Since songs are poetry set to music, I decided to tap into one of my favorites:
We read the lyrics using the Four Voices strategy. This consists of breaking text into meaningful chunks and color-coding it in four different colors. Each student in a group assumes a color to read and this aids in their overall comprehension of the poetry text. Afterward, I used In the Ghetto as a model text. On clean copies of the poem, we worked as a class to paraphrase each stanza and color-code literary devices. Discussions about tone and mood evolved naturally during the paraphrasing process, and I was delighted to see that engagement was through the roof thanks to the use of Today's Meet. When all was said and done, I played the song so students could hear it. They loved it!
To repeat the process, while gradually releasing control until students could execute the read/paraphrase/analyze process on their own, I busted out some other major players in poetry and music. Whenever possible, I shared the songs or You Tube fan tributes in class after reading. (For example, there's a fantastic fan tribute for Annabel Lee on You Tube, which really helped cement understanding for my EL students.)
