Alexandra Katechis
Poetry
LAP 6
I. Content: Describe what it is you will teach. What is the content?
Our final lesson of our poetry unit will feature a new poetic device: imagery! Students will shift
from exploring sound in poems to exploring images that are brought to mind. Students will
encounter a variety of poems that use the device and discuss how images influences the meaning
of the poem as well as our enjoyment of it.
II. Learning Goal(s): Describe what specifically students will know and be able to do after the experience of this
class.
•
SWBAT identify imagery and the influence said device has on a poem.
•
SWBAT create a graffiti board that represents the images they discover in a poem.
III. Rationale: Explain how the content and learning goal(s) relate to your Curriculum Unit Plan learning goals.
This lesson addresses six content standard (listed below): we will address CCSS.RL.3.8a by
observing and defining imagery, an essential element of poetry; we will continue to develop
mastery of CCSS.F.3.4 by reading independently and chorally; we will achieve CCSS.SL.3.1 by
expressing ourselves clearly and building upon each others ideas using Accountable Talk
“discussion helpers”; we will begin to tackle CCSS.RL.3.4 by developing abstract mental images
derived from the literal words of a poem; students will address CCSS.SL.3.2 by presenting their
understanding of imagery through a unique, visual medium (graffiti board); finally, we will work
towards mastery of CCSS.L.3.5 by associating literal words with more nuanced mental images.
In addition to these content standards, the lesson will also continue to address our most complex
practice standard, or habit of mind, so essential to the discipline of ELA. Readers in room 22
will explore the poems that contain the enormously entertaining element of noise (rhyme)!
Students will use images to convey both literal and nonliteral meaning, by exploring words and
abstracting their associated mental pictures; we will then re-literalize them through drawing.
Furthermore, this lesson incorporates literacy development by tasking students to read poems
and express their decoding skills orally. Students will also partake in a low-stakes drawing task,
where they will demonstrate their understanding of the imagery within a poem. Lastly, we will
further build our community of learners by maintaining a safe environment to ask questions,
make mistakes, and challenge one another. Students will also work collaboratively in their
creation of graffiti boards; the ideal is that students really want to share their expressions of the
poems that they chose!
Alexandra Katechis
Poetry
LAP 6
IV. Assessment: Describe how you and your students will know they have reached your learning goals.
Students will be informally assed by their participation and contributions to our discussion
regarding imagery. Students will be formally assessed by their completion of their graffiti board.
Students will be explicitly informed of my expectations of their work; students will be informed
that an option to share will be available. This will encourage their best work.
V. Personalization and equity: Describe how you will provide for individual student strengths and needs. How will
you and your lesson consider the needs of each student and scaffold learning? How specifically will ELL students
and students with learning disabilities gain access and be supported?
The strengths of individual students will be brought out and encouraged in several ways:
High flyers will benefit greatly from the opportunity to read voraciously and find several poems
that have great examples of imagery in our many anthologies. During the whole group
exploration of imagery, high flyers will be pushed to think quickly and assist less capable
readers. They may provide their imaginings with the rest of the class and help others come to see
how this visual element influences a poem. In our discussion, high flyers have the change to
grow their understanding and discipline specific vocabulary ability by showing it to other
students. Students who have an IEP or 504 will benefit from clear, single-step directions. To
further support their success, I have thoughtfully selected preferential seating spots for them, as
well as provided repeated directions as necessary. A small group of students on an IEP/504 and
ELLs will be selected to work with the teacher in a small group to facilitate access to the
curriculum. Both students on an IEP or 504 as well as ELLs will benefit from the visual aids in
our anchor chart, which provides visual cues for what our element looks like and where they
might find it. Furthermore, ELLs who have the opportunity to work with more fluent English
speakers will have the chance to encounter this new vocabulary employed by their peers. Most of
all, ELLs will be supported by the fact that this lesson is heavier on drawing than on reading or
writing. Auditory learners will be supported by the performance of the poems and the choral
readings. Visual learners are sure to benefit from the graphics embedded in the text as well as the
drawing based nature of our exploration. There will also be a large chart that outlines our new
vocabulary words in use. Finally, kinesthetic will benefit from the shared element of the lesson,
where students are actively moving about to perform their favorite poems. All students will
benefit from the enjoyment component of this lesson; students will be creating unique, original
graffiti boards!
