Help with poetry from Bigger hearts

[exodus4]

Poetry is not easy for me as I am a right brainer, with a math brain and English is my 3rd language !

Can someone please help me with this?

This is from Bigger unit 10 , day 2. Question: " What do the last lines of the poem mean?" I have no idea and neither does my son. I would like to help him but I can't.

Here are the lines:
"Every cloud has silver linings-
But is up to you!"

I've asked this before, does anyone has the answer keys (or samples of what the child should be answering) to these type of questions in the guides?

[pjdobro]

My thought on this is just that there is something good in every situation, but it's up to you to dig and find it. It might not be readily apparent what the silver lining is, but it's there if you look for it.

As far as I know there are no answers for these type of questions in the guides. It's meant more as a tool for you and your dc to explore and discuss things. Most of the time there is no one right answer. It's more about the discussion than the right answer. I know that is extremely difficult for a someone who thinks concretely (I tend to be more that way too ) It's a great way to stretch us as well as our students!

[exodus4]

Thanks for the answer . I am VERY concrete and although I've always enjoyed poetry (since I am European, I've mostly read Baudelaire,EA Poe,etc) it was never easy for me to uncover the metaphors and meanings...

Today,I had a hard time again with unit 11 Hold on I am not sure if I was right, but I explained my child that in times of trouble we have to trust the Lord . Even if I was wrong about the poem's meaning, this statement is still true , but I hate not being able to help my child with this analysis of poetry .

[Glad2Bsaved]

I agree with exodus4. I never got the deeper meanings in poems. In RtoR the poems are by Emily Dickinson who wrote in "riddles" at times. That added to my confusion. I would also like answers to questions in other boxes, such as Research. I have to do the research myself to be sure of some of the answers, especially when my 2 children come up with 2 different answers! Answer keys (maybe a separate booklet or notebook pages) would be a tremendous help. Even so, it would be difficult to pull me away from HOD!!

[Carrie]

exodus4 and Glad2Bsaved,

It's so important to know that we are not teaching for "one right answer" in the poetry box. We are rather looking for the deeper meaning, digging beneath the surface of the words to find the meaning behind them. Each person's answer is likely different, as we explore poetry. The questions are meant to be leading questions, guiding you to look more deeply at specific lines of the poem in the context of the whole poem. So, the questions are your guide as to what lines to look at more closely. While I could have provided an answer key with MY intrepretations to the questions, the problem with that would be that you would then be "coaching" your child to arrive at my answers... rather than really grappling with the meaning yourselves. In essence, having an answer key with "pat" answers would rob you of the "thinking" as I would be doing the thinking for you.

I encourage you to reset your mindset to knowing that the exploration of the deeper meanings in poetry is a higher-level, critical-thinking, not one-right-answer skill. It is a skill to be learned. I think the problem that you are continuing to come up against as you do the poetry is that you are searching for what you believe to be the one right answer. You also feel unable to help your son because you cannot be sure what that one right answer is, so you are unsure how to lead him to it if you feel you haven't arrived at the answer yourself. You are not alone in having these thoughts as you travel into tasks like this that have a myriad of possible answers. This is the stretch into higher-level thinking, and it isn't always a comfortable one for parent or child. I will encourage you that if your let go of "finding the one right answer" and turn the poetry time into a discussion of "possible answers" with both you and your child sharing your thoughts, you will enjoy poetry so much more!

The same is true for the research. This is also a higher-level skill and one that I make sure to have my kiddos show me where they found their answer, so I can see if it makes sense. The research is a way for the children to learn to skim, use headings to help them narrow down where an answer might be found, sift and sort through the answers given to see if they agree with the source, and also weigh whether the source is a reliable one. So, make sure that you are nearby as your kiddos do their research to help guide and direct, rather than doing the research on your own to see if the child came up with the "right answer". Research often shows different answers to the same question, and both can potentially be correct at times. Research is also a more open-ended assignment, like poetry. It requires critical thinking as students sift and sort and weigh. It would be very disheartening for the child to feel like he/she never gets the right answer, because he/she did not arrive at the answer you found. Rather, treat the assignment as one where you come alongside your child, helping him/her sift and sort and weigh possible answers.

