EOC Review: Poetry and Annotations

For the past few days, we have been reviewing annotation and analysis to prepare for the reading portion of the STAAR. Specifically, we have been looking at the genre of poetry.

Poetry is convenient for practicing analysis and annotation skills because it's shorter, they are sometimes humorous, and they allow for a wide range of interpretations by the reader.

Many of us may feel nervous about reading and analyzing poetry in fear that we will be "wrong." While poetry does take a lot of mental energy to interpret, it doesn't necessarily mean that the meaning is any harder to determine. As long as you can support yourself with text evidence and explain yourself clearly, you cannot be "wrong" when analyzing poetry.

We began by looking at a poem called "Dating Myself" by a poet named Poetri. You can see the video of him performing it below along with a copy of the poem itself.





We began our annotations by numbering the lines and counting the stanzas. This helps to give the reader a quick reference point when searching for text evidence or answering questions over the poem.

Stanzas are like poetic paragraphs. They are usually denoted by a gap or a line break. We didn't see any of those in "Dating Myself," so we concluded that there was only ONE large stanza.

Some people assume that poems are only poems because they rhyme. NOT TRUE! Poems do not HAVE to rhyme. Some of them do, though, just not in the way we expect. Some of them have internal rhymes. "Dating Myself" had a few internal rhymes, which we labeled on the poem itself.

Rhymes and other sound devices are used as attention grabbers, or even to accentuate how a poem should be HEARD. Just like stanzas, they are used deliberately by the poet to try and draw the reader's attention to the deeper message by making certain words, phrases, or lines stand out more than others.

Next, we moved on to repetition. Repetition can happen anywhere in a poem. While looking at "Dating Myself," we noticed many of the words he repeats are:

• I
• Myself
• No
• Like
• Man/Guy
• Women/Girl

From instances of repetition, we can start to see the thematic subjects emerge from a poem. Based on what we found, it seems like Poetri might be trying to express something about himself, possibly how much he likes himself or others like him. The repetition of the word "no" may imply that he is uncertain or is rejecting the way people see him or how he sees himself.

We then moved on to examining the tone of the piece. Every class had a different response, and this is for the same reason that you cannot be "wrong" when analyzing poetry. Everyone sees this text a little differently! There were some overlaps, as you can see in the scans of the notes below, but ultimately, each class had a slightly different perspective on the piece.

We began by circling words we saw that had strong emotional meaning, words like "fatigued" and "consumed" and "amaze."

Overall, we found that while Poetri starts his poem with a tone of uncertainty and frustration, he ends with an attitude of determination and confidence. His decision to date himself - to appreciate himself for who he is rather than wonder what it is he's lacking - is what makes him confident and, ultimately, more attractive to the opposite sex.

This helped lead us to determine the theme of the poem. Some subjects we identified within this piece were:

• Dating
• Confidence
• Self-worth
• Self-love
• Relationships
• Insecurity

This helped guide us to our theme. Every class had a different theme, especially depending on which gender we focused on. You can see some of them in the scans below.

Lastly, we looked at how poets sometimes use non-standard English in a poem, especially in modern poetry. Ultimately, we just wanted to show how it is sometimes OKAY to break the standard grammar rules, as long as it is done with PURPOSE.

On block day, we are going to independently practice analyzing poetry. We developed a list of things to annotate for based on the various questions that have been asked in the past on the STAAR. I know it's a lot, so I decided to do it on my own with a poem of my choosing, "High School Training Ground" by Malcolm London. You can see my annotations and the video below

Yes, I want your paper to look that messy afterwards. Thinking is messy. Thinking is chaotic. Our brains are filled with nerves and synapses like wild vines in the Amazon Rainforest, not neat file folders and catalogued memories. 

Watch out! Ms. Hamman's being extra again!

So, you can see what I want you to annotate for below, along with the 4 poems you can choose from. JUST CHOOSE ONE. You may do more than one for extra credit if you wish.

Now, please, read this and take heed: FOLLOW THE STEPS. Don't try to do everything at once! You will get overwhelmed and frustrated. Do ONE THING at a time. We deliberately ordered them to build on one another. And don't SKIP steps. That's a good way to forget to do them later and then lose points. 

If you need help choosing from these poems, here's a quick break-down:

• "Still I Rise" by Maya Angelou - If you are feeling sassy and confident, this is the poem for you!
• "To My Favorite..." by Billie Collins - A feel-good letter from father to daughter. For those who are sentimental or need faith in humanity restored
• "Spring in the Classroom" by Mary Oliver - A poem that starts off complaining about school, but turns into an intriguing scandal
• "First Period" by Kevin Derrig - For those days when you just feel like nothing is going right and you want people to understand why you're frustrated

We will complete these annotations in class and they will be due by the end. 

Revising and Editing Practice + Multiple Choice Practice

Today, we began our STAAR prep and practice over revising and editing.

