February 2013
Seven Hills Book of the Month
This Land Is Your Land
Words and Music by Woody Guthrie
Paintings by Kathy Jakobsen
“This land was made for you and me!”
This Land Is Your Land is the famous song by Woody Guthrie brought to life with rich paintings to illustrate the beautiful
words from one of America’s best known folk songs. The words show how a song can move people to change and have
great pride in our country.
Reading Skill: Poetry
Genre: Poetry
Point of View: 1st person
Organization: lyrical/narrative poetry with rhyme and rhythm
Purpose: to entertain the reader with a song about our great country of America
Lesson/Theme: America is a place for everyone to have a good life.
“Songs are just poetry put to music: they come from the heart and flutter off the page with the rhythm of the melody.”
(Quote taken from http://nelziez.polyvore.com/)
While poetry and songs are two different genres of writing, they do share some common elements of rhythm and rhyme
that certainly makes songs seem like poetry put to music. So using the book, This Land Is Your Land, to help students
understand some basic poetic elements, is a fun way for kids to experience poetry.
Below are some basic explanations of poetry and poetic elements. You may not use all of these terms with children depending on
your grade level TEKS, but they may be helpful as you design lessons to dig into poetic structure. All text highlighted in RED
pertains specifically to activities you could do with This Land Is Your Land. Remember, you are responsible for teaching the TEKS
AT your grade level and reviewing/reteaching the TEKS BELOW your grade level for a specific concept. Also, if you look to grades
ahead of you, some of these concepts can also be touched on as you are teaching poetry. For example, the concept of stanzas
doesn’t appear in the TEKS till 4th grade, but would be easy to introduce/reinforce when teaching poetry at your grade level.
FIRST APPROACHES
Below are some basic steps to approaching and analyzing a poem:
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Read the entire poem. Identify the speaker and the situation. Feel free to read it more than once!
Read the sentences literally. Use your analytical reading skills to clarify and infer what the poem is about.
Read each line separately, noting unusual words and associations. Use context clues to determine the possible meaning of
any words or phrases you are unsure of.
Note any changes in the form of the poem that might signal a shift in point of view.
Study the structure of the poem, including its rhyme and rhythm (if any).
Re-read the poem slowly, thinking about what message and emotion the poem communicates to you.
*Before reading the book, show the attached lyrics from “This Land Is Your Land” and if you choose, follow the above steps to
analyze the poem, prompting students to infer the poem’s meaning stanza by stanza.
*Read the book and discuss if students inferences about the meaning of the poem were accurate.
* Reread the book, but now sing the melody with the lyrics. Discuss how this is like a poem, but is actually a song, and that
sometimes songs seem like poetry, but are put to music. Discuss that poetry and song lyrics actually share some of the same
elements such as stanzas, rhythm, rhyme, etc. and also have a message for the listener.
*What is the author’s message or theme of This Land Is Your Land? In this case, what is the message of the song writer, Woody
Guthrie? (Ex. America is a place for everyone to have a good life.)
*You may choose to read or share parts of the “Tribute to Woody Guthrie” at the back of the book to give students background
on why Guthrie wrote this song.
*Have students share/write connections from this song that are text to self, text to text, or text to the world
*Listen to the recording of Woody Guthrie singing the song on YouTube at the following link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyGPyFacg3w
STRUCTURE and POETRY
An important method of analyzing a poem is to look at the stanza structure or style of a poem. Generally speaking,
structure has to do with the overall organization of lines and/or the conventional patterns of sound. Again, many modern
poems may not have any identifiable structure (i.e. they are free verse), so don't panic if you can't find it!
STANZAS: Stanzas are a series of lines grouped together and separated by an empty line from other stanzas. They are the
equivalent of a paragraph in an essay. A LINE BREAK is a line of poetry that does not always end in a period. It ends when
another line begins. One way to identify a stanza is to count the number of lines. Thus:
couplet (2 lines)
tercet (3 lines)
quatrain (4 lines)
cinquain (5 lines)
sestet (6 lines)
This Land Is Your Land is divided into stanzas of four lines each, so it could be said that it is a type of quatrain.