Alexandra Katechis
Poetry
LAP 6
VI. Activity description and agenda
Time
0:00-0:20
0:20-0:30
0:30-0:50
0:50-0:60
Teacher Activity
Student Activity
I will read poems aloud to
students and direct them to
distill the images that come to
mind as I read.
I will pass out highlighters and
copies of Humpty Dumpty. I
will lead students in identifying
words that give us images.
Students will close their eyes
and describe the images that
they see in their mind as I read.
Poems
Students will stop me as I read
when I come upon a word that
gives them an image in their
mind. Students will justify what
words made them think that.
Students will draw the images
that come to their mind as they
read and interact with their
individual poems.
Copies of poems
Highlighters
Students will volunteer to share
the images they uncovered.
Graffiti Boards
I will direct students to their
anthologies, provide paper, and
guide them through their
transcriptions of images that
appear to them from these
poems.
I will lead students in a short
sharing period.
Materials
Anthologies
Paper
Crayons
I am concerned that students will have difficulty identifying a single word or a small phrase of
words that are particularly evocative of a picture. Students may struggle to cull those highly
imagistic words from words that simply support our understanding. To accommodate this, I will
take suggestions from the group as to what to highlight, but I will only highlight the words from
their suggestions that I feel are most important.
VII. List the Massachusetts Learning Standards this lesson addresses.
•
CCSS.RL.3.8a: Identify elements of fiction and elements of poetry (p 15).
•
CCSS.F.3.4: Read with sufficient accuracy and fluency to support comprehension.
•
CCSS.SL.3.1: Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in
groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade 3 topics and texts, building on
others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly (p 31).
•
CCSS.RL.3.4: Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text,
distinguishing literal from nonliteral language (p 15).
•
CCSS.SL.3.2: Determine the main ideas and supporting details of a text read aloud or
information presented in diverse media and formats, including visually, quantitatively,
and orally (p 31).
•
CCSS.L.3.5: Demonstrate understanding of word relationships and nuances in word
meanings.
Alexandra Katechis
Poetry
LAP 6
VIII. Reflection
This was a very relaxing way to end our unit, and it proved to be a little different than I
had anticipated. Usually, I expect to go out with a bang, but this lesson provided a low-stakes
vehicle for students to demonstrate their comfort with exploring poems and new devices, in this
case, imagery. Instead of ending with a test or a large presentation, it felt as if we didn’t even
finish poetry at all. I suppose that is not a bad way to go out, as it gives the impression that
poetry is an integrated part of our year-long ELA studies.
I did, however, wish to impart students with a sense of closure and finality to the unit.
This was achieved in the lesson conducted immediately before this imagery lesson, one which I
did not write an LAP for. In this preceding lesson, we spent an entire ELA block revising a poem
that we had written the night before for homework. Students were given paper to rewrite their
poem, ensuring that they had four essential elements (title, author, lines, and stanzas). Then, they
were tasked to employ several elements of poetry from a list (alliteration, onomatopoeia, rhyme,
and rhythm). As students completed and handed in their work, they were asked to sit in a one-onone conference with myself and explain to their teacher what elements they added and where.
Several high flyers were tasked to return to their poems to add even more.
In this way, I provided a sense of closure to the unit before this final lesson, which seems
now to have been a very pleasant coda to our entire unit. Students enjoyed our rug activity, in
which we described images that came to us with our eyes closed when I read lines of a poem.
They also took to using highlighters to identify specific words that gave us a strong, visual
impression. While they often highlighted more words than I would have liked as I anticipated
above, they were more detailed and specific in their graffiti board literalizations than I could
have imagined. This was a unique and joyous way to swim away from poetry, for now.
Alexandra Katechis
Poetry
LAP 6