We've been working on revising and editing all year and applying the skills we've learned to our essay, so the purpose of our practices this week is less about learning new skills and more about choosing the right skills to solve the problems we may encounter on the STAAR.

First, we watched the video below that explains the difference between revising and editing because some people thing that revising and editing are the same thing! Can you believe it?!

Actually, revising and editing focus on different aspects of the essay and even utilize different tools and resources.

(We stopped the video at about 1:22 as the rest of the information only relates to research papers)



Then, as a class, we made a list of the differences between revising and editing. Here are the examples below.



Notice that revision is more about large-scale changes. It's about making the essay better as a whole. For revising, the tools you may want to use could include:

• An outline! (If you made one...and you should have.)
• A highlighter
• An eraser
• Scrap paper (to write out new ideas, to rewrite new sentences, to rearrange paragraphs)
• Your knowledge of the purpose of the genre and of the prompt you are writing for

When you revise, you may find yourself changing large chunks of your essay. That's okay! That's the whole point! Revising is hard, because it requires you to think of your essay not just as a bunch of separate sentences that are squished together on the page, but as a single thread of thought that you must expertly weave into a tapestry of effective communication.

Yeah, yeah, I know, I'm being extra again. :)

Editing is about small-scale changes. It's more about the nitty-gritty. Ultimately, editing is easier because it is about making small changes within individual sentences. The tools  you may use in editing is:

• A dictionary (it is more helpful than you think!)
• Your knowledge of sentence structure, grammar, punctuation, and capitalization (and maybe parts of speech) (all of this should be in your writing folder or your class binder, by the way!)

Editing will make your essay look good, not necessarily sound good. An essay that has been edited but not revised will look beautiful, but say nothing at all. That is why we use BOTH to make our essays effective.

But today, we aren't going to be revising or editing our writing. Instead, we are going to be practicing using our knowledge of editing and revising to determine the correct answer to STAAR formatted problems.

To start, we need to talk about how to tell the difference between revising questions and editing questions.

On the STAAR test, revising and editing are both lumped together in the same section. The only way to quickly and accurately identify if it's an editing passage or a revising passage is to READ THE DIRECTIONS!

The directions on STAAR for revising passages

The directions on STAAR for editing passages

Yep, they tell you in the directions which skill they are going to be assessing!

STAAR is ultimately a test of skill and stamina. 5 hours is a LONG time to sit and test! And we know revising is a more difficult skill than editing. Therefore, we don't want to end up wasting energy trying to apply our knowledge of revision to an editing question and vice versa.

For our in-class practice today, we determined it was an editing practice.



That means I really don't have to waste time reading the whole essay, so instead, I skip straight to the questions and only highlight the specific sentences the questions ask about!

And, of course, I made sure to grab my handy dandy dictionary!

In class, we went through and modeled the thinking process for each question in this packet. Here, I will only be doing that for one question.

STAAR questions are usually written to follow a specific format: 2 answer choices are obviously wrong or have a serious flaw, 1 answer choice is close to being correct or seems correct on the surface, and 1 answer choice is flat out the right one.

Looking at A, I can say pretty confidently that A could be the correct answer. "Filed" doesn't seem like it is the word the writer was looking for. It should probably be changed to "filled."

But what if it's supposed to be a fishing term? Hmm...let's check the other answer choices just to make sure.

B might also be right, but only if the word after water - "and" - is acting as a FANBOYS to make a compound sentence. But that would mean that both clauses on either side of the word "and" are independent clauses. But if I look at them, the second phrase after "and" is missing a subject, which means it isn't an independent clause, so it doesn't need a comma.

This means B is incorrect.

Looking at C, I can say that answer choice is incorrect as well, because the "it" is referring to the fish that the writer caught, but the fish is already mentioned in the sentence. Adding "it" would make the sentence repetitive, so C is incorrect.

Answer choice D has me uncertain. I'm not sure if the word "red-bellied" needs a hyphen or not. So, I referred to my dictionary to see if maybe I could find it.

There isn't an entry for "red-bellied," but there IS a definition for red-faced and red-handed. Both refer to parts of the body, so it seems like it would be grammatically acceptable. So I can say that D is also incorrect.

Therefore, answer choice A must be correct.

Seem tedious and extra?

Maybe, but it is important! STAAR questions want to see if you have MASTERED a skill, not just learned a little about it but can't remember the specifics. There will be answer choices that seem right at first glance (like answer choice B) and answer choices that you may not be completely certain about (like answer choice D), so it's best to try to prove why your answer is right and all the others are wrong!

Doing this can also help you eliminate an answer choice such as "Make no change." If you can prove that one of the other answer choices is grammatically correct, then you can be certain that "Make no change" is not a correct answer!

On block day, you will be working with a partner to create a how-to guide about how to select the write answer choice to ONE question from our next in-class multiple choice practice.