Learning Poetic Concepts Online

Learning Refrain, Simile,

 Metaphor & Personification 

Pied Piper--Armstrong-Browning Library,
Baylor University, Waco, Texas

Evelyn Smith

Ph. D. Texas Christian University, 1995

MS in Library Science, University of North Texas, 2012  

This Web page is meant to supplement the middle-school and high school language arts curriculum by teaching such poetic concepts as refrain, simile, metaphor, and personification.

Poems that Use Refrain

 
Angelou, Maya. (2013).  "Alone". PoemHunter.com.  Retrieved from

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/alone-6/

In this brief three stanza poem, the refrain falls at the end of the stanza.

Frost, Robert. (2013).  "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening".  Poetry Foundation.  Retrieved from http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171621

Here the refrain comes at the last two lines of the last stanza.

Hughes, Langston. (2003).  "Dreams". PoemHunter.com.   Retrieved from http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/dreams-2/


Hughes uses the refrain twice for emphasis.

Stevenson, Robert Louis. (1913).  "The Wind".  From A Child’s Garden of Verses and Underwoods.  Poem Hunter.com.  Retrieved from http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-wind-4/ 

"The Wind"  uses the refrain as a chorus, placing it at the end of each stanza.  Texas schools use it as an example of personification and simile, although some of the wording might not particularly appeal to today's middle school audience.

 

Yeats, William Butler.  "Brown Penny".  William Butler Yeats Poems.  Famous Poets and Poems.com. Retrieved from http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/William_butler_yeats/poems/10173

Yeats' refrain falls in the second to last line of the stanza.

Songs that Use Refrain

Foster, Stephen. "Oh, Susanna" Lyrics. You tube. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=917Ept-tWdk

Link provides the audio version of song which listeners can pair with a written version of the folk song.

Yankee Doodle Dandy.  (n. d. ). You tube.  Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwHvyqNDUvE

Teachers can have  part of the class stand during the refrain while the other part of the class stands while singing the lyric.  Students should know that in songs, the refrain is often called the 
"chorus".

Poems that Use Personification

Hendricks, S. (2010).  Personification poems.  Word Wizard.  Retrieved from http://www.mywordwizard.com/personification-poems.html

Contemporary poet furnishes a collection of poems that use personification.

Other selections  written by major poets that teach personification include the following selections:

 
Dickerson, Emily. “The Train” as found on Poem Hunter. (2013). Retrieved from http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173524

 Dickerson uses verbs and a present participle normally attributed to humans to describe the functions of a tree (lap, lick, step, pare, chase, and complaining).

Frost, Robert.  "Birches" as found on Poetry Foundation. (2013).  Retrieved from  http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173524

 

Frost doesn't build his entire poem around personification; however, he does combine both personification and simile to make the birches act like people:

And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed

So low for long, they never right themselves:

You may see their trunks arching in the woods

Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground

Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair

Before them over their heads to dry in the sun. 

Wordsworth, William.  "Daffodils"  (attributed earlier under simile).

Dancing, whether by daffodils and waves in stanza one and three or the heart in stanza four, help organize the major theme of this lyric poem--memories of nature sustain the poet even when he is away from nature. 

Yeats, William Butler,  "Brown Penny" (attributed later under refrain). 

Wondering just who he should love, the poet throws a penny, presumably into a fountain, whereupon he allows the penny's "answer" to reflect his subconscious thoughts.  

Poems that Use Simile

 Wordsworth, William. (2013). "Daffodils". Poem Hunter.com. Retrieved from http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/daffodils/

Wordsworth’s "Daffodils" poem comes to mind as a poem that using “as” in a simile in the first line.

Burns, Robert.   (2013).  A red, red rose.  Poem Hunter.com. Retrieved from http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-red-red-rose/

Web page presents Robert Burns’  “A red, red rose” as a classic example of personification. 

