Rationale+lite

This unit on poetry will equip students with essential skills to improve their understanding of literature as it relates to reading and writing. During this poetry unit, students will engage in close reading activities during which they will analyze poems, a genre that consists of texts that are concise and carefully constructed, rich and calculated. The experience provided to students in this type of analysis and close reading as they break down the language of poetry will increase their skills when looking at and working with other texts regardless of genre. Along the lines of transferrable skills, poetry contains a high prevalence of the elements of literature. In reading, writing, and analyzing poetry, students will develop their skills in identifying and using literary devices such as symbols, metaphors, allusions, and imagery. In working with the specific elements of poetry in identification and use, students will also be increasing their awareness and understanding of the use and identification of form and structure for the purposes of work with poems and other genres. In this unit, the big idea, the main overreaching, overarching theme is not just poetry, but rather, form and function within poetry. We will seek to teach the students why form and function serve to further enhance the meaning of a poem, and how it differs from prose as both a literary device and a genre. We have sequenced our unit of study so that the students will be learning different forms of poems in the context of different themes; thus, for each segment of the unit, they will encounter two new, refreshing changes of pace, instead of studying one form or one theme. We have sequenced this study around what theme we feel will segue best into another mini-unit. We scaffold our students' learning through the flow of poetic forms; each section of the unit builds on a previous part; each poetic form becoming more difficult with more parameters. We will begin to facilitate student learning by immediately having them do activities. We have started with an introduction, where students will receive an overview of haikus, free verse poetry, and sonnets. There is an anticipation guide to gauge students’ reactions to the unit and address some of their preconceptions; this will help them frame their own experiences and expectations of the unit, and hopefully pique interest. The next unit is studying haikus, arguably one of the easiest forms of poetry. We have paired haikus with a nature theme. The students will learn the components of a haiku, and practice writing them all within the context of nature. Next, the students will look at the form and function of sonnets within the appropriate theme of love. Sonnets are the seem to be a very challenging form of poetry but are so formulaic that they are often easier to understand than the next unit on free verse poetry. The ending mini-unit will be presented in the context of war poetry. They will address issues of how form relates to function and how the author’s purpose plays a major part in the information presented within the poem. They will also look through a historical lens at the war poetry studied and research war songs on the internet to wrap-up the unit. Learning expectations relate to grade-level expectations through the inclusion of various Sunshine State Standards. Throughout the unit, we specifically included a number of activities and lessons that would reflect these standards. Much of our focus will be on both reading and writing poetry. Some of the standards addressed include: o LA.910.1.7.2 The student will analyze the authors purpose and/or perspective in a variety of text and understand how they affect meaning: Author’s purpose is especially relevant to poetry study, as frequently the purpose is not entirely transparent to the reader. o LA.910.2.1.3 The student will explain how meaning is enhanced through various features of poetry, including sound (e.g., rhythm, repetition, alliteration, consonance, assonance), structure (e.g., meter, rhyme scheme), and graphic elements (e.g., line length, punctuation, word position): Poems utilize metaphors and other literary devices deliberately so that the meaning is not always evident, even after a close reading. The haiku and sonnet mini-units will examine structure and form, including rhyme schemes, meter, rhythm, and other graphic elements. There are many more standards covered throughout our unit, but these are among the most relevant. We have also included some media literacy standards, as students will be working on computers and learning to navigate the internet to do research. We hope to show how important the study of poetry is with our unit in the fact that it highlights many of the techniques needed for the effective teaching of reading and writing.
 * Introduction **
 * Topic: ** Poetry
 * Subject: ** Language Arts
 * Grade Level: ** 10th Grade
 * Rationale: **