Overview

Lesson Procedure

50-65 minutes of class time across 5 phases.

1. Warm-Up5-10 minutes
2. Direct Instruction15-20 minutes
3. Guided Practice15 minutes
4. Independent Practice10-15 minutes
5. Closure5 minutes

1. Warm-Up5-10 minutes

   Warm-Up Prompt

   "Read two sentences. (1) The wind blew hard all night. (2) The wind howled at our windows all night and rattled the glass as if it wanted to come in. Both describe the same weather. Which sentence makes the wind seem alive, and which words do it?"

   Collect answers and underline howled, rattled the glass and as if it wanted to come in. Wind cannot want anything; the writer gave it a person's wish. Name the move: this is personification, giving human actions or feelings to something that is not human. Ask what the second sentence makes a reader feel (uneasy, a little scared) that the first does not. Tell students that today they will look at three ways words carry extra meaning: figures of speech, relationships between words, and the feelings words carry.

2. Direct Instruction15-20 minutes

   Part 1: Figures of speech in context (standard a). A figure of speech is not literally true, so readers ask what it means in its setting. For personification, use three questions: What is the nonhuman thing? What human action or feeling is it given? What does that show about the thing, and about the writer's mood? A simile compares two unlike things with like or as, and hyperbole exaggerates on purpose. The same figure can mean different things in different contexts: the house groaned is spooky in a ghost story and funny in a story about a family of ten.

   Part 2: Word relationships (standard b). Words often come in pairs that explain each other (Diagram 2). In a cause/effect pair, one word names what happens and the other its result; look for signal words such as so, because and as a result. In a part/whole pair, one word is a piece of the other, as a page is part of a book. In an item/category pair, one word is a member of a group, as a trout is a kind of fish. If you know one word of the pair, the relationship tells you something true about the other.

   Part 3: Connotations (standard c). Denotation is what a word means in the dictionary. Connotation is the feeling or association it adds: positive (it praises), negative (it criticizes) or neutral (it just states). Words with nearly the same denotation, called synonyms, can have very different connotations, so a writer's choice tells the reader how to feel. The official example family is placed on a line in Diagram 1.

   • Personification in context

     The old car coughed and groaned up the hill, then sighed and stopped at the top.

     Result: The nonhuman thing is the car. It is given human actions: coughing, groaning and sighing. In context, the words show an engine making rough, struggling noises and finally giving out, and they make the car seem tired and old, like an elderly person climbing a hill. The effect is sympathetic and a little funny.

   • Other figures of speech: simile and hyperbole

     My backpack weighed a ton, and I crawled like a turtle to the bus stop.

     Result: Weighed a ton is hyperbole: no backpack weighs 2,000 pounds, so it means "very heavy." Like a turtle is a simile comparing the speaker's walk to a turtle's slow pace. Neither is personification, because neither gives human traits to a nonhuman thing. Together they show a tired student with a heavy load.

   • Word relationships: cause/effect and part/whole

     The blizzard dropped two feet of snow, so the schools closed. The pilot sat in the cockpit, at the front of the airplane.

     Result: Cause/effect: so signals that the blizzard caused the closing, so a blizzard must be a severe snowstorm, strong enough to shut schools. Part/whole: the cockpit is a part of the airplane, the section at the front where the pilot sits. Knowing the effect (schools closed) and the whole (an airplane) explains the unfamiliar word.

   • Word relationships: item/category

     Marigolds, zinnias and sunflowers are all annuals, plants that sprout, bloom and die in one growing season.

     Result: Marigolds, zinnias and sunflowers are items; annuals is their category. A reader who knows sunflowers learns that an annual is a kind of plant that lasts one season, and a reader who has never heard of zinnias learns that they are flowering plants of the same kind. The relationship explains words in both directions.

   • Connotation: the official example family

     stingy, scrimping, economical, unwasteful, thrifty

     Result: All five share one denotation: careful about spending or using things up. Their connotations differ. Stingy criticizes (unwilling to spend or share). Scrimping suggests going without, sometimes with hardship. Unwasteful is close to neutral: it simply says nothing is wasted. Economical is mildly positive (sensible, good value), and thrifty praises. A friend who reuses gift bags sounds wise if she is thrifty and mean if she is stingy.

