ELA GEE 21 FOCUSED-LEARNING LESSON: Poetry and Internet Sources
Assessment Component: Reading and Responding
STANDARD SIX:
Students read, analyze, and respond to literature as a record of
life experiences.
PRIMARY BENCHMARKS ASSESSED:
ELA-6-H3
identifying, analyzing, and responding to a variety
of classic and contemporary literature from many
genres (e.g., folktales, legends, myths, poetry,
fiction, biography, autobiography, nonfiction,
novels, drama, epic)
ELA-6-H4
analyzing various genres as records of life
experiences
LESSON FOCUS:
The student will analyze various genres as records of life
experiences by using poems, pictures and other literature.
I. Translating Standards Into Instruction
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
Have students go to an Internet search engine (Yahoo, Google, Ask) and
research the bombing of the church in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963.
Have students find three different sources on the Internet and summarize
what he/she finds in a one-page report. (The report does not have to be
in MLA format- it just needs to give as much detail as possible with the
websites from which the information came.)
Have students read “Ballad of Birmingham,” by Dudley Randall.
Show photographs of scenes as described in the poem. (Pictures of the
water hoses, the dogs attacking the civil protesters- any Internet site or
Time photo book is a good source of pictures.)
Have students follow a seven-step analysis of the poem:
1.
Read poem silently
2.
Look up any unfamiliar words.
3.
Read poem aloud
4.
Summarize the poem stanza by stanza. (The students must use
complete sentences)
5.
Identify figures of speech, sound devices, and imagery. (This poem
has rhyme, irony (sacred place is metonymy for church but the
church, which is considered safe, becomes the most dangerous
place in the poem) imagery (the pictures will aid to visual imagery).
6.
Identify author’s tone. (reverent, sad, in remembrance)
GEE 21 ELA Remediation Guide
DRAFT
7.
F.
Identify the theme of the poem (as long as there is hate in the
world, there will never be a sacred or safe place).
Discuss the following:
1.
Number of stanzas, rhyme scheme.
2.
Summarization of the poem. (A girl wants to participate in the
peaceful demonstration, but her mother will not let her because
she says it is dangerous. Instead, the mother wants the girl to go to
church where it is safe. Moments later, the mother hears the
explosion of the bomb and rushes down to the church to find her
daughter, but all she finds is her shoe.)
3.
Use of irony- the church should be the safest place the girl can go,
much safer than the streets, but it is the church where the girl is
harmed.
4.
Ballad format [Ask: Why is this poem written as a ballad, a poem
with a song-like quality? (If students have no answer, ask: why do
you sing songs, in what building or place?)] Students should begin
thinking about church, mass, etc. Restate first question- students
should begin putting the holiness of the place of the bombing with
the tone of the poem, which is solemn and reverent.
5.
Theme of the poem- as long as there is hatred, no place will be
holy or safe. The students, through their research, should find
those who set the bombs are now being brought to justice this
decade.
II. Sources of Evidence of Student Learning
A.
B.
C.
Students summarize the poem and respond to questions related to the
irony in the poem.
Students apply the Seven-Step Analysis to this poem.
Students include the analysis in their portfolios.
III. Attributes of Student Work at the “Got-It” Level
A.
B.
IV.
Students can summarize the poem.
Students can identify figures of speech (simile, metaphor, irony). [Some
may recognize tone and theme as well.]
GEE 21 Connection
Reference pages 11-14 of the January 2001 GEE 21 Grade 10 English
Language Arts/Mathematics released item document. Students were asked
to read and respond to Mary Oliver’s poem, “The Black Walnut Tree.”
V.
Recommended Materials
A.
B.
C.
Copy of “Ballad of Birmingham,” by Dudley Randall
Connection to Internet for research purposes
Source of pictures such as Time photo book, Internet sites
GEE 21 ELA Remediation Guide
DRAFT