Part of Lesson Plan: Serious About Literature and Metaphor

Activity Overview / Details

Have students research (online or at the library) and select a piece of poetry, literature, song lyric, or other literary source that they would like to work with. The piece should be of personal importance or significance to the student. Students can search Google Books and other sources or sites such as http://www.poets.org/

Have students create a single poster image (11” x 17”) that depicts the piece they selected. The poster should incorporate appropriate words and images related to the subject. This is an exercise in developing a visual metaphor for the piece. This is a good opportunity to teach additional skills in Photoshop or other image editing programs. Additionally, image layers can later be used in the student's video project. As an alternative, students may either draw using traditional art methods or physically collage the images they want to use. Whatever the method, the goal is to construct a visual representation to the piece of literature which reflects the students metaphorical understanding of the narratiive while adhering to standards of artistic expression and principals of design.

The sample here uses a Wordle of the poem as a graphic element. Have students look for other graphic tools online that can help create interesting graphic extensions of the narrative and add unique design elements that draw on the text itself and the narrative content.