Teaching Personification,  

Refrain, & Simile

Teach personification with Mickey Mouse and hip hop (2011). Flocabulary.  Retrieved from
http://blog.flocabulary.com/teach-personification-with-mickey-mouse-and-hip-hop

Web site effectively relates personification to popular culture.

Grimley, P. (n. d.). Sounds of language. Learning  to Give.  Retrieved from http://learningtogive.org/lessons/unit26/lesson2.html

Grimley teaches students how to identify rhythm, rhyme, refrain, alliteration, and onomatopoeia through the use of tongue twisters, the classic American poem, Vachel Lindsay’s “William Booth Enters into Heaven ” (Grimley furnishes link), and the more contemporary poem written by comedian Adam Sandler,” Lunchlady Land".

Lesson Plans for Simile

 & Metaphor

    
Introducing metaphors through poetry! (n. d.). EDITEMENT. Thankfinity Community. National Endowment for the Arts.  Retrieved from http://edsitement.neh.gov/lesson-plan/introducing-metaphors-through-poetry#sect-activities

High school-level lesson on simile and metaphor uses Langston’s Hughes’ “Dreams”, Margaret Atwood’s “You Begin” and Naomi Shihab Nye’s “Blood” to teach simile and metaphor as well as Dylan Thomas’ “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”, and Luis J. Rodriguez’s “The Concrete”, which give students additional practice in identifying figurative language and might also start a discussion of what makes it effective.  Finally, students work of creating their own metaphors and assessing their effectiveness. 

Rogers, Denise. (n. d.).  Funny simile poems. Funny Poems.  The Children’s Place. Retrieved from http://betterlesson.com/lesson/27141/metaphors-and-similes

Introduce or review the use of similes by working these humorous simile poems into a figurative language unit’s lesson plans.  After identifying the similes, students can work in pairs, changing similes to metaphors.

A Simile and metaphor sample lesson plan for the teaching of simile and metaphor. (n. d.).  Retrieved from http://volweb.utk.edu/Schools/bedford/harrisms/2poe.htm

United Kingdom Webpage aimed at secondary school students gives an outline for teaching simile and metaphor, providing links to a poetry worksheet to fill in the details.  Not only do students pick out similes and metaphors, but they also change the similes to metaphors and the metaphors to similes.

Simile and metaphor. (2013, March 7). Kenn Nesbitt’s Poetry4kids.com Retrieved from http://www.poetry4kids.com/blog/news/simile-and-metaphor-poetry-lesson/

Lesson plan defines both simile and metaphor whereupon two exercises test the student’s knowledge.  Exercise 1 requires students to identify comparative phrases taken from well-known poems and tell whether they are examples of simile or metaphor. Exercise 2 asks the students to then write five different similes about themselves.

Smith, Amber. (2013).  Lesson: Metaphors and similes.  Better Lesson.  Retrieved from http://betterlesson.com/lesson/27141/metaphors-and-similes

Aimed at fifth graders, this lesson pairs students that check each other on their understanding during the early part of the lesson.  After the pair reviews information from the previous day’s assignment, the teacher models the finding of similes and metaphors in  the first two lines of a poem displayed by an overhead projector whereupon the students discuss the next five lines of the poem, identifying the similes and metaphors.  Later, each student puts to use what he or she has learning by independently completing a worksheet on similes and a worksheet on metaphors.

Simile & Metaphor

 Interactive Games

Do you know your metaphors. (n. d.). Dragonsville.  Kidsonthenet.org. Retrieved from http://www.kidsonthenet.org.uk/dragonsville/metaphor1.htm

British Website familiarizes ESL students with common idiomatic English metaphors. 

Figurative Language Arts. (2007, March 11).  Gamequarium.  Retrieved from

http://gamequarium.com/figurativelanguage.html

Most of the links to games require a subscription and a plug in, although there is a 30-day trial period; however, two games, Fling the Teacher and Drag and Drop Metaphors don’t.

• Fling the teacher is an interactive program that teaches the user to recognize simile, homograph, homophone, idiom, and metaphor. 

