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Teaching Similes and Metaphors With Emily Dickinson

December 10, 2015 By David Rickert Leave a Comment

I read once that a reliable indicator of a person’s intelligence is their ability to understand metaphors. I don’t know if this is true or not, but helping students understand similes and metaphors is one of the most valuable lessons we can teach them. For one thing, the English language is full of metaphors-it’s always fascinated me how often we don’t mean exactly what we say when we communicate. But unfortunately, many of our students are stuck at the “life is like a box of chocolates” stage of understanding similes and metaphors, and we can help them move beyond that. Poetry is one of the best way to do that.

I like to introduce metaphors to my students with this poem by Emily Dickinson. It’s a riddle poem, so students first have to figure out what it is from the clues that Dickinson gives us in the form of similes and metaphors. And since it’s about (SPOILER ALERT!) snow, it’s certainly timely for winter.

Here’s the poem:

It sifts from Leaden Sieves –

It powders all the Wood.

It fills with Alabaster Wool

The Wrinkles of the Road –

It makes an even Face

Of Mountain, and of Plain –

Unbroken Forehead from the East

Unto the East again –

It reaches to the Fence –

It wraps it Rail by Rail

Till it is lost in Fleeces –

It deals Celestial Vail

To Stump, and Stack – and Stem –

A Summer’s empty Room –

Acres of Joints, where Harvests were,

Recordless, but for them –

It Ruffles Wrists of Posts

As Ankles of a Queen –

Then stills it’s Artisans – like Ghosts –

Denying they have been –

So what do I ask students to do with the poem?

1. Find the similes and metaphors.

Once the students figure out that the poem is about snow, is ask them to find all the things that snow is compared to that allowed them to figure it out. It seems like a pretty easy task, but it gets complicated right away in the first two lines with an implied metaphor – a comparison where the figurative and the metaphorical are not directly stated. Snow is compared to flour (or sugar), but neither word appears. The “leaden sieves” are the clouds (another metaphor). Implied metaphors are a concept that moves beyond a limited understanding of metaphors to a more advanced concept.

2. Examine the word choice in the metaphors.

The next thing I ask students to do is consider the words that are being used to describe the snow. What kind of snowfall is Dickinson writing about? “Sifts,” “powders,” and “fills” are all gentle verbs. Also, the snow is compared to “fleece” and “ruffles.” This is a gentle snowfall and not a raging blizzard.

3. Provide a reason for the shift in tone that occurs in the fourth stanza.

However, everything changes once we get to the final stanza where we have a significant shift in tone. The last thing I like to ask students to do is identify the shift and explain which words create it. Those words are “ghosts,” and to a lesser extent, “deny they have been.” I ask the students what the difference is. I want students to come to the realization that snow not only softens the landscape, but also can uniformly cover the landscape. The shift in tone that occurs in poems is an important skill for readers to develop, as well as the understanding that rarely do poets feel only one way about their subject matter.

Of course there are other literary devices at work here – personification being the most obvious – but for a quick introduction on metaphors and similes, this poem has worked well for me.

If you’d like a FREE lesson on this poem that you can use tomorrow, click the link below. I’ve created a comic in which Emily Dickinson teaches the poem, as well as another Dickinson riddle poem that reinforces the concept of similes and metaphors. And it’s yours for free just by clicking the box!

Learning should be fun! Check out my Teachers Pay Teachers store for fun comic resources like those below.

How I Survived my First Reader’s Workshop Conference

November 11, 2015 By David Rickert 1 Comment

Using reader’s workshop in the high school English classroom is a teaching practice that has been generating a lot of buzz. Elementary teachers having been using it for years, and it has slowly made its way through the middle school into the upper grades. It’s a terrific idea: kids pick books they’d like to read and work on a variety of tasks involving those books instead of reading class novels that are set at a specific level that may not be appropriate for students’ lexile level. It sounds like a logistical nightmare for someone like me who favors an orderly and predictable classroom routine (everyone’s doing something different!). However, the promise of a classroom filled with kids actively engaged in reading and writing was too good to pass up.

