Students will complete a close reading of Ted Kooser’s poem, Abandoned Farmhouse.  Students will use their knowledge about the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl to determine the setting and characters in the poem. After analyzing the author’s style, use of figurative language, and structure of the poem, students will write an ORIGINAL POEM in the spirit of Abandoned Farmhouse by using the same syntax.  Using the original poem and a template as a guide, students will compose a poem that reveals who they are through the voice of important objects in their homes.

In this lesson students will improve their writing skills by finding, defining, and correctly using new and interesting vocabulary words and then integrate them into a persuasive piece of writing.

In this lesson, after being introduced to the novel Out of the Dust, students examine unfamiliar words and phrases and interpret them using context and word structure, making inferences and generalizations, using graphic organizers and comparing and contrasting skills.

In this lesson, students review the concepts of diction, connotation, and denotation. Students split into groups and work with lists of words to review whether they have a positive or negative connotation. Then, students revise one of their own pieces of writing to fix words with incorrect connotations.