A Lesson plan for teaching the poem

Exercise 1
Draw a picture of a tree and a picture of a girl side by side on a blank piece of paper.
Exercise 2
Read the poem A Girl by Ezra Pound. Look at the drawings that you have made. Now consider the questions
below.
1.

Does the poem evoke a sense of comparison between a girl and a tree?

2.

How is the tree compared to a girl?

Exercise 3
Make two columns and list down the words related to a tree and those related to a girl.
Exercise 4
A Poem can be interpreted in many different ways. Read the poem once again. What do you think is the poet trying
to say in this poem?
Exercise 5
There are many metaphors used in this poem. Can you make a list of them?
Lesson Plan: Teachers Copy
A Girl by Ezra pound
Task A
Set Scene
Talk about pictures and paintings and how they might be similar to poems.
Ask the students to draw a picture of a tree and a picture of a girl and ask them to compare and see if there are
any similarities.
Task B
Preteach vocabulary/prediction
Discuss and preteach the following vocabulary:
sap
Exercise 1
Exercise 2

moss

violet

Exercise 3
Exercise 4
Task C
Metaphors
Metaphors are devices used in writing poems or any other form of literature where comparison is made between
two things which have some similarities but are essentially different. There is no use of comparing words like like
or as.
He is a dog.
In the sentence above, (he) is compared with a (dog).
Exercise 5
Task D
Follow up
Ask the students to create metaphors for another object or person. Since a girl was used as the subject of the
topic, you can use a boy instead to create some metaphors.
Suggested activities in the lesson plan
Few activities have been suggested in the lesson plan for teaching the poem A Girl by Ezra pound.
Pre-teaching Activities
Activity 1: Scene setting
Setting the scene for the matter to be taught will enable the students to activate the schema and in turn, it will
make the comprehension of the subject matter easier to comprehend. Here, as a scene setting activity, the teacher
is suggested to talk about how there are similarities between text of poems and pictures. Moreover, words can also
be an effective means to express picture-like representations. As an imagist poem, A Girl also paints a picture of
a comparison between a girl and a tree.
The teacher can further ask the students to draw a picture of a tree and a picture of a girl and try to see if there
are any similarities that exist between them. The students can work individually, in pairs or in groups and give a
short presentation on what kind of similarities that they have found.
Activity 2: Preteach vocabulary items
Although the vocabulary items presented in the selected poem are reasonably simple and most of the words can be
understood by the students of secondary level, it is a good idea to discuss some of the items so that the students
will have a complete comprehension of the poem that they are reading. Here, three words sap, moss and violet are
referred for consideration for discussion. Of course the list can be contracted or extended based upon the cognitive
knowledge of the students regarding vocabulary.
It is suggested that the vocabulary items are discussed in contextual and context free manner regarding the poem.
The words might have been used in a different way in the poem as it so often happens while studying poetry. The
students should have a clear concept of what the words mean in the poem before they start reading.
While-teaching Activities

Activity 3: Reading and comprehension

Ask the students to read the text of the poem, preferably aloud. Ask them to answer the comprehension check
questions given at the end. This will enable the students to get a basic gist of the poem and what it is trying to say.
Activity 4: Vocabulary used for comparison in the poem
There are different words used to describe the tree and to describe the girl. Ask the students to make a list
of these words so that they can get an idea how these two unlikely items are compared using more or less equal
number of words.
Activity 5: Finding the metaphors
One of the figurative devices used in this poem is metaphors. After explaining what metaphors are, the students
can be assigned to make a list of all the metaphors used to compare the girl with a tree.
Post-teaching Activities
Activity 6: Creating Metaphors
After the students are familiar with the concept of metaphors, they can be asked to create some metaphors of their
own. Here, the students are asked to create metaphors for a boy since the poem deals with metaphors dealing with
a girl.