As you can see in both of the examples above, your role as a teacher is changing as your child matures. You are no longer the one source for all information, but rather are working with your child to find and think through answers. You are more of a team as you discuss assignments and come to conclusions together. This is the moment at which the process becomes much more important than the end result. It is no longer all about "the answer", but instead it is about how you arrive at possible answers. You are teaching the process.

I want to encourage you that although there are some growing pains with the new role you will find yourself in, there is also much joy in taking the learning to the next level. If you never grow past the stage where you do tasks only to find the right answer, you will miss the joy that comes in the search for answers. You will also miss out on the opportunity of helping your child learn how to really think.

The process will get easier, as time passes, just be careful not to pass your frustrations along to your child in the process (even if you feel frustrated at times). Think of your poetry time and your research time as if you were sitting down with a friend to have a conversation. You can lead the answers to the questions in the poetry with things like the following: I think maybe these two lines are saying... What do you think? Or, it could be that the poet meant.... Maybe the poet was really talking about.... What are your thoughts? Why do you think that? Let's read back over the poem, with the question in mind. Maybe that will give us some more help as to what the poet is talking about? What did you notice now?

For research, you could use guiding questions to help like the following (of course, you wouldn't use them all every time): Where could we look to find the answer to the first question? Since there seems to be so much information on this page, how could we know where to start? Under what heading might this question be answered? How could you quickly look over the information you see here to help guide you to the answer? Do you have to read every word? Where did you find the answer? Can you read it to me or point to it? Do you agree with the answer, or do you think this source may have it wrong? How could we write that answer down? Do you think that's the only answer to this question? Which other questions that are asked in the guide do you see right away that you could answer from this source? Let's do those first.

Anyway, you get the idea how important the dialogue is in these types of assignments. As your child grows in the skills, you'll have to help less with the dialogue and listen more. In the beginning though, you'll dialogue A LOT and nudge with your questions to get your child talking. There are no right questions for you to ask as you talk, just talk through the process out loud. As soon as he/she discovers you don't have a certain answer in mind that you are trying to get him/her to say, he/she will open up so much more!

Blessings,
Carrie

[exodus4]

Carrie, thank for your reply. I agree with you - theoretically only . I want my kids to have higher order thinking skills. But for me and apparently other people feel that way too- , it is difficult to *think* about these literary questions. I just don't have the brain for that HOD is great for ex-school teachers or creative people who can easily dig into literature, unfortunately I am not one of them .

I would pay a good amount of money for these AK ! It would be so nice to have them, especially when you have 4 kiddos in three different guides and your brain is too tired to think, or in my case, English is not your first language . (Although honestly I'm not sure this is the problem, I was told my English is excellent, I guess it is simply that I am not gifted in literary&poetry analysis.)

Because of feeling incompetent or maybe having an incomplete analysis of the literature in HOD ( without proper answer keys samples) , I feel compelled to supplement with other curricula that give me a sample of how the answer should be . The samples AK are just that - samples, directions, so that I as a parent and HS mom, do not feel inadequate as to what the answer should be like .

Maybe you will reconsider this in the future as we would love to see your expert interpretation to the questions Having that direction, we can easily assess our kiddos answers . This opinion was often shared on other homeschooling boards among HOD-ers , but maybe few have the audacity to come directly and bring up this issue.

[deltagal]

Exodus4,

I've been musing this thread over a bit. Carrie's post turned a "light-bulb" on for me. Last year when my youngest son was in Bigger, his most common response was "I don't know." And so we would read the poetry and "go through the motions" with the thought-process questions. I frequently didn't have any thought either, every now and then I would offer some thought (if I truly had one). But towards the VERY END of the guide, my ds began to occasionally have a thought! And if he had a thought I would enjoy it and affirm it and see if I had one, as well. But, we didn't force thoughts. If nothing struck us, it was okay.

Time with poetry (and many other things) does things. At some point, these things may begin to talk to you. You may begin to make connections. Sometimes, it takes a while - a LOOOOOONG while to begin to appreciate, enjoy or simply understand the rhythm, the inflection, the mood. Much like a foreign language. But if it doesn't ever speak to you...I think it's okay. True, you could use some "helps" and that might be "helpful", but then the "helps" would be doing the talking and you would never really begin to "hear" the poetry. It might be interesting to "hear" what others think, but sometimes that can become a crutch that one gets used to using and can't let go. So, why not just read the poem and "see" if you made a connection - a leaf, a road, snowfall? Who knows? Somewhere along the way you just might. And if you don't...then check the box and move on.

