Poetry
YOUTUBE Literary Device Quiz
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The YouTube Literary Device Quiz is a multistage project that gives the students the opportunity to have their end product viewed by a real audience. The assignment starts with the teacher giving the students a Folder on a USB stick which includes 8 sub folders named after 8 Literary Devices. Below those folder are some pre-edited sound clips which will fall into one or more of the literary device categories above. In this step, the students are responsible for listening to the sound clips filing the clips by Literary Devices into the matching category.
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Once the students have filed all the songs. They will select the 10 they would like to include in their YouTube quiz. To create the video, we used Microsoft Movie Maker, but it could work with iMovie as well.
Above: 50 Literary Device Sound Clips
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When teaching the Literary Devices portion of the Poetry unit, I found it difficult to find one song that had multiple Literary Devices in it. Stereo Hearts by Gym Class Heroes may not have all of them, but its popular with school aged students and has a good lot of them. There are a few duplicate literary devices in the song, but here are some of my favorites.
Literary Devices in Stereo Hearts
Literary Devices in Stereo Hearts
- Metaphor - "My Heart's a Stereo, it beats for you so listen close"
- Simile - "We go in and out like on the interstate"
- Pun - " If I was just another dusty record on the shelf, would you blow me off and play me like everybody else" - Could also be a Metaphor, but the use of 'Blow' and 'Play' have two meanings. A Dusty record requires dusty blown off before it is played for music and if a person is blown off and played, it means that he or she was ditched and taken advantage of. Very Punny!
- Onomatopoeia - "I used-used-used-used now I'm over that" - Travie is making the noise of a skipping record. The previous line in the song is suggesting that the last girl that "played" him left a couple cracks, and now his "CD" is skipping.
- Alliteration - So Sing along to my Stereo - A loose alliteration, I know....I recommend checking out "Alphabet Aerobics" by Blackalicious. They rap through the alphabet one letter at a time composing a example of alliteration for A, B, C...etc. However, STOP this example by the time you get to "N", as I have not found a clean version of the song.
rhythm, lyrics, and Shakespeare
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This is a video I stumbled across while on a Ted Talks binge. It is presented by Akala, a British rapper and member of the Hip-Hop Shakespeare Company. He makes comparisons between Hip-Hop and Poetry/Shakespeare. He begins his Ted Talk with a short quiz for the audience where they are exposed to different lyrics/lines and are required to identify if they were written by a Rapper or Shakespeare. You would be surprised by the outcome.
Suggested Grade Level: Grades 7-12. I would recommend this video for any Poetry or Shakespeare unit. 100% appropriate and engaging. Akala is no thug, he is incredibly articulate and a terrific speaker. |
