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113 Lesson Ideas on Craft and Structure Strand 2.4

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113 Lesson Ideas on Craft and Structure Strand 2.4

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This site allows you to look by strand. I looked in 11-12 grade under 2.4 craft and structure and many good one popped up--just have to sort through

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RL.11-12.4 | English / Language Arts | BetterLesson

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RL.11-12.4: Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in the text, including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone, including words with multiple meanings or language that is particularly fresh, engaging, or beautiful. (Include Shakespeare as well as other authors.)

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This looks like it would be fun, integrating nursery rhymes and songs to teach the rhythm

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I wonder if you could model the strategies with these simpler, more approachable poems and then ask the students to apply the skills to the Jennings poetry? Then you could use existing lessons that are out there so you're not making up 100% of it on your own.

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Teaching Poetry Meter in High School English: Identifying Meter in Poetry by Doing the Scansion of Poems

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These poems for teaching poetry meter will impress your students, your colleagues, your principal, and your spouse. Teach students the skill of identifying meter in poetry with the Scansion of Poems.

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from AP Central

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Connecting with the Voice

Poetry engages the body, emotions, and spirit, as well as the intellect, and listening to a poem provides a more primal understanding of poetry than what may ordinarily be taught in the classroom. Instead of reaching first for analysis, abstraction, and explanation, I try to connect students to poetry as it has always been experienced-as a voice that calls forth joy or sorrow, a rhythmical series of sounds that affect us as profoundly as music.

When I introduce poetry-often to students who have had little or no exposure to the genre-I move very quickly to reading poetry. I often begin with Frost's "Design," and after the students hear it, I ask what it's about-or as Maxine Kumin asks, for the "plot" of the poem. Then I advise students to listen for sounds, and I read it again. They count lines and we sketch rhyme schemes on the board, a first for many students.

In this way students begin to develop a notion of what a sonnet is, not as they might ordinarily do in a literature class, where the teacher explains the technical requirements and moves from there to an analysis of content, but by uncovering layers of sound, counting lines, and listening yet again for rhythm. I don't want my students to write a sonnet as a first exercise in poetry. But we start with this poem because I want them to understand a little of what's possible within the tradition.

Learning to "Feel" Poetry

Then we move to Sharon Olds's "Alcatraz," a free verse, heavily enjambed poem in which the speaker remembers when her parents threatened to send her to Alcatraz. When I ask students what they feel as they hear the poem, one student responds that she feels tension, which is precisely the answer I might have hoped for. The students experience the effect of enjambment before they hear any explanation; they understand it not as a concept but as a rhythm that affects their response, contracting their muscles, gradually feeling the constricted environment the poem suggests.

Sometimes when students begin to bring their own work to class, I am pleasantly surprised by the results. More often, I have to remind them that poetry isn't just a good idea: it's not just an explanation of falling in love, wishing that the dead could still be with us, or talking about the beauty of a mountain. In the process of discussing how they could enliven their work, we return to the poetry of masterful poets. Again, we read aloud or, if I have access to good recordings such as those in Poetry Speaks (Naperville, Ill.: Sourcebooks MediaFusion, 2001), we listen to poets read their own work.

Although it's important to discuss elements of craft in the classroom-line breaks, alliteration, or imagery-I sometimes wonder how much one can actually teach about writing poetry. I am certain, however, that assigned exercises provide students with some experience in the difficult and mysterious process of writing. Nothing we do in the classroom is finished; and I remind students that if they really want to write, they must devote years to experimentation and study before their work will become what it needs to become.

Poetry

This is my tired poem when the ash
leaves turn and willows by the river
sift theirs to the ground; this is my
turning in poem, my singing poem
about the dog curled into old blankets
and cats rattling dishes in the sink.
This is for sleep, for you who have
begun to sink into the deep water
of dreams where I am swimming
to meet you in tall weeds and we
wait for the next big fish. This is my
swimming poem when we rise
to its belly, hold to its spiked fins and
follow it into the open waters of this lake.

the living." The room begins to feel warm.
"Don't worry, my dear," says George Eliot.
"Remember the squirrel's heartbeat?"
What am I doing? she asks herself. Believe,
fine, but why announce? "Yes, I see your point,"
she says to the man, whom Van Gogh

and Joyce joins Roethke mid-aisle where
they mime Book I of Paradise Lost, lolling
about the floor like devils. Milton
scowls from the rafters, though he, too,
agrees about realism and says so
to Dizzy Gillespie who blows his trumpet

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Calling Forth Joy: A Poet's Ideas About Teaching Poetry

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Poetry engages the body, emotions, and spirit, as well as the intellect, and listening to a poem provides a more primal understanding of poetry than what may ordinarily be taught in the classroom.