English Language Arts – Contrasting Ordinary and Poetic

Language – Kathleen Owens

Teacher: Kathleen Owens Content Area: English Language
Arts Grade: 2 Topic: Poetry Date: August 6 , 2018
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Instructional Objective (Lesson Objective*)

After an interactive lesson on how we can observe objects using poet’s eyes, and learning

that the musicality of poems comes from how the words are chosen and how you put them on paper by

line breaking, students will be able to find a topic that holds a big, strong feeling, show their feelings

about an object using exact, precise words, experiment with different voices of poetry, and show their

emotions using patterns and language, with minimal errors, being able to edit and correct later on.

Standards and Indicators

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.4.4

Describe how words and phrases (e.g., regular beats, alliteration, rhymes, repeated lines)
supply rhythm and meaning in a story, poem, or song.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.2.4

Tell a story or recount an experience with appropriate facts and relevant, descriptive
details, speaking audibly in coherent sentences.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.2.10

By the end of the year, read and comprehend literature, including stories and poetry, in the
grades 2-3 text complexity band proficiency, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of
the range.

ISTE Standards for Students

Knowledge Constructor- Curate information from digital resources using a variety of tools
and methods to create collections of artifacts that demonstrate meaningful connections or
conclusions.

Creative Communicator- Communicate complex ideas clearly and effectively by creating

or using a variety of digital objects such as visualizations, models or simulations.

Motivation (Engaging the learner (s) *)

Poets get ideas for a poem by choosing a topic that feels big, but is also small. I will be modeling

how you could choose a big topic, such as about a special person, a pet, etc., and zoom in on something

small, such as a trip to the zoo, a birthday Party, or an event, that gives them a big feeling. Just how we

started observing simple objects with poet’s eyes, we start to see these memories and small moments with

poet's eyes as well.

Overall, many students are choosing topics that hold big feelings and small details, but the key is

to not have your poetry sound like regular writing. This is where we introduce using voice and emotions

while writing. To introduce and pull my students into writing, we will start discussing happy memories

we have, like a birthday party or a basketball game, and write down how we felt. Then we will think of

times we were sad, like a pet passing away or you lost a game, and write down how that made us feel. We

will go through the basic emotions we can feel on a daily basis and start to write down how feeling like

that is.

Materials

1. SMART Board

2. Paper and Pencil

3. Camera

4. iPads

5. Anchor Charts
 6. Assessment worksheet

Strategies (Learning Strategies)

Direct Instruction: The teacher will provide the students with information about using voice and

feeling while writing poetry, and model the correct way in which we can edit our poems by

putting precise descriptive language that shows emotion and our own voice that tells the story

from a personal perspective.

Group Discussion: The students and the teacher will discuss how there are times when we each

have felt sad, proud, and angry. We will compare the feeling to something that reminds them of that

feeling. For example, being happy because of a birthday party.

Cooperative Learning: Students will work independently to write their poems using feelings and

voice, and share their work with friends and peers and see if there is any comparison in writing

and/or any similar experiences.

Adaptations (Exceptionality*)

There are beginning-English learners in the classroom.

For beginning-English Learners, they should start to write in their native language, to represent

ideas pictorially and with labels, and to dictate their writing to the teacher or other adult. Eventually, they

are able to use their given laptop/ iPad and use the translator app/ website for taking the writing in their

native language and translating it to English language.

Differentiation of Instruction

Developmental Procedures

 Students will discuss in whole group what we have learned thus far in our poetry unit,

which includes observing objects using poets eyes, line breaking within our poems, and

how we choose our topics to write about. “Boys and girls, how have we described

different objects? Is it easy writing about an object that doesn't seem that interesting?
 How has breaking up the lines within your poem helped in telling your story? Have you

noticed a pattern within your poems?”

 Students will be introduced to the idea of using their own voice and emotions while

writing their poems and how that will make their poems more meaningful to them, and

more relatable to other people. “Boys and girls, how can we make our poems more

personal? What kind of feelings can we write about in our poetry? Do you think I can

relate to your poem and to your feelings?”

 Students will start brainstorming different feelings they have experienced and make a list

together on a type of feeling, such as happiness, and when they have felt happy about

something, such as getting a good grade or making a new friend. This will help in making

a list of descriptive words for them to use within their poetry and also to come up with

different ways we could feel this emotion so not everyone writes about the same topic.

 Students will break off individually and start brainstorming and writing about a time that

made them feel happy, angry, sad, excited, nervous, etc, and talk about a time, event,

object, or a person that conveys that emotion to them. The goal here is to have them make

their poems personal using their own voice and their own emotions that shows they

experienced something with that feeling. The idea is to have it be an experience or a

feeling that is relatable to their peers.

 Students will share aloud their poems with other classmates and compare poems with

how their feelings were or what they felt during that time, and see if other students can

relate and share the emotions. “Boys and girls, make sure that you listen when someone

is sharing, you may have felt like this one time in your life also. Do you think you can
 relate to your friend? Have you had an experience similar to theirs? Have you ever felt

happy like they have?”

 Students will be given a homework assignment to write their own poem on an object

conveying emotion, feeling, and voice within the poem. “Boys and girls, today in class

you wrote a poem about an experience you have had that made you feel some type of

emotion or feeling that is sharable with your peers. Now, I want you to go home, and

write a poem about an object or a person that also shows feeling, emotions, and voice

within it. If you write about your sibling, tell me why you feel happy or angry about them!

If you write about your room, tell me the same thing! Be creative and show me that

emotion!” This will help in my assessment of showing that they understand how to use

feelings and voice within their poetry.

Assessment (Artifacts* and assessment [formal and informal]*)

Homework assignments that are given to students during this unit will be assessed

informally to show that they understand the concept of writing poetry using the key ideas from

the essential question, which is using your voice, finding emotions, and using poetic language.

Independent Practice

Following the lesson, students will write their own poems about an experience, object, or

person that conveys emotion and voice. This is practice for them starting to write as poets and

later will be edited for final publishing. They are also given homework in this subject area for

independent practice as well and receive feedback from both peers and teachers.

Follow up: Direct Teacher Intervention and Academic Enrichment

Direct Teacher Intervention: For the students having trouble with grasping the concept of

describing items in a creative way, the teacher will have the student pick an object that they like
and describe it with the student, listen many describing words and what they like about the object

through the use of poetic language. The teacher will show the student how any object can be

described in a fun way and be made into a poem using poetic language instead of plain, ordinary

language.

Academic Enrichment: For further practice describing objects and understanding how that is

applied to creating poems, the students will complete an All About Me project, describing

themselves, which will be used to create a poem about them.

Resources

Poetry. BrainPOP.

https://www.brainpop.com/english/writing/poetry/

New York State Next Generation English Language Arts Learning

Standards. http://www.nysed.gov/common/nysed/files/nys-next-generation-ela-standards.pdf