How to Write a Poetry Analysis Essay Ap Lit

As an AP Lit teacher, one of the biggest challenges that I face at my school is helping students feel comfortable with poetry analysis. Since poetry isn't much of a focus in the lower grades at our high school, I have to find ways to help ease my students' anxiety about digging into the complexities of a poem. By the time they get to their senior year, most of my class is pretty comfortable with reading, writing, and discussing novels, so I try to use this as my entry point to poetry analysis. The lesson that follows can work as a standalone introduction to poetry, but I typically use it as a way to incorporate some companion texts that bring a fresh perspective to whichever novel we're reading at the time.

At the beginning of the year, I emphasize that poetry analysis needs to be a collaborative process, especially early on. I tell them to think of the poem as a puzzle they will try to put together as a team. Just knowing they don't have to decode the text on their own is enough to put most kids at ease, but without a structure to guide their discussion, the level of analysis can be all over the place depending on the strengths of each group. This shared google document  lets my students work together on a set of poems and gives them a framework for better understanding each of their themes. Usually, I print the poems for them for annotations, but I like to have them fill out the chart together using the chromebooks if they are available. The electronic document seems to require students to work together in a more meaningful way, so if it's available, I would recommend using the technology.

This document that I linked above includes a set of poems from an AP Summer Institute last June with a focus on family. They are a perfect set of poems to start the year as they are accessible for students who are just getting started with poetry analysis. However, the poems can be changed to fit whichever big ideas, themes, or levels of complexity you need for your students as long as they all focus on similar themes.

The Setup

To get the most out of this activity, I use a strategy called a Jigsaw . Students are grouped into teams of 4-6, depending on the size of the class; each group should have as close to the same number of students as possible. I then assign each group one of the poems from the set so that every team has a different poem they will become the experts of. After the "expert" groups have read, discussed, and responded to their poems, I regroup them so that every student in their new (jigsaw) groups is an expert of a different poem that they are now responsible to teach to their new partners. The easiest way that I've found to make the switch is to have the students number off in their original "expert" groups then regroup according to their number (i.e. ones in the back left corner, twos in the back right corner, etc.).  If we're working on one shared google doc, the rest of the "jigsaw" group will be able to look at the notes that the "expert" groups wrote about their poems. Also, having the common document is a great way to catch up students who are absent on the day of this activity.

The Questions

Once students are in their groups, I have them read and annotate the poem individually for several minutes to prepare for the group discussion. There are several great strategies to teach students how to annotate a poem, but one that works well for me is the TPCASTT method. Once students have read and annotated on their own, they discuss five questions as a group that gradually lead them to a deeper understanding of the text. As the groups discuss each of the questions, they record their answers on the shared google doc (or if you're working without technology, their own packets). The questions should be addressed in the following order:

1. What is literally happening in the poem?

This is a great question to start with any poem because it is easy for students to paraphrase what happens. There is no pressure to get into the depths of the poem yet, and before they can get to analysis, students need to have a strong understanding of what happens at the literal level.

2. What do you know about the speaker?

This question requires students to start making inferences about the poem without having to jump all the way to theme. Before they can start to draw conclusions about the meaning of a poem, they need to understand who the speaker is, who they are speaking to, and what the situation is that has brought them to this moment.

3. How does the poet feel about the situation or the topic in this poem?

First, it is important for students to understand the difference between the speaker and the writer and that they aren't always the same person. Once they understand this, students will start noticing how the poet has shaped the situation as well as the speaker. These observations inevitably lead them to a discussion about tone and the tools a writer uses to create the tone. When they get to this level of discussion, they are ready to start talking about the purpose behind the decisions writers make and how they function together to create meaning in a text.

4. Where do you feel the poem and what tools does the poet use to make you feel that way?

What I like about this question is that it forces students to think about their emotional response to the words on the page. An easy way to get students thinking about how the poem affects them emotionally, which I picked up from a twitter post by Scott Bayer , is to have them choose between their head (it makes you think), their heart (it makes you happy or sad), or their stomach (it hits you like a punch to the gut). Once they can identify the various ways they feel the poem, I ask them to pick out specific lines or even the literary devices that make them feel this way.

5. What is the theme of the poem and how is it presented to us?

Finally, I ask students to write a thesis statement that includes the meaning of the poem and how it is created over the course of the text. The first time students get to question five, be ready to check in with each group to make sure they are on the right track. Some of them may need help stringing all the pieces together. But what I find happens most often is that the discussions leading up to this question have been rich enough that students are typically ready to start drawing some conclusions about the meaning of the work as a whole.

The Debrief

After students have discussed and filled out the chart in their "expert" groups and explained their learning to their "jigsaw" groups, it is important to put some kind of closure on the activity. Maybe this could be a whole class discussion about the conversation that is created by putting these poems together. It could also be a short reflective writing assignment that asks them to explain how the poems help them to better understand the novel they are reading for the class. Regardless of what type of activity you decide to close with, it is important that the students have time to process their learning in some way.

Over the last few years, this lesson has become my go-to poetry activity. Not only is it a great way to get students immediately talking about the poems, but the more comfortable students become with the process, the easier it is for them to settle into writing their own poetry analysis without the help of their classmates.

Matt Brisbin  is a high school English teacher at McMinnville High School in McMinnville, Oregon. He has been a high school English instructor for 12 years, which includes the last 6 years teaching AP Lit and Comp. Aside from reading and writing, his passions in life include spending time with his wife and kids and cheering on various sports teams at the high school, college, and professional levels. He is also a professional coffee drinker and is currently in search of the perfectly brewed cup of coffee.

How to Write a Poetry Analysis Essay Ap Lit

Source: http://www.aplithelp.com/digging-poetry-analysis/

Share this post