The Effective Use of Figurative Language: Symbolism
The Effective Use of Figurative Language: Symbolism
Objectives
Students will examine the use of symbolism within particular selections. Students will:
- identify and analyze the use of imagery.
- add to a collection of individually chosen examples of the use of figurative language, each one identified and its effectiveness briefly analyzed.
- create together a rubric that evaluates the use of imagery and symbolism in a particular selection and in their own writing.
- demonstrate their understanding of the effective use of figurative language in fiction.
Essential Questions
- How do strategic readers create meaning from informational and literary text?
- What is this text really about?
- How does interaction with text promote thinking and response?
- Why learn new words?
- What strategies and resources do readers use to figure out unknown vocabulary?
- How do learners develop and refine their vocabulary?
- What makes clear and effective writing?
Vocabulary
- Alliteration: The repetition of initial consonant sounds in neighboring words.
- Connotative Meaning: The ideas or emotions associated with a word.
- Figurative Language: Language that cannot be taken literally because it was written to create a special effect or feeling.
- Hyperbole: An exaggeration or overstatement (e.g., I was so embarrassed I could have died.).
- Idiomatic Language: An expression peculiar to itself grammatically or that cannot be understood if taken literally (e.g., Let’s get on the ball.).
- Imagery: A word or group of words in a literary work that appeal to one or more of the senses.
- Metaphor: A comparison of two unlike things without using like or as.
- Mood: The prevailing emotions of a work or of the author in his or her creation of the work. The mood of a work is not always what might be expected based on its subject matter.
- Personification: An object or abstract idea given human qualities or human form (e.g., Flowers danced about the lawn.).
- Simile: A comparison of two unlike things, using like or as (e.g., She eats like a bird.).
- Symbolism: A device in literature in which an object represents an idea.
Duration
135–180 minutes/3–4 class periods
Prerequisite Skills
Prerequisite Skills haven't been entered into the lesson plan.
Materials
- “Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/mother-to-son/
- “A Retrieved Reformation” from Roads of Destiny by O. Henry http://fiction.eserver.org/short/a_retrieved_reformation.html
- student copies of a teacher-written personal experience (about 150–200 words) in which a symbol clearly emerges. An example, “The High Board,” is included in the Instructional Procedures.
Teachers may substitute other texts to provide a range of reading and level of text complexity.
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Instructional Procedures
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Final 03/01/2013