However, if I were a middle school teacher right now, I’d be reaching for Pat Mora‘s newest poetry book, Dizzy in Your Eyes: Poems About Love. Seeing as I taught fifth grade, not eighth grade, I don’t think I would’ve encouraged teaching students how to write love poems. A few of my former fifth graders even wrote love poems in their poetry notebooks, which also prompted a few quiet conversations. When I taught fifth grade, I noticed some of my students were often lovestruck during the final months of school, even though they were just little kids a few months earlier. Springtime not only brings more poetry into our classroom, but it also ignites a desire for many middle school students to ask each other out. Knopf for Young Readers, an imprint of Random House Children's Books. Using the structure and language of the poem to determine this overall meaning is the goal of poetry analysis in the middle grades.A review copy of this book was provided by Alfred A. Try to put this overall idea into one sentence, such as "Youthful innocence cannot last forever" and be prepared to defend it with the specific ideas from the text. This may or may not be the impression that you had after your first basic reading. Frost, for example, uses his symbolic poem to make a statement about how time corrupts the innocence of youth. Once you have read through the poem several times and looked at each line for hidden meaning, you should be ready to make a statement about the poem’s theme, or the overall message that the poet meant to express. Lastly, watch for any words or phrases that are repeated to add emphasis to the author’s point, and don’t ignore the final line - it often wraps up the poet’s overall view of the topic. A reference to a well-known biblical story like the fall of Eden, as Frost uses, may evoke moral lessons that readers will be familiar with - in this case, the corruption of innocence. Look also for similes, metaphors or literary allusions, as these comparisons may bring to mind the deeper ideas that the poet hopes to convey. Since a poem’s meaning is often below the surface, look for examples of symbolism that the poet may have used to represent a bigger idea, such as Frost's use of "green" as a symbol of youth and turning leaves to represent the passage of time. Once you've evaluated the structure of the poem, read through a third time with an eye out for the specific words and phrases that the poet includes. Poetry can be visual, so the "Core Analysis Frame" for middle school poetry suggests looking at the white spaces on the page for any images they may bring to mind. They may be grouped into paragraph-like stanzas, each with a new main idea that contributes to the overall meaning, or lines may stand alone for impact. Does the poem appear to follow a familiar form, such as sonnet or haiku, or does it appear to be written as a letter or song? Read the poem aloud to get a feel for the beat or rhythm of the words and any rhyming patterns, such as the pairs of rhyming lines - called couplets - in "Nothing God Can Stay." These sound devices may give the poem a light, carefree mood, or they may add to its tension. On your second reading, look at how the poem is formatted.
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