How many stanzas does “This Land Is Your Land” have? (13 if you continue to count the chorus each time)
A poem often has a specific pattern of stanza lines, rhyme scheme and/or rhythm, and many types of poems can be
identified by their particular patterns:
Haiku: It has an unrhymed verse form having three lines (a tercet) and usually 5,7,5 syllables, respectively.
Limerick: It has a very structured poem, usually humorous & composed of five lines (a cinquain), in an aabba rhyming
pattern; beat must be anapestic (weak, weak, strong) with 3 feet in lines 1, 2, & 5 and 2 feet in lines 3 & 4.
Sonnet: It is a lyric poem consisting of 14 lines. In English, generally the two basic kinds of sonnets are the Italian or
Petrarchan sonnet and the Shakespearean or Elizabethan sonnet.
FORM: A poem may or may not have a specific number of lines, rhyme scheme and/or metrical pattern, but it can still be
labeled according to its form or style. Here are the four most common types of poems according to form:
1. Lyric Poetry: It is any poem with one speaker (not necessarily the poet) who expresses strong thoughts and feelings, and
has a regular rhythm.
2. Narrative Poem: It is a poem that tells a story; its structure resembles the plot line of a story [i.e. the introduction of
conflict and characters, rising action, climax and resolution].
3. Descriptive Poem: It is a poem that describes the world that surrounds the speaker. It uses elaborate imagery and
adjectives. While emotional, it is more "outward-focused" than lyric poetry, which is more personal and introspective.
4. Humorous Poetry: It makes the audience laugh and is funny.
In a sense, almost all poems, whether they have consistent patterns of sound and/or structure, or are free verse, are in one
of the three categories above. Or, of course, they may be a combination of 2 or 3 of the above styles!
Grades 3-5, after briefly touching on the three types of poetry above, see if students can identify the form of “This Land
Is Your Land”, which is lyrical/narrative poetry. Have them justify with text evidence why it is more lyrical and narrative,
and not descriptive or humorous.
SOUND PATTERNS
Three other elements of poetry are rhyme scheme, meter (ie. regular rhythm) and word sounds (like alliteration). These are
sometimes collectively called sound play because they take advantage of the performative, spoken nature of poetry.
Rhyme
Rhyme is the repetition of similar sounds. In poetry, the most common kind of rhyme is the end rhyme, which occurs at the
end of two or more lines. Take a look at the rhyme scheme for the following poem :
I saw a fairy in the wood,
He was dressed all in green.
He drew his sword while I just stood,
And realized I'd been seen.
The rhyme scheme of the poem is a b a b. (8 syllables, 6 syllables, 8 syllables, 6 syllables)
-Have students identify the end rhymes in “This Land Is Your Land”.
-Have students identify the rhyme scheme of “This Land Is Your Land” as: a a a b (10 syllables, 10 syllables, 10 syllables, 8
syllables.)
Internal rhyme There are three types of internal rhymes: (5th grade – internal rhyme is one of your TEKS)
•Two or more rhyming words occur within the same line (I went to town to buy a gown. )
•Two or more rhyming words will appear in the middle of two separate lines or sometimes in more (I see a red boat that
has a red flag. Just like my red coat and my little red pail.)
•A word at the end of a line rhymes with one or more in the middle of the following line (The snowflakes are dancing,
floating, and falling. / The church bells are calling, but I will not go.)
-An example of internal rhyme from “This Land Is Your Land”:
The sun comes shining as I was strolling,
The wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling;
As the fog was lifting a voice was chanting,
This land was made for you and me.
Rhythm and Meter
Rhythm: A recognizable pulse, or "recurrence," which gives a distinct beat to a line. It is the pattern of stressed and
unstressed syllables in a line. You can listen and identify the rhythm when it has a ‘flow’ about it. Rhythm is a musical
quality produced by the repetition of stressed and unstressed syllables. Rhythm in writing is like the beat in music.
Read “This Land Is Your Land” while kids tap their fingers on their desk or tap their foot. Have them tap harder on words
they emphasize and lighter on ones they don’t stress or emphasize. Do the words of this song/poem have rhythm?
(YES!!)
Meter: The basic rhythm in a verse of stressed and unstressed syllables.
Free Verse: A poem with a lack of formal verse structure. Free verse has no rhyme or rhythm, and flows along an uneven
pattern.
