Students will learn how things may look and sound one way in figurative language but mean something else.
They will not just learn how to read the words of a poem, but also to interpret its meaning. Students will be responsible for comprehending poems. I want to find poems that evoke a variety of cultures and time periods and styles, all related to a topic or idea with which my students can make a connection, formulating thoughts about an idea that is new to them. This exercise will also help increase the students' fluency, expression, and the rate at which they read and acquire words.
These poems will serve as mentor texts for the poems they are going to write around a topic we are studying in school, integrating the vocabulary they need to learn into their poem as a means of better understanding that topic. Students will listen to, read, and recite poems. Students will have access to a variety of poems that are appropriate to their individual reading levels so that this exercise will be possible for each of them. Once they know what makes a sonnet, I will give them a chance to explore the rhyme scheme of sonnets, integrating the subjects of reading and math as my students identify and reason about the end patterns in the sonnets they read. As a result of what I have learned I will teach my students what a sonnet is and how poems can be categorized as sonnets. Fry, Professor of English, at the Yale National Initiative. This curriculum unit is being developed while I'm participating in the seminar "Love and Politics in the Sonnet" offered by Paul H. This curriculum unit will allow my students to reference a variety of poems and types of poetry, including the format of sonnets. It is important to foster an enthusiasm in my students for reading and writing in a variety of genres and poetry helps us to understand our lives, our culture, and our history. The verses "In fourteen hundred ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue" is needed to help me remember what year Columbus came to America. For instance, the rhyme "30 days Hath September, April, June, and November" is quickly recalled anytime I'm trying to figure out how many days there are in a given month. This will allow the students to realize that poetry is not just about writing, it's also about understanding, and can be used at one and the same time to reinforce what they know and help them learn more. I believe they can tie the vocabulary of second grade science, social studies, or language arts into their poems to give them purpose and meaning in the context of another discipline they are studying. Only then will I have students write their sonnets in response to something they are learning in a different content area. I currently use poems or songs to introduce different themes and topics that my students study and learn in second grade but beyond this mediatory function I will also make poetry a curricular topic: I will create a space in my curriculum for my students to learn about the format of poetry, how to read it and how to write it. This unit will make poetry connect with everything in my curriculum, but that in itself is not new for me. Wouldn't it be great to share this same joy with our children? Don't our students deserve to know the great poetry that has been part of our educational history-and even poems that have not? Poetry can have a significant connection to their lives, situations, or the subjects they are studying. 2 While you sit there and read this now, is your head spinning with other poems that you can quickly recall or recite? What is your favorite? What images or events in your life immediately conjure up a poem that you heard, read, or learned, knowing that that poem puts a smile in your heart? Even poems that address subjects or events that are disturbing still please us for having encountered them and read them to learn something new. Seuss and The Cat in the Hat? Do you know Peggy Ann McKay who "cannot go to school today"? She is the main character in Shel Silverstein's poem, " Sick." 1 Have you needed to make a decision in your life and "taken the road less traveled by and made all the difference," as modeled by Robert Frost in his poem " The Road Not Taken"?.
Dooley Introduction and ObjectivesĪre you friends with Dr.