Reading and Literature:
GENERAL STANDARD 14: Poetry
Students will identify, analyze, and apply knowledge of the theme, structure, and elements of poetry and provide evidence from the text to support their understanding. (See also Standard 15.)
From poetry we learn the language of heart and soul, with particular attention paid to rhythm and sound, compression and precision, the power of images, and the appropriate use of figures of speech. And yet it is also the genre that is most playful in its attention to language, where rhyme, pun, and hidden meanings are constant surprises. The identification and analysis of the elements generally associated with poetry—metaphor, simile, personification, and alliteration—have an enormous impact on student reading and writing not only in poetry, but in other genres as well.
Grade Level
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Learning Standards
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PreK–4
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Grades PreK–2
14.1: Identify a regular beat and similarities of sounds in words in responding to rhythm and rhyme in poetry.
For example, students recognize and respond to the rhythm and rhyme in Mother Goose nursery rhymes and in poems by David McCord and John Ciardi.
Grades 3–4
(Continue to address earlier standard as needed and as it applies to more difficult texts.)
14.2: Identify rhyme and rhythm, repetition, similes, and sensory images in poems.
For example, during a study of animals, students read animal poems and songs, such as the following excerpt from “Jellicle Cats,” a poem in T. S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats:
“Jellicle Cats are black and white,
Jellicle Cats are very small;
Jellicle Cats are merry and bright,
And pleasant to hear when they caterwaul.
Jellicle Cats have cheerful faces,
Jellicle Cats have bright black eyes;
They like to practice their airs and graces
And wait for the Jellicle Moon to rise.”
Students write their own animal poems and recite or sing their own lyrics.
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5–8
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Grades 5–6
(Continue to address earlier standards as needed and as they apply to more difficult texts.)
14.3: Respond to and analyze the effects of sound, figurative language, and graphics in order to uncover meaning in poetry:
• sound (alliteration, onomatopoeia, rhyme scheme);
• figurative language (personification, metaphor, simile, hyperbole); and
• graphics (capital letters, line length).
Grades 7–8
(Continue to address earlier standards as needed and as they apply to more difficult texts.)
14.4: Respond to and analyze the effects of sound, form, figurative language, and graphics in order to uncover meaning in poetry:
• sound (alliteration, onomatopoeia, internal rhyme, rhyme scheme);
• figurative language (personification, metaphor, simile, hyperbole);
• graphics (capital letters, line length, word position).
For example, students explore ways in which poets use sound effects (as accompaniment) in humorous poems by authors such as Laura Richards, Lewis Carroll, Ogden Nash, or Shel Silverstein; or (as reinforcement of meaning) in serious poems by such writers as Robert Louis Stevenson, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Marianne Moore, or Alfred Noyes. They incorporate these effects in their own poems.
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9–10
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(Continue to address earlier standards as needed and as they apply to more difficult texts.)
14.5: Identify, respond to, and analyze the effects of sound, form, figurative language, graphics, and dramatic structure of poems:
• sound (alliteration, onomatopoeia, rhyme scheme, consonance, assonance);
• form (ballad, sonnet, heroic couplets);
• figurative language (personification, metaphor, simile, hyperbole, symbolism); and
• dramatic structure.
For example, students respond to, analyze, and compare a variety of poems that exemplify the range of the poet’s dramatic power—such as Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess,”Elizabeth Bishop’s “Fish,” Robert Frost’s “Out, out . . .” (along with Macbeth’s soliloquy in Act V), Amy Lowell’s “Patterns,” and Edwin Markham’s “Man with the Hoe.”
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11–12
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(Continue to address earlier standards as needed and as they apply to more difficult texts.)
14.6: Analyze and evaluate the appropriateness of diction and imagery (controlling images, figurative language, understatement, overstatement, irony, paradox).
For example, students examine poems to explore the relationship between the literal and the figurative in Mark Strand’s “Keeping Things Whole,” Elinor Wylie’s “Sea Lullaby,” Louis MacNeice’s “Prayer Before Birth,” Margaret Walker’s “Lineage,” A.E. Housman’s “To an Athlete Dying Young,” W.H. Auden’s “Unknown Citizen,” Emily Dickinson’s “I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed,” and Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias.” They report their findings to the class, compare observations, and set guidelines for further study.
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Sample Grade 1 Integrated Learning Scenario:
Choral Poetry
Learning Standards Taught and Assessed
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Reading and Literature Strand:
• 14.1: Identify a regular beat and similarities of sounds in words in responding to rhythm and rhyme in poetry.
• 18.1: Rehearse and perform poems for an audience using eye contact, volume, and clear enunciation appropriate to the selection.
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Introduction:
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The teacher has collected short animal poems by Dr. Seuss, Jack Prelutsky, and Langston Hughes that stress alliteration, onomatopoeia, rhythm and rhyme, and/or repetition.
She reads them with the class, pointing out the various techniques used by the poets. (Learning Standard 14.1)
The class chooses one poem and the teacher leads the students through various choral reading exercises (repeating a line in unison after she reads it, pairs of students repeat a line after she reads it, students read the lines in turn), emphasizing clear enunciation and variations in pace and volume. (Learning Standard 18.1)
“The Chipmunk,” by Jack Prelutsky
Chitter-chatter, chitter-chatter
is the chipmunk’s steady patter,
even when he’s eating acorns
(which he hopes will make him fatter).
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Practice / Assessment:
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The teacher organizes groups of three or four students and gives each group copies of one of the animal poems to read, practice, and present aloud.
Students read the poem in unison several times as the teacher moves from group to group. She shows them how clear enunciation and variations in pacing and volume can bring out the poetic techniques and clarify the meaning in their poem. (Learning Standard 14.1, 18.1)
Then students in groups read their poems, each child taking one line in turn practicing clear enunciation, appropriate pacing and volume, and smooth transitions between lines. (Learning Standard 18.1)
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Culminating Performance and Evaluation:
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Groups present their oral readings to the rest of the class.
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