The following lesson was designed for an honors eleventh grade English Language Arts class during their poetry unit. This lesson focuses on understanding how symbolism and imagery are utilized in poetry and various social and personal connotations we assign to objects. Specifically, I have chosen two concepts to focus on: associations with colors and seasons. We will begin the class discussing connotations we have with various colors and seasons. Then we will read the poem “Tulips” by Sylvia Plath and discuss her use of symbolism and derive meaning from it. Lastly, I will ask students to create their own ten-line poem which I will assess formally; I will look for thoughtful use of symbolism that creates a particular image.
The following lesson was designed for an honors eleventh grade English Language Arts class during their poetry unit. This lesson was a continuation on understanding how symbolism and imagery are utilized in poetry, but with a stronger emphasis on meaning than identification. We began this class with students swapping the poems they wrote in the previous lesson above and identifying the use of symbolism and imagery to create tone and themes. Then we read the poem “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe. Lastly, I asked students to write a response to “The Raven” that specifically addressed Poe’s use of symbolism and imagery and discussed why they believe he made those particular imagery choices.
The following lesson is an activity that we did in my Honors American Literature class during our rhetoric unit. Essentially, they had to argue with me while I was giving increasingly insane or childish counterpoints in order to demonstrate what kind of common arguments would not work in their papers.