Lesson 1

Content Knowledge

By the end of the lesson, ESOLs will:

1. Identify the rhyme scheme and meter of a poem.

2. Describe the meaning of figurative language used in the poetry we analyze

3. Describe to peers unique cultural elements found in the three poems we analyze, including the foreign language used in each of these poems.

Language Objectives:

By the end of the lesson, ESOLs will demonstrate increasing proficiency in the performance of the following functions and their forms:

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Functions:

1. Breaking apart words by their syllables to analyze the meter of a poem.

2. Highlighting uses of figurative language and sound devices to identify them.

3. Translating foreign language used in the example poetry in their own language.

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Forms:

1. Students will draw a line (“|”) between syllables of a word when counting the feet found in a line of poetry (“Shall| I| com|pare| thee| to| a| sum|mer’s| day”)

2. Students will use the following colors when highlighting figurative language and sound devices:

   • Yellow: Similes

   • Green: Metaphors

   • Blue: Personification

   • Pink: Alliteration

   • Red/Orange: Assonance

3. As the three poems in today’s unit are in students’ heritage languages, they will share what the poem means in English.

Vocabulary Objectives:

By the end of the lesson, ESOLs will demonstrate an understanding of the following vocabulary words:

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Content

• Simile

• Metaphor

• Personification

• Alliteration

• Assonance

• Foot (poetry)

• Syllable

• Rhyme Scheme

• Stanza

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Academic

• Annotate

• Analyze

• Translate

Description

Special Cross-Cultural Considerations for ESOLs: Although the vast majority of our students (six of the eight students in total) are from the Philippines, it is important that we make some inclusion for all of our English Language Learners. Thus, as we select poetry using the heritage languages of the classroom, it is important that all three languages (Tagalog, Spanish, and Samoan) are represented in some respect.

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Materials: Needed materials for this instruction include the Powerpoint slide deck containing the key terms students need to focus on for poetry analysis; the poems “Ls Vida es Sueño” by Calderón de la Barca and “Blossom” by The Poetic Architect, and the poem “O le Mualeva” found in George Pratt’s (1984) book A Grammar and Dictionary of the Samoan Language, with English and Samoan Vocabulary; five highlighters (one in yellow, green, blue, pink, and orange); an annotation practice packet; and a 3-question quiz that will be used as today’s exit slip.

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Lesson Sequence 

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MOTIVATION: Before the start of class, I will have a bell ringer designed to assess students’ prior knowledge concerning analyzing poetry. These students previously had unit dedicated to poetry last year, so it is pertinent to begin with this to ensure that we have a better impression on the students’ current knowledge and abilities as it pertains to analyzing poetry. The poem, which I will generate, will be written in sonnet form (an ABAB CDCD EFEF GG rhyme scheme in iambic pentameter) and will include some examples of figurative language and sound devices including similes, metaphors, personification, alliteration, and assonance. The goal of the students is to describe the structure of the poetry accurately, as well as to identify at least two sound devices or figurative language featured in the poem. If possible, I will even challenge them to describe the meaning of one of my examples of figurative language in their own words. We will review shortly thereafter.

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PRESENTATION: First, based on how well students do with the bell ringer, I will teach students about several concepts when it comes to analyzing poetry, using the poem we started off with in class as a means to demonstrate what we are talking about. We will begin by describing structural terms related to poetry, including stanzas, rhyme scheme, and meter. Stanzas will be the most straightforward, as I will provide spaces in between stanzas to help students easily delineate when one stanza ends and another begins. As for rhyme scheme, after I have students underline the last word of each line in the poem, I will ask students to write these words down in order in their notebooks. Afterwards, I will have students sound each of these words, delineating the pairs with “A,” “B,” “C,” and so on. Then I will have students read the rhyme schemes aloud, just to make sure students got it. In addition, I will take one of the words at the end of the line out and ask them to fill in another word that fulfills the rhyme scheme, no matter how silly the end product might be. Finally, to have students find the meter, I will ask students to draw a line between each syllable in a line of poetry, demonstrating it with a tanaga (a traditional form of Filipino poetry) as to not spoil the meter. Students will then try finding the number of syllables in each line, which will lead us into identifying the meter. I will also have students pair these syllables into feet, as to help them as they practice analyzing their own poems in their Language Arts classes.

After describing structure, we will then talk about common examples of figurative language and sound devices. I will describe each of them (simile, metaphor, personification, alliteration, and assonance) in our presentation, providing examples not in the poem as to allow them to see how these work rather than giving them the answers from the bell ringer. From there, I will then ask students to read through the poem, keeping an eye for these examples of figurative language and sound devices. Some I imagine will be fairly easy to grasp, as they will likely look for the words “like” or “as” to identify similes and the repetition of beginning letters for alliteration and assonance. Others, like metaphors, I will provide guided questions as to help them identify these. We will then share our findings together as a class.

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PRACTICE/APPLICATION: After our discussion, I will have students practice by reading either the poems “Ls Vida es Sueño” by Calderón de la Barca, “Blossom” by The Poetic Architect, and the poem “O le Mualeva” found in George Pratt’s (1984) book A Grammar and Dictionary of the Samoan Language, with English and Samoan Vocabulary. As these are all written in the students’ heritage languages, this will grant me the opportunity to see how well my students understand poetry analysis by examining poems written in languages they are more familiar with than English. As they read, they will use the activities we talked about in class to determine the rhyme scheme of these poems, the meter, and find any examples of figurative language or sound devices in these poems. Once they finish, they will share their poems to the class.

At the end of the class period, students will have as an exit slip a three-question summative quiz. In this quiz, students will be given a haiku, and they will answer a question dedicated to describing the meter of each line of the poem, the rhyme scheme, and identify the type of figurative language or sound device being used – describing its meaning in their own words.

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EXTENSION: If students are still demonstrating some deficits in their learning from today’s activity, I have a few extension activities in mind. First of all, while I used a sonnet for our example poem, I can use the activities we used to identify the structure of the poems to help students introduce themselves to other poetic forms including limericks and haikus. Likewise, while the figurative language and sound devices we dived into for this activity work primarily well in poetry, these are all regularly used in other forms of literature as well, meaning that if we are diving into a reading that students our working on for their standard ELL course, I can always have students annotate a selection from these readings to identify and describe the meaning of these as they are used in their classwork.