To say that I was building a plane in midair is putting it mildly. I had some great resources – Room 213 has some great products and I purchased her reader’s notebook to get started. Our building has a well stocked media center, so the kids were easily able to find books that interested them (or were short enough to inflict minimal pain.) However, there was one stumbling block:

The conference.

Student conferences are something in twenty years I have never been able to master. I’m sure my problems are the same as everyone else:

How do I get through 28 kids in 50 minutes?
What can I have my students doing that will keep them occupied and won’t supply constant interruptions?
What will I talk about? And what if we can’t come up with anything to talk about?

I had no good answer to these questions, so I put off the conferences for a couple of weeks hoping that something ingenious would come to mind. Every day I thought about doing them, I found some compelling reason for why I could put them off- the kids needed my help with whatever they were working on, they hadn’t read enough yet, I hadn’t had enough tea to get me through it. I never tried to structure the period so I could conference because I wasn’t sure I could do it successfully, and I shared every teacher’s fear of spending a period looking like you have absolutely no idea what you’re doing.

However, I found myself with three extra days before the rest of the freshmen teachers were ready to start our research project, so I had a good stretch of time that I could fill with reader’s workshop activities. And I knew that I had the perfect time to do conferencing if I just set my mind to it.

Sometimes things align for what you want to do. My students had been working on a suspenseful narrative earlier in the week and I was able to get the laptop carts at the last minute. This gave students two options for the period: work on their stories, or work on their reader’s notebook, both of which I knew they could do with minimal help.

I also had the idea that conferences would go better if I did them in groups. We already had groups set from an activity from the previous week, so I kept those groups and called them up to a table I set in the middle of the room for our chats. Completely on accident, I created an ideal environment for what I wanted to do.

And guess what? It went really well.

It turns out kids really like to talk about books if they like what they are reading. I asked every student about the conflict in the book and gave them something I wanted them to look for in the pages they read between Friday and Tuesday. Initially I wanted to give every student the same thing to look for, but as I became more comfortable talking to them, I began to ask them to engage with the book differently depending on what they were reading. Most of all, I communicated I was interested in their book and what they had to say. I was also about to almost get through everyone in the period. I only had a few students left that I had to conference with on Friday. Not ideal, but something I can work on.

For those who are thinking of using reader’s workshop and conferences in the classroom, here are some tips:

Start small.

When I asked kids to fill out the reader’s notebook, I gave them too much to do. It would be better to focus on three things than six. This will help them get the drift of what they are doing, and less for you to manage. It’s easier to get more complex as you go on.

Make sure the students have the right activity to do while you’re conferencing.

During the second set of conferences, I asked the kids to read or finish up their reader’s notebook activities while I was conferencing. However, most of them were done with their notebook, and reading wasn’t enough to keep them occupied and quiet without being off task. Conferencing is counterproductive if kids aren’t doing meaningful work when they aren’t in a conference, so you have to pick a task that will keep them busy and minimize the risk of off-task behavior.

Don’t schedule conferences too close together.

Most of my students had not read enough from Friday to Tuesday to answer the question I had posed. It seems like a week or a little less is optimal.

Conferencing for a period is fairly exhausting.

You have to think on your feet a lot, which can be draining if you are doing it period after period. Be prepared. Don’t have all your classes doing conferences on the same day.

As much as I liked it, I still have some lingering questions about reader’s workshop. I still don’t know how to build rigor into it. I don’t know whether the books they choose are making them better readers, or whether I can ask thoughtful, engaging questions that force them to think about the book at a higher level. I’m also not sure that some of the books that they pick allow a deep engagement with theme. Perhaps this will be the subject of another post.

Learning should be fun! Check out my Teachers Pay Teachers store for fun comic resources like those below.

Suspenseful Stories in Langauge Arts: Writing the Story

October 21, 2015 By David Rickert Leave a Comment

Writing suspenseful stories in the Language Arts classroom can be a fun way to teach students how stories work. In previous posts I shared model texts that I use to teach kids how suspense works. In another post I discussed how you can teach literary devices while creating the suspenseful story. In this post we’ll put it all together and write a story!

