Craft Lesson 5::Street Love::Reading Between the Lines

Resources:
Myers, Walter Dean. Street Love. New York: Harper Collins, 2006.

Discussion:
I want students to understand the entire depth of poetry. I want to disperse my class into pairs across the classroom to cooperatively break down the poem and find its meaning. I will have them break down the poem piece by piece, and then with two brains working as one try to read between the lines.

How To Teach It:I

I will start the class with a quick mini-lesson over the over all idea of a close reading. I will start with a short poem like "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost. I know it's very overused, but for adolescents it is a great poem to reflect on and work with. I will break each poem down line by line. I'm going to model first how to do it with the first three or so lines, and slowly work the students into it.

I will make copies of each of the poems for Street Love, and hand them out to the class. I will also hand out bookmarks that each have these questions:

What were the tools used?
What does each word mean?
What is the author trying to say?
Why does he say it?

then with the book mark they go line by line asking these questions together, discussing and taking down notes. Then the next class period I hope that they can all share what they found about each poem to the entire class. Encourage discussion, additions, and opinions on each.