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Advanced/Gifted and Talented: An advanced/gifted and talented tool is an idea for a complex, multi-step instructional task that requires students to apply knowledge and skills of multiple objectives that support one indicator. Tasks require students to interpret, analyze, and evaluate text at an appropriate level of complexity and embed a variety of differentiation strategies to challenge advanced readers. Many of these strategies and activities can be adapted for use with all students.

Standard 3.0 Comprehension of Literary Text

Indicator 4. Analyze elements of poetry to facilitate understanding and interpretation

Objective a. Use structural features to identify poetry as a literary form and distinguish among types of poems such as haiku, form/shape poetry, etc.

Other Objectives Addressed
b.Identify and explain the meaning of words, lines, and stanzas
c.Identify and explain sound elements of poetry
d.Identify and explain other poetic elements such as setting, mood, tone, etc., that contribute to meaning

Instructional Task
Students will analyze elements of narrative poetry in order to interpret how a narrative poem and its sequel differ in tone, theme, and purpose. The students will perform dramatic readings that interpret the different tone and theme presented by the original and the sequel (bodily-kinesthetic intelligence).

Development of Task
  1. In order for students to identify the structural features of a narrative poem, the teacher will create a prose version, such as a news story, of a narrative poem of appropriate complexity such as, “Casey at the Bat” by Ernest Thayer, “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, or “The Ballad of Davy Crockett” by Tom Blackburn. The students will read the prose version and identify the narrative elements.
  2. Next, the teacher will provide students with the narrative poem. During reading, the students will use a graphic organizer to identify the similarities (plot, character, setting, sensory details, figurative language) and differences (poetic structure, sound devices, tone, and mood between the prose and poem versions (objectives a, c).
  3. After reading, students will analyze how the poetic devices and structure contribute to the poem’s tone and theme and affect the reader’s interpretation of the narrative (objectives b and d).
  4. To further explore the interpretation of the narrative, the students will read a sequel to a narrative poem such as “Casey’s Revenge” by Grantland Rice or “The Midnight Ride of William Dawes” by Helen F. Moore. The students will determine how the sequel poem differs in tone, theme, and purpose from the original poem while using similar poetic devices and structure (evaluation).
  5. Students will work in pairs to create “point-counterpoint” oral readings, contrasting stanzas of the narrative poem and its sequel. The students will use emphasis, rhythm, and tone to communicate the different themes in the two poems (auditory learning style).
  6. As another option, the teacher may have students compose an original sequel to a narrative poem that creates a different tone and theme while using similar poetic devices and structure (synthesis).
/instruction/advanced/reading/grade5/xml/3A4a.xml
Resources for Objective 3.A.4.a:
Lesson Seeds | ADVANCED/G-T |