A lesson that worked well

This is a lesson that I used when teaching "Their Eyes Were Watching God" by Zora Neale Hurston. For those that have not read the book, it was written during the Harlem Renaissance, and takes place in rural Georgia and Florida. The author chose to write the character dialog in a southern black vernacular to make it more authentic, but this also makes the text harder to follow for some readers. In addition, Hurston often uses colorful figurative language to describe situations. I found that many of my students were taking these figures of speech literally, and decided to spend a day deciphering some of the figurative language.

I like this lesson because it helps students visualize figurative language in their heads and get a better understanding of what the author means. The drawing at the end helps cement this notion of picturing what figurative language would really look like. Before this lesson, when students read "...didn't keer nothin' fo' the land, ah could throw ten acres of it over de fence..." they didn't understand why this character would throw ten acres of land over a fence.

I think the transfer to other areas would be any lesson that had the students breaking down something that they were learning into a visualization to help it make sense.

Here it goes:

Do Now: What is a simile? Metaphor? Hyperbole? Personification? Give an example of each.

I used this as a Do Now to try an activate prior knowledge. Most of my students have been exposed to figurative language in the past, but needed some prodding.

Mini Lesson: Go over these four types of figurative language, give examples, explain how they are different. Why are they used? Why not describe things literally?

The mini-lesson is just a refresher for students who knew these, but mainly for students who forgot, or only knew one or two types of FL. I found that many students thought that everything was a hyperbole ("it's exaggerating, because you don't have eyes like the sun."), so some clarification was then in order.

Mini-Lesson pt 2: How to find figurative language and know what it means. RATATA (Read Aloud, Think Aloud, Talk Aloud) from Chapter 2. Read a passage and discuss how I found figurative language and how I figured out what it means. Explain how I picture in my mind what this figure of speech would literally look like (i.e. "The sun was gone, but he had left his footprints in the sky.") and follow by thinking of what the author really means. Read a passage with the class and have them find one piece of figurative language, explain why it's figurative, and what that looks like. How does it help you understand the passage better? What does it add to the meaning of the passage?

This part it to show how to find these types of figurative language and how we know the difference between literal and figurative. It also begins to teach how we make sense of these figures of speech.

Classwork: Each table (4-6 students per table) is assigned a six-page passage from the book. They read the passage marking down any figurative language they find. After 15 minutes, the table takes turns sharing the figurative language that they found and as a group they decide a) is it figurative language? b) what type? c) what does it mean? After discussing all of the figurative language from the passage each person takes a different phrase and write it down on a piece of paper. Write down the answers to the above questions, and then draw a visual representation of what this would look like literally (from the i.e. above, show the sun walking through the sky leaving footprints). When groups are done, jigsaw members from each table to share with other tables what was found and what they thought it meant.

Here's the transfer of knowledge, where they find it on their own and have to make sense of the meaning as a group. There were some interesting debates as to what different phrases would look like or what they mean. Also helped show that their are different interpretations of literature.

Assessment: turn in the sheet with the figurative language and drawing.

HW: Read Chapters 5 and 6, write down any figurative language you find while reading.