The Red Couch Reading Room

"A Literary ToolChest" is a guide to literary devices which uses YouTube clips and familiar songs to introduce today's students to poetry and prose applications of the very best tools a writer has available. Containing a total of 30 lessons designed to be used once a week, students will discover techniques to strengthen their own writing as they first discover a literary device, analyze its use in a familiar song, then the students will analyze the use of that device in classic poetic or prose works.

Many students have never considered that familiar songs – rock songs, patriotic, rap, hip-hop, country, nursery rhymes, hymns, or otherwise – are poetry! It changes the way they approach poetry when they realize that these were the songs of another age, the oft-repeated lyrics of a bygone day.

After you have listened to the songs or watched the video, engage your students in discussion. Discuss the questions in the lessons; the suggested answers in the notes following will help you. Read through the prose or poetry examples together – selections from among the great works of literature – and discuss the questions, encouraging students to research, think, and dare to take the leap of answering when they do not know! These lessons make fantastic literature circle curricula.

I am hopeful that after completing this packet, your students will not only be familiar with common literary devices, but they will have become more familiar with some of the most intriguing poetry in the canon of literature. If my dearest hopes are realized, they will have laughed and had fun in the process!

NOTE: This curriculum is INCLUDED in the year-long course "American Literature," so if you intend to purchase that course, you do not need to purchase this in addition. Thank you!