Simple instructions — the starter — great them when they enter the classroom.

Complete: “Poetry is…”. Write at least five facts about poetry. Then complete “Poetry isn’t…” and write five more things poetry isn’t.

They get started scribbling a list, a list we will share and debrief once I’m done checking roll and making sure I have all my materials for the day’s work in order.

Then the poem: “Because You Asked about the Line Between Prose and Poetry” by Howard Nemerov.

Sparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzle
That while you watched turned to pieces of snow
Riding a gradient invisible
From silver aslant to random, white, and slow.

There came a moment that you couldn’t tell.
And then they clearly flew instead of fell.

After reading a couple of informational texts about how to read a poem, students try their hand at Nemerov’s analogy:

prose : poetry :: sleet : snow

It’s slow going at first, for it’s such a strange poem for eighth graders. “It claims it’s going to be talking about poetry and prose in the title,” one student complains, “and then it’s all this stuff about birds and rain and snow.”

Tomorrow I will model the steps of interpretation, relying heavily on the questions and steps in the two texts about reading poetry they went over today, with the hope that they’ll be able to do it for themselves, at some point.