First, though, I’d like to share another resource that you can use to discuss suspense. It’s a short CGI film called “Alma” about a little girl that visits a toy store that isn’t what it seems. It’s appropriate for any age, yet suitable creepy. The less said about it before you show it the better – you want kids to be thinking about the moments where suspense happens.

Now on the the story!

The suspenseful story assignment

Here are the guidelines that I give students for the assignment. Feel free to add any other literary devices that you’d like. FlashFictionAssignment

You’ll notice that I set a word limit on them by asking them to write a piece of flash fiction that should be 500 words or less. I give them this boundary because it gives them a length to manage and forces them to think creatively about how to fill the space. In general, if I don’t give them a length requirement, they will lose control of the narrative.

There are plenty of examples of flash fiction out there, and I spent a lot of time finding stories that were a suitable length. Many of them were entertaining, but too short. Some of them were not appropriate. Some were just poorly written.

Three-Minute Fiction

However, I found the best source for great flash fiction on NPR’s Three-Minute Fiction contest page. They haven’t had the contest since 2103, but all of the best stories can be found here, and it’s a treasure trove of stories that you can use. The trick is finding suspenseful stories, though, and I had the best luck with the contest in which a character finds something that they have no intention of returning. They are a little shorter than the required length, but nevertheless terrific examples for what you can accomplish in a few words. Be careful! These are addictive reading.

Here are the stories that I used. Be sure to preview them: some aren’t appropriate for all ages. But there are plenty more on the site to choose from.

Picked Clean

Litter

Snowflake

The Art of Compromise

Ghost Words

Here’s the link to all of the finalists for this contest. There are some other good ones there too.

One Last Thing

One last tip: here’s a great infographic on the physical effects of fear. I use this so that students can describe what is happening to their main character as they encounter their suspenseful situation.

Happy writing!

Don’t keep your students in suspense while waiting for fun lessons! Check out my store for great cartoon products like the one on the left to keep your kids engaged.

Writing Suspenseful Stories in Language Arts: Literary Devices

October 13, 2015 By David Rickert 1 Comment

In a previous post I discussed using model texts like short stories, poems, and non-fiction as model texts for writing suspenseful stories. In this post I’ll address using suspenseful story writing to teach literary devices. In the final post I will cover how we write the story.

Before that, however, here’s a YouTube clip that helps students understand how suspense works. It’s the famous scene from Jurassic Park in which the T. Rex attacks the children in the car. You get to see the clip with the suspense edited out and the original clip from the movie. I encourage kids to pay attention to their body as they watch it. They should “feel” the suspense in the longer clip. It’s an effective example of how you can withhold information from your audience – in this case, what the T. Rex looks like.

Now I’d like to share a few strategies I use when I teach “The Storm” – in this case, personification and flashback.

Literary Devices in Suspenseful Stories

While students are reading the story, I give them the following instructions (done in a spooky font):

Mark any instances where suspense occurs because the author:

Pauses on microscopic details around the points of highest intensity.
Presents the character with a kind of choice or challenge and helping us to wonder how the character will decide.
Makes you wait for the outcome longer than you want to.

Also mark instances of physical reactions to situations described by the author.

Personification

After students read the story and discuss it, we look at the use of personification to describe the storm. I give them an example: “The wind shook the house in its giant grip.” They then find three more examples of personification from the story. They then write their own sentences describing a storm using personification so that they start to use the device in their own writing. You could, of course, do this with any literary device (similes and metaphors would be good candidates) with any story you choose.

The reason why I asked them to take note of physical reactions will be covered in my next post.

Flashback

The next thing we address is flashback. Most students can tell you what a flashback is, but they may not be able to write one. For the story I ask them to pick a point in the story where they would like to include a brief flashback and write one. They may provide more information on why the woman is so scared, or they may want to explore the husband’s past or their relationship. Whatever they do, it can’t just be a character remembering something, nor can it be part of the story simply told from another character’s point of view. If you would like the worksheet that I use for this part of the assignment, email me and I’ll send it to you (you’ll also be added to my email list.)

