We will start class with ten minutes of reading today. I will read with my students.
I have definitely not done enough poetry in my class given the traditionally high emphasis on poetry on our state test. I will be doing more poetry with a few upcoming units, so I'm not too concerned that they will leave my class with out any poetry analysis, but I do feel moderately bad that I haven't done much prior to the test. Such is the nature of the teaching life.
To at least give them at brief refresher on some basic poetry reading techniques, I will have students read "Half-Caste" by John Agard using a modified version of the TPCASTT method of poetry analysis. I am using this poem to continue our thematic analysis of imperialism (Agard is a South African poet discussing his life as in modern England). Since theme is my main focus, TPCASTT seems to be the best method as well. It is a simple and easy to use guide for poetry analysis that focuses students on reading the poem for the literal and figurative meaning all with the purpose of determining theme or message. Using this tool will allow me to assess how well students are able to understand the theme of the poem (RL.9-10.2), which they will need to be able to know for their comparative essay writing tomorrow.
I will guide them through this reading process in three steps, using a Powerpoint for instructions and images.
I will not have a lot of time to wrap up class today, but I will remind them that they need to have both "Half-Caste" and "By Any Other Name" in hand tomorrow so they are prepared for our final skill review day, which will be a written comparison of these two pieces.