Creating Characters in Poetry:
A Study of Two Poets - Grade 7
The work in this unit grows from the following ideas: that poems are things people make; that people make poems to think about ideas and issues; and that poems themselves can be usefully understood as enactments of this thinking—language events in which a poet works on an idea, makes an argument, and creates a world or a character. According to this view, poems are not merely elegant, clever, or civilizing outpourings of language; they are not rhyming exhibitions or little texts from which to extract the “real meaning” in two sentences or less. They are things that people make to think and to think with.
Table of Contents
Text Audio
Writing Tasks
Title: Argument Writing About “Thieves of Light”
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 6-7
Title: Writing Like Martín Espada
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 10
Students should use this time to begin work on the “Writing Like Martín Espada” assignment. Specifically, they should work in pairs to do the initial review of the poem.
Encourage students to confer with you after they have completed the review work. After that, they’ll be ready to write.
Use this time to confer with students about their work.
Title: Argument Writing About “Offerings to an Ulcerated God”
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 16
Discuss the interpretive question in small groups, working together to help each other refine the responses and identify examples to support the claims.
Use this time to confer with groups about this work.
Suggested Student Materials: Interpretive/Argument Checklist
Title: Argument Writing About “Hills Brothers Coffee”
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 24
Suggested Student Materials: Interpretive/Argument Checklist
Title: Writing Like Luci Tapahonso
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 28
Students should use this time to begin work on the “Writing Like Luci Tapahonso” assignment. Specifically, they should work in pairs to do the initial review of “Raisin Eyes.”
Encourage students to confer with you after they have completed the review work. After that, they’ll be ready to write.
Use this time to confer with students about their work.
Title: Studying Character in Poetry A Retrospective Task
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 34 – 36
Charts for Discussion
Title: Similes and Metaphors
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 3
Place students in pairs or trios. Ask students to copy the listed examples of similes and metaphors in their notebooks (ideally on two facing pages).
Give the groups a few minutes to study and discuss the examples and, after studying the two sets of examples, to work out definitions of “simile” and “metaphor” based on their study. Use the following questions to help direct the work:
How are similes and metaphors similar?
How are similes and metaphors different?
Afterwards, call on members from each group to share their definitions and explanations with the class. Use this time to negotiate as a group a class definition of each term. Jot the final definitions on the appropriate example charts.
Title: “Four Sandwiches” Comparison
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 11
Display a copy of “Writing Like Martín Espada.” Remind the class that any “write like” task provides students with an opportunity to emulate the poets they have studied. This work, in turn, gives them a kind of “insider’s” view of the work poets do in poetry.
Tell students that during the next session they will have a chance to share their poems and to explain how their poem is, in important ways, like “Four Sandwiches.”
Using drafts and notes of your own poem modeled on “Four Sandwiches,” take a few minutes to walk students through your own work with this task.
Afterwards, answer any questions students have about your work.
Wrap up the focus lesson by working with the class to isolate and chart moments in your poem that are like “Four Sandwiches.” Be sure to jot down on the chart lines or phrases from both your own poem and from “Four Sandwiches” to make the comparisons clear. (You will need this chart again in Session 12.)
Checks for Understanding
Title: What Happens in Thieves of Light?
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 1
- Reconvene the class and ask groups to report out on their work. Write the following question on the board and use it to drive the whole-class conversation:
- What happens in this poem? Compose a stanza-by-stanza retelling that captures what is happening in the poem.
- What happens in this poem? Compose a stanza-by-stanza retelling that captures what is happening in the poem.
In addition to facilitating this conversation, work to capture student responses to the question on a chart or another display.
Title: Characters in ‘Thieves of Light
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 5
Closing Meeting
Reconvene the class and invite students from each group to share the results of their study.
Capture the information students share on a class chart titled “Characters in ‘Thieves of Light.’” To do this, move one-by-one through the characters on the master list. Have students share their entries for each character. Discuss each offering as a class, refining if necessary. When an entry meets the group’s approval, enter it onto the class chart.
Title: Characters in “Four Sandwiches”
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 9
Reconvene the class and invite students from each group to share the results of their study.
Capture the information students share on a class chart titled “Characters in ‘Four Sandwiches.’” To do this, move one-by-one through the characters on the master list. Have students share their entries for each character. Discuss each offering as a class, refining if necessary. When an entry meets the group’s approval, enter it onto the class chart.
Title: Characters in “Offerings to an Ulcerated God”
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 13
Reconvene the class and invite students from each group to share the results of their study.
Capture the information students share on a class chart titled “Offerings to an Ulcerated God.’” To do this, move one-by-one through the characters on the master list. Have students share their entries for each character. Discuss each offering as a class, refining if necessary. When an entry meets the group’s approval, enter it onto the class chart.
