Standard 2: Reading and Writing Process

Students will use a variety of recursive reading and writing processes.

READING: Students will read and comprehend increasingly complex literary and informational texts.

 Instructional Guidance 

• Distribute copies of “I Hear America Singing.”

• Using a document camera, read “I Hear America Singing” as a class.

• Work together as a class to briefly summarize the main points of the poem and the speaker’s tone.

• Because students may confuse paraphrases and summaries, review the differences. The poetic paraphrase tries to restate every word or phrase in a new way. The goal in a paraphrase is to clarify the content by re-seeing and re-creating each word in every line. Thus, paraphrases may actually be longer than the original source (if that length makes the original easier to understand).

• Work together as a class to paraphrase the poem. 

• Distribute copies of “On the Pulse of the Morning.”  

• With partners or small groups, students should summarize and paraphrase the poem, clearly showing the different methods.

• Discuss the poem as a class, comparing it to “I Hear America Singing.”

• Distribute copies of “I, Too, Sing America.”

• Students should summarize and paraphrase the poem, clearly showing the different methods.

• Work to complete a Venn Diagram that compares and contrasts all three poems.

• Discuss what overall inference can you make about the perspectives of America expressed in these poems (synthesis).

Deeper

Acquisition 

• Have students write poems in response to one of the three poets as Hughes did to Whitman. Students should focus on tone (anger, sarcasm, humor, sadness, etc.) and emphasize their own backgrounds and life experiences through point of view.