Metaphors

Looking for a poem to teach, a way to teach literary terms, or just want a  quick lesson to fill a gap?  Look no further than "Metaphors" by Plath.  I'm sure you've read and may have taught it before, but in case you are not familiar with it, here it is:

Metaphors 

by Sylvia Plath

I’m a riddle in nine syllables,

An elephant, a ponderous house,

A melon strolling on two tendrils.

O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!

This loaf’s big with its yeasty rising.

Money’s new-minted in this fat purse.

I’m a means, a stage, a cow in calf.

I’ve eaten a bag of green apples,

Boarded the train there’s no getting off.

This works really great with a SmartBoard-like projection or even an overhead since marking up the poem as you read it as a class is easier for the students to visualize.

Students tend to be intrigued by it when you build it up as a mystery to be solved.  You can even up the ante by putting something up to win for the first person to figure it out.  With that objective, I do not tell them this is about a pregnancy.

First thing, have students read the poem to themselves and have them write down what they think the poem is about, just so they have an reason to try and process it.

Title - Metaphors are often missed by students because, while it is easy to understand most comparisons, many metaphors leave off what is being compared, like in this case.  We get one of the objects for comparison, but not the whole thing.

Line 1 - Plath wastes no time handing out the clues.  I say to the kids, "This poem is way over nine syllables!  What is this about?"  Eventually some student will figure out that the line is nine syllables long.  Then I have students check the other lines and yep, all are nine syllables exactly.  A clever student might point out that there are nine lines.  A super clever student might point out that there are nine letters in the title.  So we mark on our clue board that nine must be important.

Line 2 - We take the time to figure out what ponderous means.  I usually at this point do not point out that people live in a house.  I wait and let someone pick up on that or we just move further.

Line 3 and 4 - We take the time to look up what "tendrils" means.  Then maybe draw a quick doodle to get a visual.  Students usually focus on these first few lines about she is fat.  We do focus on the tendrils are pale because they must not be getting sunlight.

Line 5 - So they start to put together that whatever she is, she's getting bigger.

Line 6 - Students often have to be told what minted means.

Line 7 - We touch on what it means to be a "means to an end".  My more rural students at this point figure it out since they know what it means for a cow to be in calf. I sometimes skip over this clue to prolong it a bit, if no one points it out.

Line 8 - While apples do come in the green variety, I ask them if we take the idea that apples are typically red, what do you think happens if you eat a bunch of unripe one?

Line 9 - With abortion being in the spotlight, you can choose how close you want to dance on this line that there is no getting off.  However, I do like to talk about getting on a train is an archetype for a major life change/decision (like Polar Express).

If students figure it out early, you may want to see if they notice how her viewpoint of this situation seems to spiral downward as the poem goes on.  At first, she talks about how fat she feels, but by the end, she feels trapped with no way out of the situation.

I often do this with ninth graders, since the idea of being pregnant isn't the first thought that pops into their mind, but I have used this before with other grade levels with much success.

If you are looking for more texts to use in order to teach students inference, try Ordeal by Cheques.

Jack's Lament and Teaching Allusions

If you have not seen the movie Nightmare Before Christmas by Tim Burton, you really should.  It is excellent for middle school age children and older.  As far as class goes, there is a particular song in it that is useful for instruction: "Jack's Lament."

A quick bit of background information for those who have never seen the movie. Jack Skellington (pictured to the left) is the Pumpkin King of Halloween Town (every holiday has their own town).  He has just had another successful Halloween.  He has, once again, won all the praise of the inhabitants of Halloween Town.  And he is bored out of his mind.  This is the song he sings to express how unhappy he is, even though everything is going great.

Why show this song clip in your class?  To teach allusion. There are several examples and depending on the level of student that you have, they should be able to pick out most.

Here they are in order as they appear in the song:

1. Sally, the rag golem is an allusion to Frankenstein's monster.  Students might be able to figure that out from the stitch marks.
2. He is walking through a pet cemetery (Stephen King's Pet Cemetery).
3. Zero the ghost dog - easy Rudolf allusion
4. There is a grave stone figure that looks like Mushu from Mulan.  If students make that connection, that's great.  However, The Nightmare Before Christmas came out in 1993 and Mulan came out in 1998, so no true allusion there (though perhaps it inspired the look of the dragon?).
5. The horse head tombstone is actually an allusion/pun.  It looks like the chess piece knight.  Use the homophone reference for night.
6. You have two versions of the Scream painting by Edvard Muench.  One tombstone looks similar to the painting and the other looks similar to the Halloween mask designed after the painting.  To really drive it home, he even says that he, "grows so weary of the sound of screams," at the same time that he drapes his arm around one of the tombstones.  Students might recognize the tombstone from the movie Scream, which has a mask based on the same painting.
7. He calls himself Jack, the Pumpkin King.  Maybe an allusion or at least a play on the idea of a Jack o' lantern?
8. As Jack stands in front of the moon, it is a reference back to Tim Burton's Batman, when the batwing flies in front of the moon for a special visual effect.
9. And of course, the Hamlet allusion as he takes off his skull and holds it to recite "Shakespearean quotations."

