ALEX Resources

Title: Writing for Catharsis: How Do We Survive?
Description: This lesson is an internet-based inquiry into the Virginia Tech Massacre and Nikki Giovanni’s poetic response. This lesson ties informative reading and inquiry with the craft of poetry and the role of poetry as catharsis. Students will also understand firsthand the  difference in reading a poem and the experiencing it as a public performance.
Standard(s):
[ELA2015] (7) 7: Compare and contrast a written story, drama, or poem to its audio, filmed, staged, or multimedia version, analyzing the effects of techniques unique to each medium (e.g., lighting, sound, color, or camera focus and angles in a film). [RL.7.7]

Title: Interactive Poetry - Learning Poetic Elements and Structure Through Exploration
Description: This is an online exploration poetry lesson.  Students will navigate through the interactive PowerPoint presentation and complete different tasks while acquiring knowledge on the various aspects of poetry. This is a College- and Career-Ready Standards showcase lesson plan.
Standard(s):
[ELA2015] (7) 5: Analyze how a drama's or poem's form or structure (e.g., soliloquy, sonnet) contributes to its meaning. [RL.7.5]

Title: Analyzing and Recreating Poetry with William Wordsworth
Description: This language arts lesson incorporates collaboration and analysis of poetry. The students will utilize drawing and analysis. The lesson also incorporates synthesis by having the students recreate Wordsworth's poem.The students will recreate personal photos on Aviary to make them more vivid.    
Standard(s):

Title: All About Us: Writing and Presenting Poetry
Description: In this lesson students write a poem about their class and classmates. Students then transfer their poems to individual presentation slides which are combined with their classmates' slides to create a class slideshow presentation. This presentation can be printed to create a class ABC book.
Standard(s):
[ELA2015] (7) 5: Analyze how a drama's or poem's form or structure (e.g., soliloquy, sonnet) contributes to its meaning. [RL.7.5]

Title: The Reading Performance: Understanding Fluency Through Oral Interpretation
Description: Students discuss prosody, gain a new appreciation for literature intended for oral performance, and participate in activities that instill the value of technology in shaping their appreciation of literature.
Standard(s):
[ELA2015] (8) 35: Adapt speech to a variety of contexts and tasks, demonstrating command of formal English when indicated or appropriate. (See Grade 8 Language standards 36 and 38 for specific expectations.) [SL.8.6]

Title: Cosmic Oranges: Observation and Inquiry Through Descriptive Writing and Art
Description: Students will eat up this lesson about oranges as they practice the skills that help them investigate and make detailed observations for descriptive purposes.
Standard(s):
[ELA2015] (8) 40: Demonstrate understanding of figurative language, word relationships, and nuances in word meanings. [L.8.5]

Title: Can It Be?
Description: In this lesson, one of a multi-part unit from Illuminations, students participate in activities in which they focus on connections between mathematics and children s literature. They listen to the story The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster, and then explore and interpret the concept of averages.
Standard(s):
[ELA2015] (8) 9: By the end of the year, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poems, at the high end of Grades 6-8 text complexity band independently and proficiently. [RL.8.10]

Title: In the Poet's Shoes: Performing Poetry and Building Meaning
Description: Students take poetic license when they interpret William Carlos William's poem '' The Red Wheelbarrow'' to help create a poem of their own.
Standard(s):
[ELA2015] (8) 35: Adapt speech to a variety of contexts and tasks, demonstrating command of formal English when indicated or appropriate. (See Grade 8 Language standards 36 and 38 for specific expectations.) [SL.8.6]

Title: Analyzing Advice as an Introduction to Shakespeare
Description: Popular culture provides an introduction to Shakespeare's poetic devices in this lesson, which asks students to explore an excerpt from Shakespeare's Hamlet.
Standard(s):
[ELA2015] (8) 9: By the end of the year, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poems, at the high end of Grades 6-8 text complexity band independently and proficiently. [RL.8.10]

Title: Using the Four-Square Strategy to Define and Identify Poetic Terms
Description: How do poets play with language? Students will explore some answers to this question as they search through poems for examples of alliteration, assonance, simile, and rhyme.
Standard(s):
[ELA2015] (8) 28: Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research. [W.8.9]

Title: The World of Haiku
Description: In this lesson, from EDSITEment, students explore the traditions and conventions of haiku, comparing this classic form of Japanese poetry to a related genre of Japanese visual art and composing haiku of their own.
Standard(s):
[ELA2015] (8) 9: By the end of the year, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poems, at the high end of Grades 6-8 text complexity band independently and proficiently. [RL.8.10]

Title: Modeling Reading and Analysis Processes with the Works of Edgar Allan Poe
Description: Explore reading strategies using Edgar Allan Poes The Raven and other works. Students read Poesworks in both large- and small-group readings then conclude with a variety of projects.
Standard(s):
[ELA2015] (8) 41: Acquire and use accurately grade-appropriate general academic and domain-specific words and phrases; gather vocabulary knowledge when considering a word or phrase important to comprehension or expression. [L.8.6]

Title: The Poet's Voice: Langston Hughes and You
Description: This unit of seven lessons, from EDSITEment, introduces students to a poet's voice. Students develop a general definition of voice in poetry, and analyze and appreciate the poetic voice of Langston Hughes in particular. Included are writing and discussion activities, in which students either write a poem expressing their own voice (as developed in a journal), or write about one of the qualities of Langston Hughes's poetic voice (as explored in class discussion).
Standard(s):
[SS2010] USS6 (6) 4: Identify cultural and economic developments in the United States from 1900 through the 1930s.

Title: Poems That Tell a Story: Narrative and Persona in the Poetry of Robert Frost
Description: In this four-lesson unit, from EDSITEment, students read, discuss, and analyze selected poems by Robert Frost. The activities that make up this unit encourage students to draw inferences about a poem's speaker based on evidence contained within the poem and to gather evidence supporting those inferences.
Standard(s):
[ELA2015] (8) 29: Write routinely over extended time frames, including time for research, reflection, and revision, and shorter time frames such as a single sitting or a day or two for a range of discipline-specific tasks, purposes, and audiences. [W.8.10]

Title: The Statue of Liberty: Bringing the ''New Colossus'' to America
Description: In this lesson, from EDSITEment, students learn about the effort to convince a skeptical American public to contribute to the effort to erect a pedestal and to bring the Statue of Liberty to New York. The activities in this lesson guide students through an investigation of primary historical documents and an analysis of the poem The New Colossus, written by the nineteenth-century poet Emma Lazarus.
Standard(s):
[ELA2015] (8) 20: Write arguments to support claims with clear reasons and relevant evidence. [W.8.1]

Title: The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes
Digital Tool: The Highwayman video
Web Address URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCtJDbQwsZ4
Standard(s):
[ELA2015] (7) 16: Compare and contrast a text to an audio, video, or multimedia version of the text, analyzing each medium's portrayal of the subject (e.g., how the delivery of a speech affects the impact of the words). [RI.7.7]
Digital Tool Description: This video is an excellent companion to the poem for visual and auditory learners.

Title: Writing Stylized Poetry
Digital Tool: Poem Workshop: Syllable Counter
Web Address URL: http://www.howmanysyllables.com/PoemWorkshop/
Standard(s):
[ELA2015] (7) 5: Analyze how a drama's or poem's form or structure (e.g., soliloquy, sonnet) contributes to its meaning. [RL.7.5]
Digital Tool Description: This website not only defines highly-stylized poetry types such as haiku, sonnet, tanka, etc, but also counts the syllables of poems students compose on the website.  It also has a small grammar resource.

Title: Playing with Poetry the Interactive Way
Digital Tool: Poetry Idea Engine: A Writing With Writers Activity
Web Address URL: http://teacher.scholastic.com/writewit/poetry/poetry_engine.htm
Standard(s):
[ELA2015] (8) 9: By the end of the year, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poems, at the high end of Grades 6-8 text complexity band independently and proficiently. [RL.8.10]
Digital Tool Description: This interactive activity challenges students to write haikus, free verse, limericks, and more.

Title: What Makes a Poem an Epic?
Description: This student interactive, from an EDSITEment lesson, prompts students to identify examples of the epic hero cycle from a story with which they are familiar.
Standard(s):
[ELA2015] (8) 30: Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on Grade 8 topics, texts, and issues, building on others' ideas and expressing their own clearly. [SL.8.1]

Title: Star Wars creator George Lucas was born in 1944.
Description: Students use the Hero's Journey interactive to describe how Luke Skywalker meets each stage of his journey, and then brainstorm other works that use the formula.
Standard(s):
[ELA2015] (8) 29: Write routinely over extended time frames, including time for research, reflection, and revision, and shorter time frames such as a single sitting or a day or two for a range of discipline-specific tasks, purposes, and audiences. [W.8.10]

Title: April is National Poetry Month!
Description: Students are assigned to be '' poets of the day'' and are provided several models to create, illustrate, and present their different poems to the class.
Standard(s):
[ELA2015] (8) 29: Write routinely over extended time frames, including time for research, reflection, and revision, and shorter time frames such as a single sitting or a day or two for a range of discipline-specific tasks, purposes, and audiences. [W.8.10]