Mrs. Bolen
8th Grade Reading
Name:_____________________
Period:_______ Date:_______
Main Idea and Poetry Study Guide
Vocabulary
Main Idea and Supporting Details
Genre of Poetry
Poetry
Main idea: is what the paragraph is mostly telling you about. The main idea is the big picture in
a passage. The main idea is the message the author is telling you and they give smaller details
to support that main idea.
Practice:
When sailors long ago glimpsed a smooth body, round head, and fluked tail parting the surface
of the sea, they believed they had just sighted a mermaid. Biologists now know that what these
sailors had seen was no mermaid; it was the dugong, a sea mammal related to a manatee. The
dugong is bulky, its skin thick and tough, and it has 2 front flippers that are used for steering and
a fluked tail for propulsion. It can grow as long as 11 feet and weigh up to 800 lbs- as much as
a cow! Indeed, dugongs are also called “sea cows” because they graze on beds of sea grass.
1. What is the main idea of the selection?
a. Dugongs are known as “sea cows”
b. Dugongs have been mistaken for mermaids
c. The dugong is a sea mammal that resembles other creatures
d. The dugong has a smooth body, round head, and fluked tail.
2. Which of the following is a supporting detail of the main idea?
a. Sailors discovered that the dugong was actually a mermaid
b. The dugong has several names
c. The dugong uses its nose for steering
d. The dugong is related to another large sea mammal
Genre of Poetry: lines of poetry (verses) are written in stanzas
a. May include patterns of rhyme to capture the reader’s interest
b. Uses carefully selected words and phrases to create vivid pictures in the reader’s
mind
c. very concise, and often musical/emotional language.
d. Every word counts
e. Various techniques in writing poetry
Techniques:
1. Sensory Language: writing or speech that appeals to 1 or more of the 5 senses
2. Figurative Language: imaginative writing, not meant to be taken literally (SHAMPOO)
3. Sound Devices: add musical quality to written language
EX: - repetition
- Alliteration
- Rhyme
- rhythm
Sounds
Sound Devices are one of the 3 techniques to writing poetry.
1. Alliteration: the repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of words (Ex. The big
ball bounced by)
2. Consonance: the repetition of consonant sounds at the ends of words (Ex. The brush
swished as we pushed past)
3. Assonance: the repetition of vowel sounds in words
(Ex. I see the sheen of the deep green sea)
4. Rhyme: a repeated sound at the end of words
Ex: I’m the Dragon of Grindly Grun,
I breathe fire as hot as the sun.
-Stanza: a group of lines in a poem
- End Rhyme: the repeated sound at the ends of lines
- Internal Rhyme: the repeated sound within a line
Rhythm and Meter
1. Rhythm: the rise and fall in intensity of sounds, the pattern of beats
2. Meter: some poems have a very specific pattern, or meter
a. iamb: one unstressed syllable (u), and one stressed syllable (/)
Ex: your heart beat, da DUM, da DUM, da DUM
-upon - arise
3. Foot: a group of unstressed and stressed syllables is called a foot
4. Iambic Pentameter: the most common type of meter,
*it is a line of iambs and 5 feet (10 syllables)
Examples: “But soft! What light through yonder window breaks!”
“It is the east, and Juliet is the sun!”
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”
Imagery: is word pictures or descriptions that appeal to any of the 5 senses (sight, sound, taste,
smell, touch). You may often see imagery in figurative language.
Practice
“It is easy enough to be pleasant
When life flows by like a song,
But the man worth while is the one who will smile
When everything goes dead wrong.
For the test of the heart is trouble,
And it always comes with the years,
And the smile that is worth the praises of earth
Is the smile that shines through tears.”
3.Which of the following is used in the second line?
a.
b.
c.
d.
Free verse
Metaphor
Personification
Simile
4. What is the rhyme scheme of this poem?
a. ABAB
b. ABCB
c. AABB
d. ABCD
5. What is the best definition of meter?
a. The repetition of sounds at the ends of words
b. The use of words that imitate sounds
c. The pattern and arragenement of stressed and unstressed syllables in a
poem
d. The repetition of consonant sounds at the beginnings of words
6. A three-line poem with five syllables and the first and third lines and seven
syllables in the second line is known as a ____________
a. Haiku
b. Sonnet
c. Poetry
d. Concrete poem
7. Which of the following is an example of personification?
a. Carlos is as tall as an elm tree
b. Her anger was raging with fire
c. He whooshed down the hill on his new snowboard
d. The wind whispered in Jackie’s ear as it blew by
8. What type of sound device is used in this line of poetry?
A tapering turret overtops the work
a. onomatopoeia
b. alliteration
c. rhyme
d. rhythm
Read the passage. Then, answer the questions.
When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue
Could scarcely cry “Weep! weep! weep! weep!”
So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep.
5
There’s little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head,
That curled like a lamb’s back, was shaved; so I said,
“Hush, Tom! never mind it, for, when your head’s bare,
You know tht the soot cannot spoil your white hair.”
—from “The Chimney-Sweeper” by William Blake
9. What sound device is used in line 4 of the poem?
a. onomatopoeia
b. end rhyme
c. internal rhyme
d. consonance
10. What is the rhyme scheme of this poem?
a. AABBCCDD
b. ABABCDCD
c. ABCDEFGH
d. ABBACDDC
11. The speaker in the poem is most likely a —
a. mother
b. lamb
c. child
d. father
12. Which of these is an example of end rhyme from the poem?
a. young/weep
b. sleep/head
c. said/bare
d. bare/hair
Answer Key
1. c
2. d
3. d
4. b
5. c
6. a
7. d
8. b
9. c
10. a
11. c
12. d