7th Grade ELA NYS Common Core Curriculum Module 3, Unit 1

1. DO NOW
Read the poem “Introduction to Poetry”
Use the blank space to sketch three (3)
separate images you can picture as you
read the poem

2. Slavery
Narrative of Frederick Douglass
“Introduction to Poetry”
• What do your pictures have to do with the
poem title?
• What is the speaker in the poem trying to
say?
• Let’s take a closer look…

3. Introduction to Poetry
I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.
they begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

4. Slavery
Learning Objectives
I can read and re-read a poem to find layers
of meaning.
I can identify common poetic devices,
especially those that have to do with
structure, figurative language and repetition.

5. Slavery
Narrative of Frederick Douglass
POETRY!
• Take out FOUND POEM (#2)
• Metaphor: poetry is a car
• Paint job reading
• Engine… “pop the hood” reading
• Mean machine reading!
How to Read a Poem Chart!

6. The Negro Speaks of Rivers
I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

7. Slavery
Narrative of Frederick Douglass
Powerful Stories Anchor Chart
• Let’s add Langston Hughes’s poem to the
chart!!

8. Slavery
Narrative of Frederick Douglass
Exit Ticket!
• List three (3) poetic tools with which
you are most familiar
• List three (3) tools that need help
• What might be hardest for you when
we “pop the hood” of another poem?

9. Slavery
Narrative of Frederick Douglass
Homework
• Poet’s Toolbox Matching Worksheet
• Worksheet + Poetry Toolbox!!