[Carrie]

exodus4,

It is interesting to note that I was never exposed to classic poetry that I can remember throughout my education or during my years as a classroom teacher. After ending my years in the classroom as a teacher, when I came home to teach my children, I had my first exposure to classic poetry. When I began reading Charlotte Mason's philosophy of education and started trying to implement it in my home, I began my first uncertain steps into reading classic poetry with my sons. My boys were young, just 9 and 6 at the time. We started with Robert Louis Stevenson and just read and discussed a poem a week. Then, we moved on to Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson, much as you see the progression in our guides. I did not have "expert" questions to guide me, yet we wandered our way through the poems talking about possible meaninsgs as we went.

Over the years, I began to see an amazing change in my boys' ability to understand poetry (and along with that to comprehend and enjoy difficult literature too). They began to find the meaning in what they read and really be able to talk about it, and I became a believer in Charlotte Mason's philosophy of allowing a child to think on and linger over poetry a little at a time. I slowly became a lover of classic poetry too, and I enjoy it very much now... but it was a process.

I encourage you not to give up on poetry or literature study simply to seek a way to teach these subjects with an answer key. When there is a key, you can be sure there is often very little creativity being taught, as the goal to mirror the key becomes the focus of the assignment very quickly. Subjects such as grammar and math work well from a key. Subjects such as literature, poetry, and Bible are meant to be discussed and lingered over. The skill of thinking on a higher level and digging beneath the surface of what is read is a skill to be taught like any other. It comes naturally to some people and not to others, but it is a skill that can be taught to almost anyone given the right method and enough time. As an example of this, Charlotte Mason encouraged the skills of understanding and appreciating literature and poetry in homeless workhouse children who had no education, no home, and no prior schooling. Yet, they could learn to appreciate literature and poetry and it opened a world of possibilities in their minds. Our guides strive to do the same.

One of the number one surprises to many families using HOD is how much their kiddos (both boys and girls) are learning to love and appreciate poetry. It is a skill that their kiddos are honing in which the parent had no previous instruction. As they hone this skill with poetry, the world of literature opens up to them as well, and then their writing pours forth from them later too. It is progression of skills that takes time to come to fruition, but it is a joy to behold as it does!

This discussion for you is about the need for an answer key. This discussion for me is about getting families to understand the process behind building the skills in these areas that we desire for your kiddos to have. The philosophy of why we do what we do drives whether or not a key is conducive to building the skill. In this case, an answer key would actually get in the way of building the skills that we are seeking for your child to develop. It would cause you to get between the text and the child, which is something we do not wish to do. We want the child to learn to make his/her own connections and to seek his own meaning from the text.

I'll leave you with this last thought to ponder, as it really struck me when I read it in my morning devotions several mornings ago. In 2 Samuel 23:1, as we have King David ready to depart from this earth, David whom was called "a man after God's own heart", it is interesting to notice the wording the Lord chooses as a preface to sum up David's life before David's last words are shared.

Now these are the last words of David. Thus says David the son of Jesse; Thus says the man raised up on high, The annointed of the God of Jacob, and the sweet psalmist of Israel: ... 2 Samuel 23:1

Notice that God is giving honor to David's parents "son of Jesse". He is recognizing David's calling and the coming lineage of Christ "Thus says the man raised up on high". God is pointing out the source and heritage of David's power, "The annointed of the God of Jacob". Then, God shares David's greatest accomplishment, "and the sweet psalmist of Israel". Of all of David's accomplishments (killing lions and bears, defeating the giant Goliath, his numerous victories in battle, and his reign as Israel's greatest king), the most recognized quality by the Lord is David's poetic psalms of praise and worship! The Books of Poetry in the Bible show God values this form of expressing oneself in word and in song. Yet, there is no key for us to have in hand as we read the Psalms, rather they are meant to be medidated upon and internalized as they speak to reader's heart. Poetry endures the test of time because it speaks to the the heart as well as the mind, lingering long after the reading of the final stanza, if only we allow it to do so.

Blessings,
Carrie

[netpea]

I have very little to add to the great comments here, but just know that you are not alone in this. My background is engineering. I didn't do well in literature classes in school and poetry doesn't come easily to me either. But I have enjoyed the poetry box with my kids and we have all grown through reading it together.