Blank Verse: A poem with rhythm, but no rhyme.
Figurative/Connotative Devices
Poetry is full of concrete language that appeals to our emotions. The reader often has to infer the message or theme of the
poem based on the images the poet creates. Images, in turn, suggest meanings beyond the mere identity of the specific
object. Poetry "plays" with meaning when it identifies resemblances or makes comparisons between things; common
examples of this "figurative" comparison include:
ticking of clock = mortality
hardness of steel = determination
white = peace or purity
Such terms as connotation, simile, metaphor, allegory, and symbol are aspects of this comparison. Such expressions are
generally called figurative or metaphorical language.
Examples of Figurative/Connotative Devices:
Simile: To compare an object to another using "like" or "as." Example: Her smile is like sunshine.
Metaphor: To compare an object to another using a direct comparison. Example: He's a bull in a china shop. The person in
this metaphor is not a bull; he is clumsy.
Metaphors in “This Land Is Your Land” :
a ribbon of highway, diamond deserts, freedom highway
Personification: To speak of an inanimate object as if it were alive. Example: The moonlight danced upon the water. An
example from “This Land Is Your Land”: The wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling (Waving and rolling are what
live people do. Wheat fields or dust clouds can’t really do these things.)
Onomatopoeia: Using a word that sounds like the word being described. Examples: Boom! Crash! Moo!
Alliteration: The use of several words in a row that all start with the same sound or letter. Example: Dirty dogs don't dare.
Alliteration can be used to playfully call attention to a detail in a poem.
Can students identify examples of alliteration in “This Land Is Your Land”? Some examples below:
r
r
f
f
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts;
The sun comes shining as I was strolling,
I've oamed and ambled and I've ollowed my ootsteps,
Repetition in Poetry
Repetition of a sound, syllable, word, phrase, line, stanza, or metrical pattern is a basic unifying device in all poetry.
Repetition of key words, phrases, and sentence patterns is often important in poetry. Repetition is often used in poems for
effect, either to get a point across, emphasize something, or signal distress/tension, but it depends on what is being
repeated.
What words and phrases of “This Land Is Your Land” are repeated? Why do you think Woody Guthrie chose to repeat
these specific words and phrases? Do the repetitions help us determine the overall theme? Why or why not?
Grade Level TEKS for Poetry/Literary Text
K.7A respond to rhythm and rhyme in poetry through identifying a regular beat and similarities in word sounds
1.8A respond to and use rhythm, rhyme, and alliteration in poetry
1.11A recognize sensory details in literary text
2.7A describe how rhythm, rhyme, and repetition interact to create images in poetry
2.11A recognize that some words and phrases have literal and non-literal meanings (e.g. take steps)
3.6A describe the characteristics of various forms of poetry and how they create imagery (e.g. narrative, lyrical, humorous poetry,
or free verse)
3.10A identify language that creates graphic, visual experiences and appeals to the senses
4.4A explain how the structural elements of poetry (e.g. rhyme, meter, stanzas, line breaks) relate to the form (lyrical, free verse,
etc.)
4.8A identify the author’s use of similes and metaphors to produce imagery
5.4A analyze how poets use sound effects (e.g. alliteration, internal rhyme, onomatopoeia, rhyme scheme) to introduce meaning
in poems
5.8A evaluate the impact of sensory details, imagery, and figurative language in literary text
STAAR Question Stems for Poetry:
The reader can tell that the poem is written in free verse because…
Which poetic structure is found in the poem? (stanza, rhythm, use of repetition, short line length)
The poet’s/author’s use of metaphors/similes emphasizes –
The paragraph above the title of the poem is included to – (help the reader understand, persuade readers to, encourage readers to,
provide background information about…)
What does the poet mean by ________?
Why does the author/poet combine _____ with _____?
What is the theme of the poem?
Which word best describes the feeling the poet creates in this poem?
Websites for teaching poetry:
http://www.poetryteachers.com/
http://www.readwritethink.org/search/?sort_order=relevance&q=poetry+resources&old_q=&srchgo.x=15&srchgo.y=3
http://gigglepoetry.com/
http://www.proteacher.com/070034.shtml
http://teacher.scholastic.com/poetry/