The lesson plan I chose originally focused on "Teaching Poetry through Riddles," but I adapted the lesson plan to focus on the elements poetry offers and how students comprehend and use those elements. For this lesson plan, students are asked to look at two poems
by Edgar Allan Poe. Their objective through this lesson was to obtain a better
understanding for the elements of poetry as they are seen through these works.
The first task will help students to determine a central theme or idea about a
specific text (RL 7.2). The teacher will introduce the author of these two poems
by providing a brief biography through a Powerpoint presentation. This is the most
effective way to present biographical information because students are able to
follow along with the organized information which should include visuals and
possibly even videos embedded into the slide. These visuals would help keep
students engaged with the information. The students would then watch “The
Raven” episode of “The Simpsons,” which is a humorous adaptation on the classic
poem, which will again gain the students’ interest and provide them with a
current cultural relationship to the text. For the episode, the teacher will be
using a DVD Player
because the episode is copyrighted. The students are then asked to reflect on
the video and provide a response to what they think the main idea of the poem
will be prior to reading it. This exercise will serve as a precursor to another
activity they will be doing in class regarding predicting outcomes in poetry. Their
response will be conducted online using Blogger.com where they will have an account
already set up for their unit on poetry. Having their response online allows
the students to see how their predictions about the main idea compared to
everyone else in class. This activity follows NETS-S (2) because they are
participating in an online learning community (Blogger) to gain a better
understanding of the text.
The next task will be for students to determine the meaning
of words and phrases as they are presented in the text (RL 7.4). Students will
be presented with an “Elements of Poetry” handout which provides the students
with definitions for the elements used in the poem. The students will then work
in pairs to read the poem and identify the elements listed within the poem. The
students then, individually, will complete an Online Graphic Organizer (http://www.exploratree.org.uk/) to show their findings
from the poem. The graphic organizer online is helpful to the student to organize
their materials coherently and also allows them to set up their information in
many different models that they can choose from. That way, even though the
students worked in pairs to find the information, they are working creatively
alone to convey that information for assessment. This activity would follow
NETS-S (1, 4) because the students are gathering and providing data using an
online tool with the graphic organizer.
Shifting to the next poem “The Tell-Tale Heart” students will
be asked to cite specific pieces of textual evidence to draw inferences during
a prediction exercise (RL.7.1). This is a follow-up assignment that will engage
students with “The Tell-Tale Heart” by using a collaborative authoring device
to read the text called the ELMO
document camera (NETS-S 2, 3, 4, 5). This is a choice technology to use
instead of students reading from their books, since students must make
predictions for this task, they won’t be able to read ahead. The teacher can
print out the text in pieces according to where the teacher decided he/she
wanted the students to draw inferences from the text regarding what is going to
happen next. To achieve making a prediction, students will need to observe the specific elements within the poem to understand the connections between what Poe is saying and what may actually be happening in the poem to make their prediction accurate. The students’ predictions will serve as an assessment of their
comprehension of the text.
The students will be constructing their own ending to “The
Tell-Tale Heart” to provide a conclusion that reflects the novel. (W.7.3e)The students will be able to brainstorm in groups during the class session about how they would rewrite the ending. There are many possibilities for this assignment and by being in groups, it will help the students begin the creative thought process of concluding their own version of the ending. Students must also provide a bried rationale of how they chose their ending and why they believe it is an exceptional ending. Again, students' understanding of the elements of poetry is essential for developing a cohesive and believable alternate ending. The students will then be asked to post the conclusion they generated from their interpretation of the poem on their blog using Blogger.com. (NETS-S 1 and 2)
After completing all these assignments, students will have a
final assignment that will assess their comprehension of the poem “The
Tell-Tale Heart” (RL.7.10). Students will work creatively with the text to
provide an Acrostic poem or a Cartoon Strip which illustrates how they would
summarize the text in their own words. Students must use atleast one of the elements of poetry provided in the "Elements of Poetry" handout within either their Acrostic Poem or their Comic Strip. For example, students can use the metaphor of the ticking sound and the heart for ironic purposes through a graphic example or they can use a similar example for their Acrostic poem. For this activity, students will have
the option of doing an Acrostic poem online using the Acrostic Poem Tool. (www.readwritethink.org/materials/acrostic) The students will use
either the title or the word “narrator” to give their summary. For the cartoon
strip option, students will be working with the Comic Creator Tool (www.readwritethink.org/materials/comic) which will generate their strip
for them once the information and illustrations are chosen. These creative tools
allow the students to engage and create and illustrate a document which will be
presented to the class (NETS-S 1,6).
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