Between the Lines

Teaching Pre K-8, Nov/Dec 2004 by Glazer, Susan Mandel

Poetry's figurative language offers clues to a poem's meaning, and discussion helps make everything crystal clear

Using poetry is a great way to guide children to understand how to unlock the meaning of text. Poetry often gives riddle-like clues that help children make sense of a text.

Our teachers like to hand out a poem from which the title has been removed. The poem's topic should be something with which the children are familiar. Some teachers also project a copy of the poem onto a screen. Each child is given an Idea Chart, and an oversized Idea Chart is posted next to the projected poem. After the class reads the poem, we model, by thinking out loud, how to unlock its meaning.

Discussing the poem

Consider "The Dragonfly," by Robert S. Oliver, reprinted here. If students were given the poem (without the title), the discussion might sound like this.

Teacher I'm going to model how to discover what this poem is about. (Writes "glassy wings" in the first space on the Idea Chart.) Hmm..."glassy." It has "glass" in it. What about glass? You can see through it. Something glassy is like glass. The wings could be made of glass, or they could look like glass.

Gloria: My screen door is like glass because you can see through it.

Teacher: So "glassy wings" could be a screen door?

Maria: No, doors don't have wings.

Seth: I know! It's an angel. You can see through an angel's wings.

Teacher: I'm writing, "It could be an angel." (Writes that, then writes "A cage of legs.") Hmm...you can't get out of a cage.

Seth: Like my gerbil's cage.

Teacher: Great, Seth. You made a connection between the word "cage," and the cage for your pet. Making connections helps you understand words. A cage might look like legs because the bars are skinny like legs.

Anthony: Yeah, bars do look like skinny legs.

Teacher: So, there are wings that look like glass, and legs that look like a cage. How about "Bulging eyes?" (Writes it on the chart.)

Seth: It's a fly! You can see through a fly's wings, a fly has legs that can look like a cage, and a fly's eyes bulge out.

Teacher: So it could be a fly. I'm writing "It could be a fly" next to "Bulging eyes." The next line says "Mandibles" (Writes it on the chart) but I don't know what that means. The dictionary says, "any part of the mouth of insects for seizing and biting food."

Seth: So it could still be a fly.

Teacher: The next line says, "A ghastly helicopter." Hmm...why is the word "helicopter" here?

Anthony: On my toy helicopter, the top part goes around fast. That's how it flies.

Teacher: So this poem is about something whose wings go around like a helicopter?

Maria: It's one of those bugs that flies, and it has a long tail!

Clues and hints

The teacher then reread her Idea Chart entries. Next, she showed the students the poem's title. Seth remarked that the author could have said the bug was like a monster, which would have helped them to connect to the word "dragon." Maria felt that the words "fire from his mouth" would have been a very good clue.

Providing words that hint, asking questions that lead children to find words to use in place of the author's words and asking children to justify their responses all help to guide children's comprehension of a text. Eventually, children will use their own words and find meaning in a text without teacher guidance.

Susan Mandel Glazer is the Director of the Center for Reading and Writing at Rider University in Lawrence, NJ. E-mail: glazer@rider.edu