Analyzing Characterization:Poetry Jigsaw
Background: Students should work with one of the attached poems. Differentiate by reading level: “Ode” (low), “Heidi” (medium), “Ducks” (high). Allow like poem groups to discuss. Compare/contrast across all three texts as a whole class.
Examples of Direct CharacterizationTraits / Textual Evidence
Examples of Indirect Characterization
Traits / Textual Evidence
Reflection:
Why might an author fully develop some characters through both direct and indirect characterization, while only partially developing other characters? / / Visualize: Use your notes to create a sketch of your poem’s protagonist as you see her/him.
Compare/Share: Read each of the remaining poems. Which of the three is most effective at developing character? Poem: ______Explain how and/or why:______
Analyzing Characterization:Poetry Jigsaw
Background: Students should work with one of the attached poems. Differentiate by reading level: “Ode” (low), “Heidi” (medium), “Ducks” (high). Allow like poem groups to discuss. Compare/contrast across all three texts as a whole class.
Ducks
In her first home each book
had a light around it.
The voices of distant countries
floated in through open windows,
entering her soup and her mirror.
They slept with her in the same thick bed.
Someday she would go there.
Her voice, among all those voices.
In Iraq a book never had one owner – it had ten.
Lucky books, to be held often
and gently, by so many hands.
Later in American libraries she felt sad
For books no one ever checked out.
She lived in a country house beside a pond
and kept ducks, two male, one female.
She worried over the difficult relations
of triangles. One of the ducks
often seemed depressed.
But not the same one.
During the war between her two countries
she watched the ducks more than usual.
She stayed quiet with the ducks.
Some days they huddled among reeds
or floated together.
She could not call her family in Basra
which had grown farther away than ever
nor could they call her. For nearly a year
she would not know who was alive,
who was dead.
The ducks were building a nest.
From 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East by Naomi Shihab Nye
For Heidi with Blue Hair
When you dyed your hair blue
(or, at least ultramarine
for the clipped sides, with a crest
of jet-black spikes on top)
you were sent home from school
because, as the headmistress put it,
although dyed hair was not
specifically forbidden, yours
was, apart from anything else,
not done in the school colours.
Tears in the kitchen, telephone-calls
to school from your freedom-loving father:
'She's not a punk in her behaviour;
it's just a style.' (You wiped your eyes,
also not in a school colour.)
'She discussed it with me first -
we checked the rules.' 'And anyway, Dad,
it cost twenty-five dollars.
Tell them it won't wash out -
not even if I wanted to try.
It would have been unfair to mention
your mother's death, but that
shimmered behind the arguments.
The school had nothing else against you;
the teachers twittered and gave in.
Next day your black friend had hers done
in grey, white and flaxen yellow -
the school colours precisely:
an act of solidarity, a witty
tease. The battle was already won.
By Fleur Adcock
Analyzing Characterization:Poetry Jigsaw
Background: Students should work with one of the attached poems. Differentiate by reading level: “Ode” (low), “Heidi” (medium), “Ducks” (high). Allow like poem groups to discuss. Compare/contrast across all three texts as a whole class.
Ode ToMiPerrito
He’s brown as water
Over a stone,
Brown as leaves and branches,
Brown as pennies in a hand.
He’s brown as my mitt
On a bedpost,
And just as quick:
A baseball rolls
His way and his teeth
Chatter after it.
Miperritorolls
His tongue for the taste
Of a dropped chicharron,
For the jawbreaker
That fell from my pocket,
For a potato chip bag
Blowing across a lawn.
He’s brown as earth
But his days are yellow
As the sun at noon.
Today he rode
In my father’s car,
His paws on the dash
As he looked around
At the road giving way
To farms and countryside.
He barked at slow drivers
And Father barked back.
Where did they go?
Fishing. Ten miles
From town, and they crossed
A river, blue with the
Rush of water
Fish lurked beneath
The surface, the big
O of their mouths
Gulping bubbles.
Father threw his line
There, and waited,
His hands in his pockets.
Miperrito didn’t wait.
He jumped into the river,
And jumped back out-
The water was icy
Cold. Father fished
And mi perrito
Walked along the riverbank,
Sniffing for birds
And cool-throated mice.
His ears perked up.
When he jumped,
His paws landed on a cricket.
The cricket chirped
And jumped into
The gray ambush of grass.
He barked and returned
To my father, who
Returned to the car:
The fish would have
Nothing of hook and sinker.
They drove back
To town through the curve
Of hills When
My father turned
Sharply, mi perrito barked
Because it’s his job
To make noise
Of oncoming danger.
He had his paws
Up on the dash,
With a good view
Of the hills
Where cows sat down on the job
When one cow dared
To moo, mi perritobarked
And showed his flashing teeth.
Miperrito is a Chihuahua-
Smaller than a cat,
Bigger than a rubber mouse.
Like mouse and cat,
He goes running
When the real dogs
Come into the yard.
By Gary Soto
From Neighborhood Odes