I first heard about TPCASTT from Lisa Huff and shared the resource on my blog 15 years ago. It works really well for giving students a starting place for analyzing poetry. It helped me solve a problem I was having when teaching poetry: how do students start analyzing poetry? I’m still using TPCASTT in my…
I’ve been a little bit frustrated by my first unit in AP Lit. since my first year teaching it. Since this year is my fourth, it was time to make some changes or scrap it altogether, and since I felt it had some real potential, I decided to rethink the selections I was using to…
This morning my Keurig decided to break. I have a single-serve Keurig that I have to fill with a cup of water each time I use. Only half a cup came out. I knew there had to be water trapped inside, but I wasn’t able to open it to see. So I turned it upside…
One of the difficulties students tend to have with analyzing poetry is figuring out how to start. One method I’ve adopted after seeing it on Lisa Huff’s blog is TPCASTT. TPCASTT is an acronym standing for title, paraphrase, connotation, attitude, shift, title (again), and theme. Students begin by looking at the title of the poem…
My students in British Literature and Composition have just begun a unit on late Renaissance/Restoration poetry. We will read the following writers: John Donne Ben Jonson Andrew Marvell Robert Herrick Sir John Suckling John Milton Afterward, students will explicate a poem, something I was not asked to do until I was a freshman and college. …
