Word-level analysis, or connotations, is a fundamental skill.

Seeing how words interact can offer new ways of interpretating poetry, especially when applied across techniques or thematic containers.

One activity that my students complete, as part of the ongoing refinement of their connotation skills, is to use a variety of graphic organisers to see how the implied meaning of a poem might change. This visual representation (with its connections, assumptions, and more obvious layers of meaning) is particularly useful to students who are studying English as EAL. However, visual representations are useful for anyone as a way of making the metaphorical more tangible, and the abstract more concrete.

These videos are example of how the word-level analysis (Reading AF5 by English APP) of connotations can be done. Thank you to all students who participated:

The poem used was “This Is Just To Say” (available here). This is a fantastic poem to choose for word-level analysis (and in-itself) as it is denotationally simple, but connotational complex.

The PowerPoint with the graphic organisers for connotations is available from this post here (click the link to download the PowerPoint). http://www.thequillguy.com/using-graphic-organisers-to-make-meaning-from-poetry/