I'm teaching a 6th-grade Special-Ed Language Arts class for the first time this year, and I've started a unit on figurative language and it's use in poetry. The students are fairly high functioning, but I'm having difficulty locating enough appropriate examples of figurative language poems for illustration. I've asked the school's media specialist for help but I'd also appreciate any assistance you can provide.
Thanks in advance,
Joe
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/28/2007 08:04AM by hpesoj.
Joe, some of my favorites are contained here: [falcon.jmu.edu] />
Many of the links on that website do not work, but most of the poems listed are available on the web. William Blake and Lewis Carrol immediately come to mind as writers of figurative poems, but one of my all time favorites is this one by Carl Sandburg:
FOG
by: Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
Les
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/28/2007 01:46PM by les712.
As you're probably aware, song lyrics are good sources of figurative language. Consider these
C.C. Rider
Riders on the Storm
A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall
Puff the Magic Dragon
etc.
What about this poem by Emily Dickinson?
I like to see it lap the miles,
And lick the valleys up,
And stop to feed itself at tanks;
And then, prodigious, step
Around a pile of mountains,
And, supercilious, peer
In shanties by the sides of roads;
And then a quarry pare
To fit its sides, and crawl between,
Complaining all the while
In horrid, hooting stanza;
Then chase itself down hill
And neigh like Boanerges;
Then, punctual as a star,
Stop--docile and omnipotent--
At its own stable door.
Les
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/28/2007 04:34PM by les712.
Les:
The Sanburg and Dickinson poems are good examples of personification and I've used them already. I'll give the link a try, but as you say, a lot of links are no longer active. I've run into that before. I'd still like to get a book geared to pre-teens with illustrations of most figures of speech. Thanks for your help.
Joe
You might try some of these Joe: [www.hclib.org] />
or these:
(Click on search for a reading list.) here: [www.cde.ca.gov] />
Les