3. Guided Practice15 minutes

   Read the poem aloud twice. Words to know: host (a very large crowd), sprightly (lively), glee (great delight), gay (in 1815, cheerful and merry), jocund (cheerful), vacant (empty of thought), pensive (deeply thoughtful) and solitude (being alone). Daffodils are yellow spring flowers. In pairs, students find each figure of speech in the table, name the nonhuman thing and the human trait, and write what the figure shows. Model the first row together.

   1I wandered lonely as a cloud
   That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
   When all at once I saw a crowd,
   A host, of golden daffodils;
   5Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
   Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

   Continuous as the stars that shine
   And twinkle on the milky way,
   They stretched in never-ending line
   10Along the margin of a bay:
   Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
   Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

   The waves beside them danced; but they
   Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
   15A poet could not but be gay,
   In such a jocund company:
   I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
   What wealth the show to me had brought:

   For oft, when on my couch I lie
   20In vacant or in pensive mood,
   They flash upon that inward eye
   Which is the bliss of solitude;
   And then my heart with pleasure fills,
   And dances with the daffodils.

   Figures of speech in the poem (teacher key in the last two columns)

   Words (line)	Figure of speech	What it shows (teacher key)
   "I wandered lonely as a cloud" (1)	Simile	The speaker drifts alone and aimlessly, high above everything, the way a single cloud floats.
   "Fluttering and dancing in the breeze" (6)	Personification	The flowers move in the wind as if they were dancers; the scene feels full of life.
   "Tossing their heads in sprightly dance" (12)	Personification	The flower heads bob like the heads of lively dancers; the daffodils seem happy.
   "Out-did the sparkling waves in glee" (14)	Personification	Both the waves and the flowers are given joy, and the flowers win a contest of happiness.
   "that inward eye / Which is the bliss of solitude" (21-22)	Metaphor (a comparison without like or as)	Memory is an eye inside the mind; later, alone, the speaker can "see" the flowers again.
   "And then my heart with pleasure fills, / And dances with the daffodils" (23-24)	Personification	The heart is given a dancer's movement; the memory makes the speaker as joyful as the flowers.

   Discuss: How does the speaker's mood change from line 1 to line 24? (From lonely to joyful; the memory of the flowers cures the loneliness.) Then look at connotation in the poem: Wordsworth calls the flowers a crowd (line 3), a host (line 4) and a company (line 16). All three mean a group, but company suggests friendly companions. Why might the poet end with that word? (The lonely speaker has found friends.) Also point out that line 11 is hyperbole: the speaker did not count ten thousand flowers.

4. Independent Practice10-15 minutes

   Students read the science passage below. For each pair of words in the chart, they (1) name the relationship (cause/effect, part/whole or item/category), (2) find the sentence that shows it and (3) write what the relationship tells them about the less familiar word. Students fill in the middle and right columns; the teacher key follows.

   1A honeybee colony is a family of insects that lives together in a hive. In summer, a strong colony can hold tens of thousands of bees, but only one of them is the queen, and she lays the eggs. Most of the other bees are workers, females that clean the hive, feed the young, guard the entrance and gather food. The males, called drones, never gather food at all.

   2The inside of the hive is filled with honeycomb, sheets of wax made of thousands of six-sided cells. Workers make the wax in glands on their abdomens, the rear parts of their bodies. Some cells hold eggs and young bees; others store pollen or honey.

   3Honey begins as nectar, a sugary liquid that workers sip from flowers. Back at the hive, the bees fan their wings over the stored nectar. The moving air dries it out, and it thickens into honey. In winter, flowers stop blooming, so the colony lives on the honey it saved. The bees crowd into a tight ball and shiver the muscles that move their wings, and the shivering keeps the center of the ball warm.

   Word relationship chart for the honeybee passage (teacher key)

   Word pair (paragraph)	Relationship	What it tells you (teacher key)
   honeybee, insects (1)	Item/category	A honeybee is one kind of insect, so it has the traits of insects, such as six legs.
   queen, workers, drones; colony (1)	Item/category	Queen, worker and drone are the three kinds of members in a colony, and each has its own job.
   cells, honeycomb (2)	Part/whole	Cells are the small six-sided rooms that together make up a sheet of honeycomb.
   abdomens, bodies (2)	Part/whole	The abdomen is one part of a bee's body, the rear part, where the wax glands are.
   fanning wings, nectar thickens into honey (3)	Cause/effect	The air from fanning dries the nectar; the result is honey, so honey is dried, thickened nectar.
   shivering, warm center (3)	Cause/effect	Shivering produces heat, so the bees' shivering is how the colony stays warm in winter.