• Drag and Drop Metaphors allows the user to recognize metaphors by matching the first and last parts of a sentence. 
 

Figurative Language. (n.d.).  Spelling City.  Retrieved from http://www.spellingcity.com/figurative-language.html

Interactive word games whose vocabulary matches that of the average elementary, middle school, and high school student familiarizes users with metaphor, simile, idiom, hyperbole, and personification.  Accompanying worksheets test what they have learned by accessing the games.

Simile or Metaphor Jeopardy. (2011, February).  Super Teacher Tools. Retrieved from

http://superteachertools.com/jeopardy/usergames/Feb201106/game1297119259.php

Contestants play Jeopardy by determining whether an answer is an example of either a simile or metaphor. “Alex, I’ll take “No man is an island for $20?”

Help for Elementary & Middle School Language Arts

Fun English Games.  (n. d.). Free English Resources Online.  Retrieved from

http://www.funenglishgames.com/funstuff/tonguetwisters.html/

Resources include grammar, reading comprehension, spelling, and writing games as well as word games and puzzles, quizzes, videos, ESL  help, and jokes and riddles. 

Poem Hunter. (2013).  Retrieved from http://www.poemhunter.com/song/lunchlady-land/

Site provides links to almost all the American and British poets United States students study in language arts and English classes in middle school and high school as well as in literature survey classes at the university level.  

Lansky, B. (2000).  A fun way to teach similes.  Poetry Teachers.com.  Retrieved from
http://www.poetryteachers.com/poetclass/lessons/teachsimiles.html

Lansky furnishes a predictable poem using a collection of well-known clichés that teach the use of simile.  He then suggests that the instructor reproduce the poem with the last two words left blank.  

Wroblewski, M. (2013).  How to teach personification for kids. eHow.  Retrieved from
http://www.ehow.com/how_8685163_teach-personification-kids.html

Wroblewski furnishes instructions of how-to teach personification in a step-by-step plan that relates this poetic device to the students’ everyday lives. 

Further Literary Criticism Help for 

Waco-McLennan  County

Library Patrons

McGregor area residents who hold a Waco-McLennan County Public Library card may also access literary criticism subscription databases  Online using the library card number and a password, including Book Review Digest Plus, Essay and General Literature Index, Gale Virtual Reference Library, Gale Literature Databases, Humanities Index, Literature Reference Center (EBSCO), EBSCO E-books, Play Index, Short Story Index, and Twentieth-Century Poetry.

Other residents of Texas who hold a library card from a library that is part of the TexServe consortium can also access these databases Online. 

APA & MLA Guidelines 

for Research Papers

Turn to the Purdue Online Writing Lab:

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/  

Vetted Literary Criticism 

Websites Online for

 High School &

 University Students

Harris, Robert A.  (2013, January 19).  Virtual Salt: A Handbook of Rhetorical Devices.  Retrieved from http://www.virtualsalt.com/rhetoric.htm

Harris defines most terms students will come in contact with in first-year college and university composition classes.

Lancashire, Ian. (2002).  Prose and Verse Criticism of Poetry. University of Toronto.  Retrieved from https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/html/1807/4350/indexcriticism.html

 Lancashire offers commentaries on a selected list of poems as well as furnishing criticism of poetry by a list of famous poets.

Literary Criticism.  (2012).  Ipl2.  Drexel College of Information Science. Retrieved from http://www.ipl.org/div/litcrit/

 Users can browse criticism by author's names and the work's name for almost all of European literature as well as Japanese and Chinese literature.  Additionally, the Web site provides a link to an Online Literary Criticism Guide.

Poets.org. (2013).  Academy of American Poets. Teaching Resource Center. Retrieved from http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/83

Students and educators can access a plethora of links to poetry and language arts Websites and government resources.  They can also view curriculum units, lesson plans, educational technology Websites, including Blackboard, as well as Web pages for Writers in Schools programs, conference workshops, and literary festivals.