Title: The Most Significant Line in “Offerings to an Ulcerated God”
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 14
- In addition to facilitating this conversation, work hard to capture and distill the major claims students seem to be making. Jot these claims on the board or a chart and push students to help you build text-based explanations to support them. This will ensure that students get a glimpse of what it looks like when someone builds an interpretation. This chart will be an important element of the next session’s work.
Title: Tapahonso’s Line Breaks
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 21
Wrap up the session by discussing the following questions with the whole class:
How does each kind of line break affect them as readers?
How does each kind of line break affect the poem? (Note: Of the two questions, this one is the most challenging. People regularly ask how writing moves affect a reader, but to ask how a move affects the poem is harder and requires students to talk about poems as written things shaped by the various ways of writing or devices working in them.)
Record the class’ thinking on the board. When the discussion is over, work with the class to add a distillation of the group’s thinking about each kind of line break to the “Tapahonso’s Line Breaks” chart.
Planning Notes
Title: Tapahonso’s Use of Dialogue and Description
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 22
After the class has worked through both poems, ask students to help you work out an answer to the following question:
What can we say about the way Tapahonso mixes dialogue and description in her poems?
Capture the results of this discussion on a chart titled “Tapahonso’s Use of Dialogue and Description.”
Wrap up the session by discussing the following questions with the class:
How does Tapahonso’s use of dialogue and description affect them as readers?
How does Tapahonso’s use of dialogue and description affect the poem? (Note: Of the two questions, this one is the most challenging. People regularly ask how writing moves affect a reader, but to ask how a move affects the poem is harder and requires students to talk about poems as written things shaped by the various ways of writing or devices working in them.)
Record the class’ thinking on the board. When the discussion is over, work with the class to add a distillation of the group’s thinking about each question to the “Tapahonso’s Use of Dialogue and Description” chart.
Title: Characters in “Hills Brothers Coffee”
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 13
Reconvene the class and invite students from each group to share the results of their study.
Capture the information students share on a class chart titled “Hills Brothers Coffee.’” To do this, move one-by-one through the characters on the master list. Have students share their entries for each character. Discuss each offering as a class, refining if necessary. When an entry meets the group’s approval, enter it onto the class chart.
Title: Characters in “Raisin Eyes”
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 13
Reconvene the class and invite students from each group to share the results of their study.
Capture the information students share on a class chart titled “Characters in ‘Raisin Eyes.’” To do this, move one-by-one through the characters on the master list. Have students share their entries for each character. Discuss each offering as a class, refining if necessary. When an entry meets the group’s approval, enter it onto the class chart.
Title: Characters in “All I Want”
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 13
Reconvene the class and invite students from each group to share the results of their study.
Capture the information students share on a class chart titled “Characters in ‘All I Want.’” To do this, move one-by-one through the characters on the master list. Have students share their entries for each character. Discuss each offering as a class, refining if necessary. When an entry meets the group’s approval, enter it onto the class chart.
Title: What is Tapahonso Telling Us in “All I Want”?
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 32
- In addition to facilitating this conversation, work hard to capture and distill the major claims students seem to be making. Jot these claims on the board or a chart and push students to help you build text-based explanations to support them. This will ensure that students get a glimpse of what it looks like when someone builds an interpretation. This chart will be an important element of the next session’s work.
Independent Reading
Title: Reading Log
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Independent Reading
As you transition to independent reading, discuss how students can keep a reading log. Show students how you would like them to set up and use their reading log to record their independent reading this year. An example of one way a reading log could be set up is provided nearby. You may choose to have students create a table in their notebooks, use a pre-made sheet, or a digital format.
Explain to students that they should make an entry in their log only after they have finished a book. You will need to negotiate with students how to handle the entry of magazine readings (for example, entire issues versus individual articles).
After students have set up the log, including proper headings, creating the grid, etc., show students how to make an entry.
Answer any questions students have about the reading log.
Begin independent reading.
Consider conducting individual reading conferences with students as they are engaged in independent reading. In No More Independent Reading Without Support, Debbie Miller and Barbara Moss (2013) suggest that during early conferences, you should listen to students and work to build trust: Ask students how they view reading and how they think of themselves as readers; ask what they are interested in. Over time you can ask more about what they are reading and about how you can help them or what they are struggling with. Use what you learn from these conversations to guide additional instruction with groups or with the class.
Title: Independent Reading – Individual Planning Sheet
Instructions:
Title: End of Marking Period Self-Assessment
Instructions:
Unit Resources
Title: Writing About “Offerings to an Ulcerated God”
Title: Studying Character in Poetry: A Retrospective Task
Title: Scaffolds and Modifications: Descriptions and Use