*Reading Strategies

*Types

*Structure

*Sound Effects

*Figurative Language

*Tone

Poetry

Bellringer September 13, 2011

(You do not need to write the questions, just your answers. Be ready to share.) (There are no wrong answers.)

1. How would you define poetry?
2. How is poetry different than other types of writing?
3. Can you give examples of poetry found in ‘the real world’?
4. What makes poetry difficult to read? (If you find it easy to read, why do you think it is easy for you?)

Prose to Poetry

• Prose – everyday, ordinary language. (Any type of writing that is NOT poetry).
• Poetry – condensed language; prose with words left out / words used in a different way / words that paint a picture and communicate an idea.

POSSIBLITIES FOR ANNOTATIONS

***These are only a very few ideas…

• Ask questions
• Show your agreement/disagreement with the ideas (smiley face….whatever works for you)
• Underline parts you feel are important
• Recognize and identify any patterns of imagery
• Look closely at colors
• Highlight any interesting words
• Any poetic devices (similes, metaphors, personification, etc...)

Prose to Poetry Activity

• Get out THREE sheets of paper.
• Write three things you are interested in and/ or like to do. (One per sheet of paper) – examples – basketball, go to the beach, go to the fair, play Xbox, shopping,
• Write a DESCRIPTIVE paragraph using SENSORY DETAILS.
• Omit unnecessary words (like the, and, a, I, etc..)

BellringerAugust 17, 2010(Put these on your same bellringer page. – Make sure to date it!)

• Whenever you have something that you find hard to read, what are some things you can do to help you understand it better? (example: read it more than once, etc…)

Poetry Introduction

• What is poetry?
• What makes poetry different than other kinds of literature?
• Why do people read poetry?
• Why do people write poetry?
• What makes reading poetry difficult?

Strategies for Reading Poetry

• Read it aloud
• Read it more than once
• Don’t stop at the end of each line. Look for punctuation. Pause when you reach a comma or period. (Read in phrases).
• Look for figurative language and images
• Figure out the subject (what is the poem about? Trees? Love? War?)
• Analyze the speaker (What do you know about him/her? Old/young/woman/man? Object?)
• Look for a deeper meaning
• Visualize – picture what is going on in your head

Poetic Language

• Speaker – the voice heard in a poem.
• (may or may not be the same as the author)
• Girl/boy/object?, age?, physical description?, attitude?, what is important to them?, anything you know
• Subject / topic – what a poem is about in one or two words: (trees, love, war, beauty)
• Theme – the comment about the subject that the author is making.
• Ex. War is difficult, trees are solid, love is fleeting, beauty is in the eye of the beholder

Poetic Language

• Style – an author’s unique way of writing; the words they use, the length and type of sentences, how they arrange words.
• Tone – an author’s attitude about the subject he/she is writing about.
• Diction – an author’s word choice
• Connotation – the emotional associations of a word.
• Denotation – the dictionary definition of a word.
• Example: odor and fragrance have the same denotation, but very different connotations (odor – offensive; fragrance – pleasant)

Activity

Write a few sentences for each numbered item.

1. Think of someone who has made you mad. Write a few sentences to that person telling them how angry they have made you.
2. A little child has wandered into the street. Write a few sentences telling what you would say to them to get them out of the street before they get hit.
3. Think of the last thing you did wrong. Write a few sentences sincerely apologizing for your actions.
4. Write a few sentences to someone thanking them for something they did for you.

Poetic Language

• Details - They clarify, illuminate, explain, describe, expand and illustrate the main idea or theme

Types of Poetry

• Lyric poem – expresses the thoughts/feelings/ideas of the speaker. (What we think of as a typical poem).
• Narrative poem – a poem that tells a story. (has characters, a setting, plot, a conflict, etc…)
• Ballad - A narrative poem, often of folk origin and intended to be sung, consisting of simple stanzas and usually having a refrain.

Types of Poems

• Limerick – a five line, usually humorous poem that originated in Ireland. The rhyme scheme is aabba.
• Epic - A long narrative poem, told in a formal, elevated style, that focuses on a serious subject and chronicles heroic deeds and events important to a culture or nation.