5. Closure5 minutes

   Exit ticket: (1) Write one sentence that personifies an object in the classroom and say what it shows. (2) Write two words with nearly the same denotation, one positive and one negative, and use each in a sentence about the same person.

   Teacher note on the texts: Both poems are quoted exactly. Wordsworth first printed "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" in 1807 and added the second stanza in 1815; this is the 1815 version. In a note he dictated late in life, he said the two best lines, 21 and 22, were written by his wife, Mary. In his time gay meant cheerful, and jocund means merry. Blake published "Laughing Song" in Songs of Innocence in 1789; its painted birds are brightly colored birds, and "Ha ha he!" is the sound of the girls' laughing chorus.

   For the quiz: Questions 1-5 use "Laughing Song" below, and Questions 11-14 use the story "The Class Trip Fund" after it. Line and paragraph numbers are shown beside each text.

   1When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy,
   And the dimpling stream runs laughing by;
   When the air does laugh with our merry wit,
   And the green hill laughs with the noise of it;

   5When the meadows laugh with lively green,
   And the grasshopper laughs in the merry scene;
   When Mary and Susan and Emily
   With their sweet round mouths sing ‘Ha ha he!’

   When the painted birds laugh in the shade,
   10Where our table with cherries and nuts is spread:
   Come live, and be merry, and join with me,
   To sing the sweet chorus of ‘Ha ha he!’

   1The sixth grade had six weeks to raise money for a trip to the science museum, and Maya was in charge of the budget. She kept every receipt in a folder and bought poster paper only when it was on sale.

   2At the bake sale, Maya asked the helpers to cut the brownies into small squares so that each pan would make more sales. Dev frowned. “You’re being stingy,” he said. “Nobody wants a brownie the size of a postage stamp.”

   3“She isn’t stingy,” said Ms. Ortiz, the class adviser. “She’s thrifty. Every dollar she saves goes to the trip.”

   4That night at dinner, Maya’s older brother teased her. “You’ve been scrimping for weeks,” he said. “You’ve packed the same peanut butter sandwich every day so your lunch money could go in the jar.”

   5By the last week, the class had enough for the bus and the tickets. In the class newsletter, Ms. Ortiz called the plan economical: the class would share one bus with another school and bring bag lunches instead of buying food at the museum. A parent wrote back, “I like how unwasteful this plan is. Nothing we raised was spent on extras.”

Differentiation Strategies

Assessment Guidance

1. Question 1 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   In lines 1-4 of "Laughing Song," which things does Blake give a human action?

   AMary, Susan and Emily Bthe grasshopper, the meadows and the painted birds Cthe woods, the stream, the air and the hill Dthe table, the cherries and the nuts

2. Question 2 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   In line 2, "the dimpling stream runs laughing by." A dimple is a small dent that shows in a person's cheek when the person smiles. What does this personification suggest about the stream?

   AIt is rising fast and is dangerous to the children playing nearby. BIts surface ripples and it makes a cheerful, bubbling sound. CIt is frozen and still, like a face that will not smile. DIt is shallow and muddy, so nobody wants to swim in it.

3. Question 3 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   In line 5, Blake writes that "the meadows laugh with lively green." What does the line mean?

   AThe meadows are bright green and full of growth, as if they were happy. BPeople having a picnic in the meadows are laughing very loudly. CThe grass in the meadows is dry and turning brown under the hot summer sun. DThe meadows make a sound like laughter every time the wind blows.

4. Question 4 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   A form of the word laugh appears in every line from 1 to 6. What is the effect of giving so many parts of nature this same human action?

   AIt shows that nature is making fun of the children. BIt warns the reader that the happy day will soon end. CIt shows that the speaker feels lonely and left out of the fun. DIt makes all of nature seem to share the people's joy.

5. Question 5 of 20 · Short Answer

   In lines 7-8, Mary, Susan and Emily "sing 'Ha ha he!'" Is this personification? Explain your answer, and explain how these lines connect to the personification in lines 1-6.