Dialogue

Finally, I always want my students to know how to use dialogue and punctuate it correctly. For this I use Calvin and Hobbes cartoons and have them recreate them as dialogue. Gocomics.com has Calvin and Hobbes strips you can use.

Don’t keep your students in suspense while waiting for fun lessons! Check out my store for great cartoon products like the one on the left to keep your kids engaged.

Suspenseful Story Writing in Language Arts: Model Texts

October 11, 2015 By David Rickert 6 Comments

Students love to write suspenseful stories, especially around Halloween. They can be a fun diversion in a secondary Language Arts classroom which can sometimes be dominated by essays. But if done properly, they can also teach students a great deal about how stories are constructed using suspense and imagery to create a particular mood. In this post I will address how I teach students about the technique of creating suspense and some of the texts I’ve used to model it. In the second post I will explain how I use writing suspense to teach literary devices. In the third post I will cover how we write the story.

First off, I allow students to write a suspenseful non-fiction story about something that happened to them, or I let them write a fiction piece. However, I tell them they cannot write a horror story. There should be no blood or violence, even implied. Too often students fall into basic horror story tropes that they don’t do particularly well. Also, as you’ll find out in a later post, they aren’t writing a story that is a piece of flash fiction (or three-minute fiction) rather than a full length story. You can certainly do that; however, I find that students need some boundaries or they’ll write too much. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but many students tend to lose control of their writing that way.

The Basics of Suspense

You can do a search for “how to create suspense in writing” and find a lot of good handouts like this one. But the idea is pretty simple: you make your reader wait for something they want to know. There are a couple of ways to do this.

Slow the story down. Many young writers get to an exciting point in a story and speed up the action. The trick is to slow it down by adding details. One way you can do this is to get inside the character’s head and describe what they are feeling. You can also describe in great detail the setting, the slow walk to open the door, and various other things.
Withhold information. Don’t immediately tell your reader what was in the box. Make them wait. Linger over the person’s expression first. Send them out of the room and out of the house. Have them scream “thank you!” or, “Why would you think I would like this?”
Put in a hard decision. Give the character a tough decision to make and have them weigh in their mind what to do. Too many students give the character a choice but then solve it too quickly. Make them weigh the pros and cons by getting inside the character’s head. Better yet, give them two undesirable outcomes and have them choose from those.

I have a couple of model texts that I use with students that get them thinking about suspense. I try to use several different genres as well to help them understand how suspense can be used in a variety of settings. The links to the stories are at the end of the post.

“The Listeners” – Walter de la Mare

This is a frequently anthologized poem with an air of mystery about it. Suspense is created because the traveler knocks on the door a couple of times and receives no answers, and there’s some ghostly listeners as well. Why is he there? What’s the deal with the cryptic message he delivers?

“The Storm” – McKnight Malmar

I love using this story to teach suspense. For one thing, it’s the type of story that students would like to be able to write. A woman is home alone during a storm and believes that someone is looking in the house. She goes to the basement and finds a dead body. I have the students read and annotate looking for examples of the ways to create suspense described above. The part where the woman goes down into the basement and discovers the body is a textbook case of how to create suspense. I usually ask my students what would happen if we simply read that she went downstairs, opened the trunk, and found the body. There’s an awful lot of great imagery in the story as well.

“The Ravine” – Ray Bradbury

This story is a part of the novel Dandelion Wine and describes an older woman taking a shortcut across a ravine to get home, all with the threat of The Lonely One lurking in the background. This is another example of a story that kids would like to be able to write and works particularly well with middle school students. I tend to use “The Storm” over this one because to be honest, it’s a little corny and a little too long. But it would still work well. The chapter that makes up the story is on page 124 in the link. There’s also a pretty cool radio adaptation of the story here.

“The Dare” – Roger Hoffman

This is a nonfiction piece about a boy who is dared to jump in between the wheels of a moving train, stay there for a minute, and roll out the other side. It’s a great example of how you can create suspense as we find out whether or not the narrator will succeed. This is a quick newspaper article.

These selections are the ones that I use in class as models for suspense. In the next post I talk about how to use these works to teach literary devices.