Types of Poems

• Sonnet - normally a fourteen-line iambic pentameter poem; usually the subject is love. 
• Italian, or Petrarchian sonnet is rhymed
• abba, abba, cde, cde
• the English, or Shakespearian, sonnet is rhymed abab, cdcd, efef, gg

Types of Poems

• Haiku – A Japanese lyric verse form having three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables, traditionally.
• Dramatic poem- a poem which employs a dramatic form or some element or elements of dramatic techniques as a means of achieving poetic ends.  The dramatic monologue is an example.

Structure and Form

• Structure – refers to the form of a poem (lines, number of stanza, etc…)
• Stanza- a paragraph in poetry
• Refrain – a reoccurring line or group of lines
• Free verse / free form – poetry that has no regular rhyme or rhythm
• Traditional / fixed verse (form) – poetry that has rhythm and rhyme
• Couplet – two consecutive (one right after another) lines that rhyme.

Sound Effects in Poetry

• Rhyme - a piece of verse, or poem, in which there is a regular recurrence of corresponding sounds
• Rhyme scheme – the pattern of rhyming lines in a poem. (Marked by letters).
• Ex. Twinkle Twinkle little star a
• How I wonder what you are. a
• Up above the world so high b
• Like a diamond in the sky b
• Twinkle twinkle little star a
• How I wonder what you are. a
• The rhyme scheme of this stanza is aabbaa

Sound Effects in Poetry

• Alliteration - the repetition of identical or similar consonant sounds, normally at the  beginnings of words.
• Six silly snakes slid through the grass.
• Onomatopoeia – ‘sound words’; words that mean sounds.
• Ex. buzz, swish, boom, bang, crack

Sound Effects in Poetry

• Assonance - the repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds, normally at the  beginnings of words.
• Ex. “Snap back to reality, Oh there goes gravityOh, there goes Rabbit, he chokedHe's so mad, but he won't give up thatEasy, no He won't have it , he knows his whole back's to these ropes. It don't matter, he's dope.”
• Eminem, “Lose Yourself”

• Summer
• I like hot days, hot days
• Sweat is what you got days
• Bugs buzzin from cousin to cousin
• Juices dripping
• Running and ripping
• Catch the one you love days
•  
• Birds peeping
• Old men sleeping
• Lazy days, daisies lay
• Beaming and dreaming
• Of hot days, hot days,
• Sweat is what you got days.
•                                 - Walter Dean Myers

Concrete poem –a poem in the shape of the subject

• Choose an object (preferably one that makes noise – a car, pop rocks, a firework, etc…)
• Write a paragraph (or poem) about the object.
• Go back and revise your paragraph by adding examples of alliteration, assonance, and onomatopoeia.
• Highlight and label the examples.
• Write your ‘final’ in the shape of the subject of your poem. (ex. If the poem is about a snake, it should be in the shape of a snake.) MAKE IT COLORFUL AND ATTRACTIVE. UNDERLINE OR HIGHLIGHT YOUR EXAMPLES.

Sound Devices in Poetry

• Meter – the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a poem
• Rhythm – the ‘beat’ in a poem

Figurative Language in Poetry

• Simile – a comparison of two things using the words ‘like’, ‘as’ or ‘than’.
• She was like an animal.
• She was as crazy as an animal
• She was crazier than an animal.

Figurative Language in Poetry

• Metaphor / direct metaphor – a comparison between two things that DOES NOT use the words “like”, “as” or “than”.
• She was an animal.
• Implied metaphor – comparing two things without outright stating the comparison.
• Ex. “My ideas had wings.”,
• “You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes.”

Figurative Language in Poetry

• Extended metaphor - a comparison that lasts throughout an entire poem.
• Ex.
• “Well, son, I'll tell you:Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.It's had tacks in it,And splinters,And boards torn up,And places with no carpet on the floor—Bare.”
• Life is being compared to a broken down house.

Figurative Language in Poetry

• Personification – giving human

characteristics to something non-human

-Ex. “The wave’s soft hands touched the shore.”

• Hyperbole – extreme exaggeration
• Ex. “A thousand times goodnight.”

Figurative Language in Poetry

• Imagery – words and phrases
• that appeal to the 5 senses.

-Ex.

-Grandma's hugs burn my skin.

-The pitter-patter of the rain

against the window.

-the sun shining brilliantly

-my grandfather smelled of leather and pipe

tobacco.