Images and Symbols in Poetry

In the play "A Child Shall Lead" we learned that past events can help us grow and change our behavior in the future.

The suitcases in this play were symbols that were meant to mean something deeper. The suitcases represented the lives of many people who lived in Terezin during the Holocaust.

Poems often contain images and symbols that help us to think deeply about our lives.
Here are a couple poems about a child's memory of their father.

The Secret Heart by, Robert Coffin

My Papa's Waltz by, Theodore Roethke


What images or pictures come to your mind as your reading?
Are there symbols in the poem that are supposed to represent something deeper?
What are some images of your family, or friends?
What symbols could you use to show your feelings about them?

Persuasive Essays

Make a positive change in our school.
When you hear the world persuasive, what do you think about?
When is a time when you wanted to persuade someone about something?

Persuade- to convince, or change someone's thinking by giving a reasonable argument

Here is a link to a video and essay that shows how one school hopes to persuade others about getting more resources for their library.

action research project

The Teachers Leadership Network Insitute is sponsoring my action research project on the effects of technology on middle school students writing stamina. I am interested on any teachers or students ideas on experiences you may have had with this topic.

Graduation Poems

What are some of our ideas for graduation poem topics? Can we find sources of inspiration online for graduation? What strategies do we think would work well for this type of poem? I suggested an Ode or a Metaphor style. Do you think this would work well, why or why not?

Reading Projects

"I can't set this book down!" Have you felt this way about a book you've been reading lately? It'd be fun to hear about:

1. Conclusions or Inferences that we're making as we read
2. Quotations from our books and our thoughts about these quotes
3. Personal connections to the book and how the stories relate to us.

Family Experience: Symbols

Share a short story/poem about how a family member affected you as a son/daughter?

symbols

One symbol in our pop culture is that of fast food restuarants like BK!

What other symbols are we familiar with and what do the communicate/represent?

The Secret Heart

The Secret Heart by, Robert Coffin uses symbols to show feelings and reactions. Many of our bloggers have talked about poems they enjoyed and symbols that helped us communicate messages. The Ode poem was one poem in which we used symbols to represent our topic.

What symbols do you see being used in The Secret Heart and what do they show the readers?

What symbols can we find in our world today to help us communciate?


http://www.literacyrules.com/Weekly_Poem/thesecretheart.htm

Poetry Books

Metaphors create pictures in our mind. Young adult author T.A. Barron, gives the flame metaphor: A flame burns brightly in each of us as unique people with moments of heroism.

In our blog, Albert described the metaphor of the walking on bare floor with no carpet, being a metaphor for the struggles of life.
As we wrote our poem books what poetry strategies did you find to be most effective for you?
Which poems of your classmates did you enjoy the most? Why?

Poem Themes

One of the questions we discussed was: What does the metaphor in Mama to Son show?
I think it was great how several responses used words from the poem to support their thinking. What are some other examples of metaphor or simile from these poems? Explain using evidence from the poems what emotion these parts show?

Vivian also developed a question about what made the mom want to say this to her son. Several bloggers commented on the emotions in other poems as well. What are some other emotions we notice?

Poems

Silver


Mama to Son


Ode to Enchanted Light


Haiku's for the 1988 Summer Olympics

Poem Questions and Responses

What poem terms have you used in your poem books so far?
Can you find the poems below online?

Silver by, Walter De La Mare
Ode to Enchanted Light by, Pablo Neruda
Haikus from the 1988 Winter Olympics
Mama to Son by, Langston Hughes

Post some questions and responses to these poems to help us understand these poems more deeply.

Writing an Ode

When we think of odes we usually think of the Subway commercial were Michael Strahan is talking about how good subway melts are. This week in language arts we will be writing an ode. Please post your odes as a comment to this post. There are lots of odes to be found on www.poetry.org Kudos to Ms. Katz for recommending this cool website on our blog last week. was recommended by Ms. Katz on her commment last week. Many of our bloggers have also told about a favorite poem which can be found on this site too.

What is your favorite Haiku Poem? Share one of your favorite poems.

Welcome

Welcome to Swift School's Class of 2010 Poetry Blog!

The 8th Grade Graduating Class of 2010 is excited about writing and reading poetry.
This blog is a tool we are using for class discussion and deepening our understanding about poems. Please feel free to post a response to questions, or comments made by our student bloggers.
We are experiementing with blogging as an interactive tool for sharing our poetry reading, responses to poems, and poetry writing.

Below are some questions to get us started:

1. What is one of your favorite poems, or favorite genres of poetry?

2. We have studied Haiku Poetry. Which of the "Haiku for the Olympics" poems on page 864, do you like best? Why?

3. Why do we think author's use alliteration in their poems or writing? In the poem Silver by, Walter de la Mare (Page 868) What examples of alliteration do you see? How does this contribute to the mood of the poem?