Poetry has become a regular part of our high school literature course this year by picking one poet to focus on for six weeks at a time. (See how we started HERE.) As part of my refining of our poetry study, I started giving Mr. A specific assignments to go along with each week. These are simple nuts and bolts assignments that get him to think a little more about the poems he is reading. We used the two books listed at the bottom of the blog entry as the foundation of our study. (If you read in a reader you will more than likely need to click over to the blog to see them.) You can read more about our poetry work if you click the "poetry for high schoolers" tag at the bottom of this post.
Carl Sandburg
Week 1:
Read one of the Carl Sandburg poetry books to get a feel for his poetry.
Focus this week on the poem, Fog. Look for and be ready to discuss the personification and metaphor in this poem.
Week 2:
Read Chicago. (http://poetry-archive.com/s/chicago.html)
Rewrite the first five lines of this poem about the Sierra at Tahoe Ski Resort using Sandburg's style. (You can pick a place that your child is familiar with...a city, an event, etc)
Week 3:
Read Bones. Pick two questions from your poetry analysis page to answer for this poem.
Week 4:
Read Jazz. Look for onomatopoeia words and list them. Write a five line poem about Kona (our dog) that usees at least three onomatopoeia words.
Week 5:
Pick one poem from you book and print it out. Highlight strong words in the poem and then go back with your thesaurus, replace the words with synonyms. Compare the two versions and see if it changes the tone of the poem. (I like Skyscraper or October Paint.)
Week 6:
Complete an author biography notebook page for Carl Sandburg. Pick a poem and practice reading it ten time before Friday. Be ready to read it to the family with expression.
Our Poetry Schedule:
Weeks 1-6 Edna St. Vincent Millay
Weeks 7-12 Robert Browning
Weeks 13-18 Robert Frost
Weeks 19-24 Carl Sandburg
Weeks 25-27 W.B. Yeats
Weeks 28-30 E.E. Cummings
Weeks 31-36 Langston Hughes
If you have younger children, you may be interested in the following free poetry units:
2 comments:
I must not have been paying enough attention lately. Don't know how I missed the other posts that go along with this but oh so glad I did catch this one. Thanks for sharing these :)
I've never been one to dig into poetry (public school is only partially to blame) but it is something that I do not want my kids to miss as I did so am learning along with them.
Thanks again. :)
Again, love how you outline your poetry studies for high schoolers! You make it easy for us. Thanks.
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