O.K., did I miss any?  I feel like I did.  If you notice any more, please leave a comment so that I can add it to the list.  I'll give you full credit!

If you have the movie, you'll find this song starting at about 6:10 and ending at 9:45.  If you don't, here is a You Tube version:

You can find the lyrics here if you would like to do a lesson on assonance.  Every second and fourth line of each stanza uses assonance to fake the rhyme.

Happy Halloween!

Using Shirley Jackson to Teach Author's Technique

 The following lesson takes a 90 minute class to teach depending on the discussion you and your kids put forth.  You can, of course, break it up as you see fit.

We started the class by reading Shirley Jackson's "Charles".  If you've never read it, you find a copy here. It's a good break from the stories involving tragedy or death.  I like to have the kids read it in parts (narrator 1, narrator 2, Laurie, Mother, Father, Teacher) since we typically do a lot of individual reading activities. 

The story itself is short and fun and is a good way to teach situational irony and foreshadowing.  After we discuss these terms and we look at the clues we were given that give away the surprise ending (this is a good chance for those who figured it early to look smart by pointing out what it was that led them to see the truth).  At this point, many of the students are wandering how they missed it on the first reading. That's when we tackle how Jackson pulls this off - with narration. 

The mother is out narrator here and her view of her son contradicts elements in the story, but, being a mom, she gladly puts the blinders on and sees the best of her child and quickly dismisses any character flaws as being the result of this Charles kid.  Since she so willingly buys into it and since we have no reason to believe she is an unreliable narrator (and even more so since she does not believe herself to be one), we easily buy into her worldview.  Since she believes her child whole heartedly, we are forgiven if we miss that this kids is an intentionally unreliable narrator when retelling the events of each day to his parents.  Sure we have situational irony and foreshadowing, by the master writer here uses narration to deliver both of these in this story.

Now that they have an appreciation for Jackson, we jump in on her more famous work - "The Lottery".  At this point the students have some knowledge of our author, so may be looking for the ironic twist and try to figure it out.  I give them no warning about the story (other than it is a story that could have gotten me fired on my first year of teaching, but that is a story for a different blog post perhaps).  Since I want to do all of this in a day, I go with the old movie version (takes about 18 minutes):

The first round of discussion goes to what the point of the story is and it is rare that we get a student who off the bat realizes that this is about questioning why we do things.  If you want to hint to your students to help them find the answer, it lies in anything Old Man Warner (my hero) says.  After there has been some discussion on that front, we talk about the background here.  It was written in 1948, so people were not as open to change then as we are now.  That started with the '60s and progressed with the changing technology, but even now students can relate to groups that do not wish to let go of traditions they hold dear.  We talk about all the negative letters it got after being printed in the New Yorker and some of the disturbing reactions (people wanting to know where this took place so that they could go watch it).  

Once that is out of the way, we go for how she did it.  What technique is present here.  The answer, for me at least, is tone.  The first half of this movie has a lighthearted tone.  everyone is joking and catching up, the kids are playing, no worries in the world.  Once Old Man Warner speaks (my hero!), the tone gets more serious and increasingly gets more serious making any joke or light hearted statement seem more and more out of place. Even though we were looking for the ironic twist, we are so thrown off by this shift in tone that it amplifies the results.

After this discussion, we move to a book she is known for - The Haunting of Hill House.  Since this is a one day lesson, we don't have time to jump into the novel, but I do reel them in with this clip from the Netflix series by the same name (I know the two are very different in may ways, but the series does try to bring in the psychological horror like the book does - the ghosts react to the personal trauma the people bring to the house).  It's not too scary and no jump scares.

By the way, earlier in this episode, the boy found a hat in the house and brought it to his room, which you can see in this clip in the shadows.

Now that the students are looking for how the scene is developed, I usually have someone point out that the tension in this scene is the pacing.  The scene moves so slow and it is this that really drives the students to hold their breath like the boy in the clip.

It is almost time for the bell to ring, so we wrap it up by reminding how narration impacts the story in "Charles", tone impacts the story in "The Lottery", and pacing impacts the story in The Haunting of Hill House and they are given a challenge to start looking at how the authors achieve their greatness, not just what is the greatness achieved.

Bang!

