Poetry Reading Skills Assessment

Learning Target

You have read and thought about many poems in this unit. You have responded in your Learning Guide and your home facilitator has gone over your tasks with you as you have completed them, helping you to develop skills as needed.

Now, it is time to read and respond to a poem independently. This means you will complete this task without help on the answers.

You will show your teacher you can:

• read and comprehend poetry
• read closely to determine what the text says and find evidence to support your responses
• determine the gist or central ideas
• find the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases by using context clues

The Poem

You can download the following poem and either print it or you can have it open on your computer screen for the "Poetry Reading Skills Assessment" that follows this poem. Remember, you should read the poem more than one time:

• First reading:
  • Try to get the "gist" of the poem - a sense of what the poem is about and a sense of how it may be read.

• Second reading:
  • This is usually a slower read, where you try to understand the rhthym or rhyme (if any) and where you may underline, mark, or sticky note things you understand and things you do not yet understand. Then, you may look up words, talk about the poem to another person, or find another way to help you to understand words or lines that did not make sense at the beginning.

• Third + reading:
  • This reading may be to answer specific questions about the setting, mood, characters, or meaning in the poem. It might be to read it with deeper understanding, to read it more fluently and expressively, or to answer specific questions about the poem. This is an important step in "Close Reading" of text.

DOWNLOAD THE POEM AND USE IT TO COMPLETE THE POETRY READING SKILLS ASSESSMENT THAT FOLLOWS THIS ONLINE BOOK: