April is National Poetry Month! I’m celebrating National Poetry Month in my classroom with a Poem of the Day. Each day I’m sharing the poems my students and I read, along with prompts, resources, and reflection.
Prior to reading the Poem of the Day today, students came up with predictions about what the poem was going to be about based on the title alone. The title of today’s poem – “Apples.” I gave students about four minutes to do this before I asked for five students to share what they thought. Below is what each hour came up with.
This activity was pulled from the TPCASTT method which is an analysis process to use with poems. Our 11th and 12th grade English classes utilize TPCASTT in poetry units, so I thought it would be useful for my 9th and 10th grade students to work through part of the process but not the whole thing.
If you’re looking for a more detailed explanation of TPCASTT, check out “Unlocking Poetry Analysis with the TPCASTT Method” from Hey Natayle. Our English department references her resources frequently.
The poem above is an image, so you’re unable to annotate directly on the poem. If you’d like to share thoughts / observations / notes, do so here:
Respond to one of the prompts about Peter Heller’s poem.
- Compare initial predictions with your interpretation/analysis after reading the poem. What was similar? What was different?
- What do you think about the poem? Why?
- How did you read this poem? Why? Describe your thinking/reading process.
Here is a copy of the Poem of the Day that students received. If you would like to modify the Google Docs, go to File > Make a Copy. I do not respond to Share requests.
It goes without saying that Peter Heller’s “Apples” threw us for a loop. A few predictions matched, but most did not. One of our biggest talking points in discussion was “How do we read this poem?”
Overall, this poem was an excellent example of how poetry doesn’t really have rules, which makes it even more interesting and open ended!
1 comment / Add your comment below