This document provides teaching materials for analyzing two literary works: "My Man Blue" by Nikki Grimes and "The Highwayman" by Alfred Noyes. Key points of analysis are characterization, tone, and mood. Students are prompted to consider how descriptive language creates tone and mood in each work. Vocabulary like characterization, tone, and mood are defined. A four square analysis chart is presented as an organizational tool. The document concludes with an exit ticket question asking students to identify the mood created in "The Highwayman" through descriptive language.

1. “My Man Blue”
&
“The Highway
Man”
Ms. Mills
7th Grade Language Arts

2. Building Academic
Vocabulary
• Characterization
• Tone
• Mood
• Summarize

3. My Man Blue
by Nikki Grimes
His leathery skin’s
like indigo ink. • How do the “color
This rugged dude
who some folk think
words” physically
looks fierce in clothes describe the character?
of midnight black.
Then there’s his teeth: • How do the last four lines
one gold, three cracked.
And I suppose lend to a deeper side?
the shades could go.
He wears them night • How do “color words”
And day, I know.
Still, underneath
create a the tone and
this shell, Blue hides mood in the literary
a harmless selection?
gentle-giant side.

4. Activate Background Knowledge
• Review the • Narrative Poetry- tells a
vocabulary from story. It combines the
page 275 in elements of PLOT,
textbook. characterization, setting,
and poetic devices.
• Free Write…
describe a time you
had to make a
difficult choice in
order to help
someone you cared
about.

6. Four Square Analysis Chart

8. Today’s Exit Ticket
• What mood is created through
the use of descriptive language
in the literary poem, The
Highwayman?