I don't remember where I found this, but I was cleaning out my folders and ran across this image of gun shot onomatopoeias.  I imagine it might be a fun image to use in explaining the literary term 'onomatopoeia' or for a creative writing class.

Going to the tumblr site on the first panel shows this guy James Chapman has a couple of "in other languages" cartoons like this.  Check it out!

Also, while writing this post on an onomatopoeia, a memory of a video game commercial from the '90s resurfaced.  I think the message of the commercial is "Don't be an English nerd, play video games instead," but I might be wrong.  :)

Toughest Tongue Twisters

Tongue twisters are fun for using as grammar practice sentences or for teaching literary terms like alliteration, consonance, and assonance.  I found a two contenders for the title of toughest tongue twister in the English language.  

Researchers at MIT created this to be the hardest:

Pad kid poured curd pulled cod.

The Guinness Book of World Records says that last one is the hardest.  

The sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick.

The official Extreme English Teacher position is that the 'Sheik' one is far tougher than the MIT one.

Got a favorite to share or want to weigh in on these?  Leave a comment!

Similes and Supervillains

Most students know that a simile is a comparison using "like" or "as", but we more enlightened teachers also know that the comparison can be made using "than".  Most of us don't teach "than" with similes because they are not as obvious or common as the other two.

I bring this up only because I ran across on in a book recently.

"I was stiller than the men who got an eyeful of Medusa."

The phrasing is done that way because this is a crime noir novel.  In fact, if you are a superhero fan and a crime noir fan, I have a book for you!

For a guy like me, who can shrug off bullets and lift seven tons, there's no better profession than powered crime, and no greater burg to practice it in than Gold Coast City. But after ten years of tossing Buicks at heroes I wised up, took the black cape off my back, and hung out a shingle. Only instead of Dark Deeds Done Daily, this one reads Dane Curse, PI. Now I work cases for the dark denizens I was once counted among. The problems they got aren't the kind that cops care about, so I do what I can, because sometimes even the unjust deserve a little justice.  

I do not know Matt Abraham, nor get any kick back for promoting his book.  I just enjoyed the book for some fun reading. Here it is on Amazon.  

Freebie: Teaching Juxtaposition

 Juxtaposition is a fun technique that is used quite often in literature. This term is used when two things (actions, colors, settings, words, anything) are placed side by side for contrast or comparison purposes. For honors or AP students, it could be an entry point that leads into a thorough breaking down of the text.  For regular level students, it can be quite intimidating of a concept, though once explained properly, can be as easy as basic symbolism. 

That poses the problem - how to teach this effectively and easily to students?  I have a solution.  This will take anywhere from 20 to 45 minutes depending on the amount of discussion  you class is willing to put into it.  

THE PRESENTATION

If you want to make changes to it, just click FILE then MAKE A COPY.  

The presentation starts with a song.  The song used is "The Letter" from the Macbeth soundtrack.  Have students listen to the first part of the theme,  It is very harsh with the violins but tell them to wait for the piano.  Once the piano hits, it is a soft and gentle sound, made all the more so by the fact that the composer uses juxtaposition with the harsh violins.  If you've read Macbeth in your class, you can point out that this particular song is played when Lady Macbeth is introduced for the first time.  She receives Macbeth's letter and we get contrasting portrayals of her.  The first is rather harsh.  She gives her whole "unsex me" speech and reveals her first thought is to murder the king.  However, more subtly and often over looked is the fact that Lady Macbeth and Macbeth have a very loving relationship.  It is often overlooked since it is overshadowed by her power move here.  Think about this - when something big happens to Macbeth, what is the first thing he does?  He writes a letter and sends it off to his wife.  He wants her to be the first to know.  When they talk, he values her opinion.  This isn't a shallow Romeo and Juliet type deal' Lady Macbeth is his partner. his confidant. his closest advisor.

The presentation follows up with a few still images that show juxtaposition.  This should help students that are more visual learners.  Next  it shows two video examples of juxtaposition.  The first is used for horror.  It is a scene from Jaws.  The whole scene shows what should be a relaxing day at the beach, yet the whole time the sheriff is uptight and nervous - a stark comparison to the care-free activities around him.  You get other examples that are hard to miss as well.  In once scene, a child is building a sand castle and singing "Do You Know the Muffin Man?" while in the same shot a guy is frantically searching for his dog.  Then again when the shark attacks another boy and in the same shot, you see other kids happily playing in the water, blissfully unaware of the carnage right behind them. 

It's followed up with another video from Seinfeld that uses juxtaposition to show humor as poor Elaine struggles on an airplane in coach while Jerry lives it up in first class.

Finally, there are four examples of juxtaposition in text, each one a little longer and more complex than the first.  

Hope you are able to use it and enjoy it in your classroom!