret T. Cain

Understanding Poetry

There is no better way to understand how an author uses language than to attempt to use language in the same way. This activity challenges students to observe in Chaucer's descriptions of his Pilgrims the wealth and significance of detail and to create a portrait of themslves that is similarly rich in evoking personality.

Angel Island Poetry: Reading And Writing Cultures, Adam Kotlarczyk

Understanding Poetry

Object of a darker chapter in American history, the Angel Island Poems (as they have become known) are a recently discovered body of over 135 poems, written primarily in Chinese. These were literally carved into the walls at the Angel Island Immigration Station, where Chinese immigrants were detained, sometimes indefinitely, between approximately 1910-1940.

This lesson demonstrates how history and culture can be integral to our understanding of poetry, even poetry that is deeply reflective and personal in nature; by requiring students to model and produce their own poetry, it also makes evident that writing poetry is a creative instinct and …

Triggering Subjects V. Actual Subjects, Tracy A. Townsend

Understanding Poetry

This classroom discussion-oriented lesson, which takes between sixty to seventy minutes, involves close-reading of texts, use of evidence to convey an interpretation, and discussion of authorial purposes and techniques. Students use poet Richard Hugo’s theory of poetry having both a “triggering subject” and an “actual subject” to analyze and respond to example poems selected by the teacher. The end goal is to engage in a discussion of how poets use observation and experience to take sometimes everyday moments and convert them into thoughtful, surprising, and moving commentaries. This lesson is well-suited to preparing students to read poetry more effectively and …

Imitism: Learning Imagism Through Imitation, Nicole Trackman

Understanding Poetry

Students will learn the components of Imagism through works of William Carlos Williams and D.H. Lawrence. As authors, students will demonstrate their understanding of this poetic movement through an imitation of either Williams’ poem “This is just to Say” or Lawrence’s poem “Green”.

Millie Dies In Style: Crafting Poems In Four Poetic Styles, Dan Gleason

Understanding Poetry

This exercise helps students learn about poetic style by challenging them to write poetry in different styles. To make stylistic differences most obvious, students write about the same topic in four different ways (casual, formal, depressing, whimsical). Students write poems of 4-10 lines in groups, and then they share their writings with each other. Nearly any topic may be chosen, but the topic should be a bit unusual; I like to use the tragic tale of Millie, a fictional family dog that dies suddenly by falling down an open well, to generate interest. The exercise is a fun activity that …

A Poem And Its Painting, Jenny Lee '13

2012 Spring Semester

Charles Bukowksi, one of the most controversial poets of the 20^th century, loved very few things- alcohol, sex, his typewriter, and classical music. His poetry is considered down-to-earth and easily relatable, but it is still able to maintain a high level of artistic and literary merit. His skill as an artist becomes clear when his poem “Dostoevsky” is juxtaposed with Caravaggio’s famous painting, “The Sacrifice of Isaac.” This painting depicts an angel stopping Abraham from sacrificing his son, Isaac. Although these pieces come from different artistic media, painting versus the written word, their shocking similarities are a testament to …