Poetry
Lesson One:
Lesson Two:
Lesson Three:
Lesson Four:
Lesson Five:
- Top five places you wouldn't expect to find poetry
- Similes and metaphors in movies
- Poetry matching terms: your sheet has the terms and examples, around the room are the examples and memory aids. Match them up properly and record.
Lesson Two:
- Imagery: I will give you a small piece of food and you will use your five senses to describe it. Extra points if you can keep your eyes closed till the end.
- Watch a video about a shark.
- Then we will practice picking out imagery from a poem about sharks.
Lesson Three:
- Irony: explain the three types of irony
- verbal: say something and mean the opposite (show Monty Python)
- situational: opposite of what you expect to happen, happens (show ironic pictures and sayings)
- dramatic: (horror movie irony)audience or characters know something that one character does not (show The Shining, where Halloran is killed)
- Listen to the song Ironic. Original version. "New" Version.
- Read the lyrics to the song "Richard Cory." Go through it together to understand a poem youve never seen before - good strategies for exam. Pick out the irony within the song.
- Now listen to the song.
- Answer the question at the bottom of the handout.
Lesson Four:
- Metaphors and Personification: Introduce Metaphor and personification. Show personification video and simile/metaphor video: and show bad metaphors
- In pairs, come up with own bad metaphor, share and vote on the best
- Brainstorm on dreams (A/b partners, then share with the class). Play the song "American Oxygen" by Rihanna, what is the message of that song?
- “American Oxygen” describes the loss of oxygen due to Eric Garner's strangulation as he begs for his life. The song is also based on her own experience as a Barbadian immigrant “chasing” the American Dream. As a music icon she is aware of the many issues of discrimination.
- “American Oxygen” describes the loss of oxygen due to Eric Garner's strangulation as he begs for his life. The song is also based on her own experience as a Barbadian immigrant “chasing” the American Dream. As a music icon she is aware of the many issues of discrimination.
- Play Boulevard of Broken Dreams and do questions that follow
Lesson Five:
- Explain that on the exam they will be responsible for writing a paragraph on the theme of a poem and that is what we will be learning today.
- Remind them how to find theme (major character development, title, lines that are emphasized, ending, major image or symbol).
- Hand out the following fill in the blank notes and complete together on the board
- A Good theme paragraph contains the following:
a) In your topic sentence, include the author and title, a theme statement and briefly how you are going to argue it
b) Use at lease three specific examples that prove your argument, consider how lines in the poem reflect the theme, how imagery reflects the theme, word choice, style, poem format, content and the title if you are feeling brave consider how poetic terms reflect the theme (ie metaphor, simile, personification, symbolism etc.),
c) Thoroughly explain why each SPECIFIC example proves your topic sentence
d) Have a strong insightful conclusion (For example, how this theme connects to your life, but without saying I, we, or you, or a strong final thought)
- A Good theme paragraph contains the following:
- Watch the video to Beautiful Day by U2
- Have students underline poetic devices on their paper copy of the lyrics
- Analyze together on the board
- Your Turn: find a song with poetic lyrics. Print them off and start analyzing the lyrics. Identify all the poetic devices. Explain the theme with support in a paragraph. Remember that this doesn't need to be a favourite song of yours but the focus is to pick one that contains many of these poetic devices and has a message to it. It doesn't need to be a long song however, if you pick a short one it may not contain many examples.