In my last post I discussed standard 4.4, which is about determining the meaning of words and phrases in context, especially those which come from mythology. 4.5 is all about contrasting poetry, prose and drama. Here’s the standard itself:
Explain major differences between poems, drama, and prose, and refer to the structural elements of poems (e.g., verse, rhythm, meter) and drama (e.g., casts of characters, settings, descriptions, dialogue, stage directions) when writing or speaking about a text.
Obviously the key here is exposure. Our students need to experience these three forms of literature if they’re going to become proficient at explaining the differences between them. Prose, of course is the most common form read by most students. When most kids think of reading, they envision a story, either fiction or nonfiction, with a setting, characters and a plot. That’s because most of the literature available is in the form of prose.
I’m lucky. Our district has a literature adoption called Benchmarks which includes a “Readers Theater” in each of the ten units. That means my fourth graders are regularly exposed to drama as a form of literature. And since they’re already fairly familiar with the elements of prose, I use that familiarity to point out the differences between prose and drama. I start with most obvious: “Notice how this play simply lists the characters on the first page. Remember when we read personal narratives? We had to pick out the names of the characters in the introduction of the story.”
Then I’ll move to the more subtle: “In this play, I notice that the dialog drives the story; what the characters say to each other is the most important part of the story. There’s very little narration compared to prose, and we’re rarely told what the characters are thinking; we have to infer it from what they say. That’s an important difference.”
These differences are important when we inevitably turn toward writing. There’s a common tendency with third and fourth graders – particularly with boys – to write a story that reads like a drama. These stories read like the soundtrack of a violent movie, but since there’s no corresponding video, the reader is hopelessly confused. That’s what I like about this standard: if we introduce kids to the difference between prose and drama, it’s easy to say: “Hey, you’ve got some great dialog here. Maybe you could turn this into a play. But to do so, you need to tell the reader which character is talking every time someone talks. Do you remember how to do that?”
This standard also mentions poetry. Frankly, our literacy adoption doesn’t do much with poetry. So I have to get to turn elsewhere! One great resource is Kenn Nesbitt’s website “Poetry4Kids.” Kenn is the current Children Poet Laureate, and he’s got a lot of great poems for kids on this site; classics as well as contemporary work.
Like I said earlier, exposure is important. Once kids have read a bunch of poems, it’s time to work on contrasting this form with prose and drama. When I work with kids and poetry, I explain that poems are usually much shorter than stories or plays, but they probably take just as long to write. We talk about why that is, concluding that each word in a poem is very important; the poet wants to include just enough words so that reader knows about the image or event in the poem and can use her or his imagination to fill in the blanks that the poet deliberately left out.
Of course, poems are also different in that they frequently adhere to a certain structure. They might rhyme or follow a rhythm. Then there’s acrostic poems, cinquans and haikus, each with its own unique set of rules. By the way, these types of poems can be really helpful as a way to respond to a unit of study in a content area. Try having a kid write a haiku about the Oregon Trail and you’ll know what I mean!
Standard 4.5 is not one of those standards that a teacher can just “bang out” and move on to something else. At least I can’t. Rather, this is a standard that we should keep referring to throughout the year, whenever our attention turns to a new piece of literature. It’s also a standard that deserves a “permanent anchor chart” somewhere in the room, to which the class can refer from time to time.