A. Read and Analyze Structure: “On Bully Patrol” – RL.7.5 (20 minutes)

• Review appropriate learning target relevant to the work to be completed in this section of the lesson:

“I can analyze how the structure of a poem contributes to its meaning.”

• Inform students that in this lesson they will begin analyzing the poem pairings in their anchor texts One Last Word by Nikki Grimes. Explain that in today’s lesson, students will reread “Hope” by Georgia Douglas Johnson as well as Grimes’ accompanying poem “On Bully Patrol.” Ask students to retrieve their copies of One Last Word and open to the poem “Hope.”
• Read “Hope” aloud for students. Ask for student volunteers to recall the themes they discussed for this poem. (Difficulties don’t last forever; no matter how difficult life is, there is always hope.) As necessary, display and review the Harlem Renaissance Themes anchor chart to help students recall the poem “Hope.”
• Inform students that they will now read the Grimes poem “On Bully Patrol,” which was inspired by “Hope.” Inform students that they will read the whole poem in this lesson, analyzing the first half of the poem now and the second half in the next lesson. In both lessons, they will investigate more closely the techniques Grimes used and how she borrowed from “Hope” to create her poem.
• Explain that students will read the poem several times through before analyzing it. Read aloud the full poem, asking students to close their eyes and listen. Remind students that today they will focus on the first half of the poem. Read the first six stanzas aloud a second time (from “My youngest limps home, feeble and frail” to “A bad habit is an ugly weed”), asking students to follow along. Finally, read the six stanzas aloud chorally as a class.
• Ask students to Turn and Talk with a partner about both poems and note any similarities they see between the two poems. (The highlighted words at the ends of the lines come from “Hope.” Both poems seem to be about overcoming difficult times.)
• Confirm for students that Grimes is using words from the poem “Hope” in “On Bully Patrol” to end the lines of her poem. Explain that this is a technique called the Golden Shovel, which they will look at more deeply after finding the gists of the stanzas they’ve read so far and understanding their meaning.
• Distribute copies of the Analyze Poetry note-catchers and Analyze Poetry note-catchers ▲ as necessary. The differentiated note-catcher supports students in writing about structure, figurative language, and themes with sentence starters. ▲ Note that this is the same note-catcher that students used to analyze poetry in Unit 1 of this module. As necessary, review what students should record in each section. Direct students to complete the sections on the title and poet.
• Ask students to Think-Pair-Share:

“Who is the speaker in this poem, and what is she discussing?” (The speaker is a mother discussing the difficulty her child faces, including facing racist insults at her school.)

“How is the poem organized—in stanzas, rhyming couplets, etc.?” (The poem is organized into stanzas.)

“What is the meaning of reproaches in line two? What is happening to the daughter in this stanza?” (Reproaches means “criticisms” or “harsh words.” The daughter is being picked on and made fun of in school.) 

• Add reproaches to the academic word wall, and instruct students to add the word to their vocabulary logs.
• Use a total participation technique to determine the gist of each stanza with the class. Record the responses on the board:
• Stanza 1: the mother comforts her child, who has been insulted because of her race
• Stanza 2: the mother remembers her own hurt at the hands of bullies
• Stanza 3: the mother remembers losing her father, recalls that difficult times pass
• Stanza 4: the mother recalls time her daughter was sick, who now “leap[s]”
• Stanza 5: her eldest child is like her, stubborn and a perfectionist
• Stanza 6: good traits take time, bad habits can come quickly
• Invite students to note these responses on their Analyze Poetry note-catchers.
• Tell students that they will look more closely at the Golden Shovel technique Grimes uses in this poem by reading her brief essay at the beginning of the book.
• Instruct students to open their copies of One Last Word to the essay titled “Poetry Form.” Read the essay aloud while students follow along.
• After reading, ask students to Turn and Talk in a small group about how the essay relates to the poems they just read:

“Does the essay confirm the structural relationship between the poems ‘Hope’ and ‘Bully Patrol’ that you discovered?” (Yes, Grimes talks about how the Golden Shovel technique uses the whole poem or just a line to create the new poem. In “On Bully Patrol” she uses the whole poem “Hope” to end each line of the new poem.)

• Also, point out that each stanza has as many lines in it as there are words in the line from “Hope” that Grimes is using.
• Ask students to Turn and Talk about the following questions:

“Why does Grimes find this way of writing challenging? Why does she ‘love’ using this style?” (Grimes says it is challenging to write something “that makes sense.” But she also says she loves it “for that very reason,” because it gives her the chance to create “something entirely new.”)

“How does writing in this way help to connect present to past, and carry on the legacy of work from movements like the Harlem Renaissance?” (By actually using another writer’s words, Grimes helps these words live on to reach new generations of readers. She adds her own ideas and language to connect the ideas in the poems from the past to her life and work in the present.)

• Tell students that throughout the unit they will have the chance to respond to the poems they read by either creating a Golden Shovel poem like the one they analyzed today, creating an illustration, song, or dance, or writing a paragraph response to the poem. These responses will be part of their work tracing the legacy of the Harlem Renaissance in this unit.
• Display the first stanza of “On Bully Patrol” and point out how Grimes uses the words from the first line of the poem “Hope” to end each line of this stanza. Note that the poem has twelve stanzas and uses all twelve lines of the poem “Hope” as the ending words in each line.
• Ask students to form small groups to look more closely at how the structure of the Golden Shovel impacts the poem. Assign each group one of the first four stanzas to analyze and discuss. Explain to students that they will analyze stanzas 5 and 6 in more detail for homework. (Since there are likely more groups than stanzas, several groups will analyze the same stanza.) As they analyze and discuss their stanza, they can determine the meaning of unknown words using strategies such as context, word parts, and a dictionary.
• Ask students to Think-Group-Share about their assigned stanzas, focusing first on the structure of the stanzas.

“What is the speaker thinking about or doing in this stanza? How does the stanza develop ideas from the line it borrows from ‘Hope’?”

• Stanza 1: (The speaker is comforting her youngest daughter. Her daughter was bullied and felt “feeble and frail” and also full of “sorrow,” like the children in “Hope.”)
• Stanza 2: (The speaker is recalling her own time being bullied. It connects to the line she uses because from “Hope” because her daughter is being bullied for being “too dark . . . too whatever,” but the speaker also remembers that the “light shines through.”)
• Stanza 3: (The speaker is recalling that she lost her father when she was young. It connects to “Hope,” because the line mentions the world changing and how “all things pass away.”)
• Stanza 4: (This describes the speaker’s daughter and how she is healthy now but was very sick once. It connects to the line from “Hope” in remembering that the dark “night” of her daughter’s illness didn’t last forever.)
• As groups share, invite students to note several examples of how the poem is structured on their note-catchers, along with a description of how the poem uses lines from “Hope” to structure its ideas. To support students who need more time or visuals to process, record responses on the board or a displayed copy of the Analyze Poetry note-catcher. Consult the Analyze Poetry note-catcher (example for teacher reference) as necessary.
• Ask students to Think-Group-Share:

“How does the meaning of your group’s stanza relate to the meaning of the line from the poem ‘Hope’?” (Responses will vary but may include: The stanza uses the same ideas in the line from “Hope,” but connects it to a new context, to children’s lives today.)

• Repeated routine: Invite students to reflect on their progress toward the relevant learning target.