“Isla”

Unit 3 Lesson 11

“Isla”

Standards & Objectives

• 5.RL.KID.1 Quote accurately from a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.
• 5.RL.KID.3 Compare and contrast two or more characters, settings, or events in a story or drama, drawing on specific details in a text.

Use textual evidence to compare and contrast characters’s reactions in a poem.

Read to determine how figurative language and literary devices enhance a poem.

What skills or traits does someone need to write poetry?

Virgil Suárez was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1962. His family moved several times, and when he was an adolescent, they immigrated to the United States. In his new home Suárez sought to find acceptance by learning to share his voice. He was influenced by the music, culture, and stories of his friends and family. As a professor today, Suárez teaches his students “to listen to the voices in their lives, the present, the past, whatever speaks to them,” as a source of inspiration in their writing.

As both a poet and a novelist, Suárez focuses on the experience of migrant peoples seeking to find a home in a new culture. His works Latin Jazz, Garabato Poems, Spared Angola: Memories of Cuban-American Childhood, and many others highlight the themes of identity, culture, and language. Virgil Suárez continues to write novels and poetry and lives in Florida.

Challenging Words

Discussion and Comprehension

1. Where is the speaker?
2. What does the poem tell us about the speaker’s home country?
3. What television shows and movies does the speaker like to watch?
4. According to the poem, why does the speaker feel isolated in his new country?
5. What does the speaker of the poem do to express his emotions?

Woken up after centuries of sleep

Rejected, cursed

Destroyed buildings,

cars, people; growled,

bellowed, whipped

its tail

Moved to a

new country

Unwanted, exiled,

rejected, cursed

Screamed, threw

a pillow

Both Godzilla and the speaker are unlike the creatures around them. They both are unwanted.

Because he does not fit in, the speaker feels like a monster rather than like a boy.

She storms into the room and asks why he throws things at the walls.

She calls their home country the monster.

The mother blames the home country for their current isolation and for the problems in their lives.

The boy blames himself. The mother blames their origins.

Check for Understanding: Thumbs-Up, Thumbs-Down

1. The characters in the poem see things similarly.
2. The character feels isolated, which means he feels surrounded by people.
3. The speaker does not feel like he “fits in”, which is why he compares himself to Godzilla.

Standards & Objectives

• 5.W.TTP.3 Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using an effective technique, such as descriptive details and clear event sequences.

c. Use narrative techniques, such as dialogue, pacing, and description to develop experiences and events or show the responses of characters to situations.

• 5.W.RBPK.9 Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research, applying grade 5 standards for reading.

Compose an original poem in which two characters respond differently to the same circumstance.

Compose a poem that shows how two different characters feel about the same thing.

Write your poem

1. Name the situation or object your characters will react to in the poem.
2. Name the two characters who will be reacting.
3. Describe character 1’s reaction.
4. What details about character 1 help shape his or her reaction?
5. What details about character 2 help shape his or her reaction?

REFLECTION

EXIT SLIP

Think about the differences between the speaker’s point of view and the mother’s perspective. How might this poem change if it were told from the mother’s perspective? In what ways might it stay the same?