Teaching poetry and poetic analysis is a challenging part of the ELA teacher's job. This side deck is an approachable way for teachers and students to cover the elements of poetry and practice analysis skills with a wide variety of poems.
Take charge of your poetry instruction by using The Big Six to invite students into an unthreatening, curiosity-driven conversation. The Big Six is a tool designed to help students engage with all kinds of poems, analyze them, and make connections to the other texts in your curriculum.
This product provides a 4-6 slide minilesson with direct instruction for each of the six elements. Each minilesson defines the elements of the Big Six, provides a checklist for examining that element, and also provides a sample poem to use for analysis.
THIS PRODUCT INCLUDES:
The Mini-lesson Slide Deck: 40 pages of detailed notes and examples
The Student Notes Workbook: Designed specifically to coordinate with the slide deck
Charlotte Danielson Lesson Template: Using this for an upcoming observation? I've started your observation paperwork for you!
HOW TO USE THIS PRODUCT:
Teach The Big Six elements one at a time or all at once
Teach each poetry element of The Big Six with several poems to use for practice before moving to the next element
Use any poem of your choice for the lesson and then use The Big Six for stations
Assign students to small groups to study a poem focusing on 1-2 elements of The Big Six. Bring everyone back together for a full class discussion afterward.
Ask students to write formal poetry analysis essays using The Big Six as the foundation for each paragraph's analysis of the poem
If you're the kind of teacher that believes students learn better through experience, discussion, writing, and engaging with one another, then ditch the worksheets and text book versions of poetry instruction and lean on The Big Six to guide you through authentic experiences with poetry and your students.
WHAT TEACHERS ARE SAYING:
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐: "I'm a rare English teacher that doesn't really enjoy teaching poetry because it is so abstract for the students. This set of materials made it so much easier! Thanks!"
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐: "This is SO incredibly helpful and easy to use! The poems that Amanda selected to teach each of these poetry analysis skills are perfect, and the highlighted and annotated poems are so focused and will help remind me to focus the analysis rather than try to analyze everything. This resource would be a great opening series of mini-lessons for the beginning of a school year or poetry unit. Thanks, as always, Amanda!"
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐: "I LOVE THIS RESOURCE! Once you (and your students) get the hang of thinking of the Big Six as a starting place in the conversation of poetry, this is such a useful tool to use in discussing poetry! We applied this with a variety of poetry pieces, used it for analysis-based assessments, and even used it in reading The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo as we dove into the verse used to present the story. The presentation is thorough and provides clear instructions for educators and students on how to use this resource."
Mud and Ink Teaching
Hi! I'm Amanda and this is my passion - sharing, collaborating, and designing amazing curriculum for creative, innovative teachers. I hope you love what you buy here and tell me all about it! Don't forget to leave FEEDBACK. It is always appreciated!
The Big Six is a tool that I developed in graduate school to help teachers take a consistent, rigorous, and focused approach to teaching poetry analysis. When teaching poetry, the goal for teachers is simple: GET OUT OF THE WAY. The worst damage we can do as teachers is setting the stage for teacher-led and teacher-dictated conversations about poems, what they mean, and how they should be interpreted. Yes, there are ways that students can veer of into wildly off-base territory, but for the most part, if the anaysis can be anchored by a few key concepts, most students are more than capable of discussing and thinking their way through a poem.
The Big Six components are meant to be entry points, or doors, into analyzing a poem: students can enter from any place they choose or feel most comfortable. Let’s say your students just read a poem by Ada Limon. One student might be curious about the title’s relevance and impact on the rest of the poem, another student might be laser-focused on the use of color imagery, and yet another student might have picked up on some of the themes suggested in the subtext of the piece. Now, those three students have three different places to start: title, tools, and theme.
The following poems can be used in a four-step process:
1). Read and enjoy
2). Analyze and discuss verbally with the Big Six
3). Write about the piece using the Big Six to guide analysis
4). Imitate the poem and students practice finding their writer's voice
"My Honest Poem" by Rudy Francisco
"Forget Your New Year's Resolution" by Prince EA