   Show model answer

6. Question 6 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Read the sentence: A sudden gust toppled our tent, and it landed in the lake. Which relationship between gust and toppled helps a reader understand both words?

   Apart/whole: the gust is one piece of the tent Bitem/category: a gust is one kind of tent Ccause/effect: the gust made the tent fall over Dcause/effect: the falling tent made the gust

7. Question 7 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Which pair of words shows a part/whole relationship?

   Ahammer / tool Brain / puddle Capple / fruit Dthumb / hand

8. Question 8 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Read the sentence: Mandolins, banjos and ukuleles hung on the walls of the music store. Jon knows banjos and ukuleles but has never heard of a mandolin. What can he conclude from the item/category relationship?

   AA mandolin is probably a stringed instrument like the other two. BA mandolin is probably one part of a banjo, such as its neck. CA mandolin probably makes the other two instruments go out of tune. DA mandolin is probably the name of the owner of the music store.

9. Question 9 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Read the sentence: After the pipe burst, water seeped through the ceiling and left a brown stain. Using the cause/effect relationship, what does seeped most likely mean?

   Afroze solid in a thin layer Bflowed slowly through small openings Csplashed loudly onto the floor below Dwas wiped away before anyone saw it

10. Question 10 of 20 · Short Answer

    Read the sentence: The percussion section sits at the back of the orchestra. Explain how the relationship between percussion section and orchestra helps a reader who knows only the word orchestra. What else would the reader need to find out, and how?

    Show model answer

11. Question 11 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    In paragraph 2 of "The Class Trip Fund," what does Dev's word stingy show about his opinion of Maya?

    AHe admires how well she is saving money for the class trip. BHe thinks she is unfairly unwilling to give people enough. CHe is describing her plainly, without any feeling at all. DHe thinks the class is spending too much on its brownies.

12. Question 12 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    In paragraph 3, Ms. Ortiz says, "She isn't stingy. She's thrifty." Why does she change the word?

    AThrifty has a different denotation: it means generous and giving. BShe agrees with Dev but wants a word that sounds more formal. CShe wants to describe the same careful saving in a positive way. DThrifty means that Maya is spending more than Dev thinks.

13. Question 13 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    In paragraph 4, Maya's brother says she has been "scrimping for weeks." Which detail from the story best shows what he means?

    AShe kept every receipt from the fundraiser in a folder. BShe asked the helpers to cut the brownies into small squares. CShe packed the same sandwich so her lunch money went in the jar. DShe planned for the class to share a bus with another school.

14. Question 14 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    In paragraph 5, a parent calls the plan "unwasteful." Which sentence from the story states the same idea without praise or blame?

    A“Nothing we raised was spent on extras.” B“Nobody wants a brownie the size of a postage stamp.” C“You’ve been scrimping for weeks.” D“She isn’t stingy.”

15. Question 15 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Which word has the most negative connotation?

    Anosy Binquisitive Ccurious Dinterested

16. Question 16 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Choose the word that makes the bakery sound most inviting: The ____ of warm cinnamon rolls drifted out the door.

    Astench Bodor Creek Daroma

17. Question 17 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Home and house have similar denotations. Which statement best explains the difference in their connotations?

    AHouse is formal, and home is a slang word. BHome suggests warmth, family and belonging; house names a building. CHome and house have different denotations, so they cannot be compared. DHouse has a negative connotation, and home has a neutral one.

18. Question 18 of 20 · Short Answer

    Compare the two sentences: The coach was firm with us. and The coach was harsh with us. Explain how the connotations of firm and harsh change what a reader thinks of the coach.

    Show model answer

19. Question 19 of 20 · Short Answer

    A travel poster says, New York is the city that never sleeps. Name the figure of speech, and explain what it means in this context.

    Show model answer

20. Question 20 of 20 · Short Answer

    A car ad says, Our economical little car saves you money on gas every week. Why would the ad writer choose economical instead of cheap or stingy? Use the words denotation and connotation in your answer.

    Show model answer

These standards connect to L.6.5: prerequisites to review first, parallel standards at the same level, and next steps that build on it.

Standard text: Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy. © Copyright 2010. National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and Council of Chief State School Officers. All rights reserved.