langston hughes poem

For the chapter 8, I used the lesson from p. 119. I gave each student a copy of "Dreams" and asked them to read it to themselves. I explained that, when reading poetry, the first thing you should do is try to visualize the poem in your mind, using the visual words from the poem. I then asked students to close their eyes, and imagine what I was reading as I read the poem. After that, I asked some volunteers what they imagined. Then I showed a youtube clip of the poem which used visuals to illustrate the poem. After that, I asked the students what they saw in the clip, and how it correlated to the poem. Then I asked the students what questions they had, and told them that there are no "dumb" questions. I had the students go up front and write their questions on the promethean screen. Some of the questions we answered as a group, but many of the questions just led to more questions. Most of the students decided it was a sad poem, but there was one student who viewed it as a happy poem. A student asked why Hughes used "a frozen field" to describe a dream that was lost. At first, I was worried that the lesson wasn't going to work, because it was really slow at first, but gradually, as more students slowly started asking more questions, more students got involved, and more interest was shown toward the poem.