Republic of the Philippines

Department of Education
Region VII
Talisay City Division
Instructional Plan in Grade __ English
Name of JARRE A.LABORTE Grade Level 8
Demonstrator
Learning Area: English Quarter:1st
Topic  Free Verse and Blank Verse Duration 1 Hour
Learning The learner…
Objectives Knowledge Define free verse and blank verse poetry.
Skill Make use of the provided words to make a poem.
Attitude Compose a 5 stanza free verse poetry and blank verse.
Materials
needed Speaker Pictures Powerpoint presentation
Laptop projector
Elements of Methodology
the Plan
Preliminary Activities (Big-Group Activity)-5 minutes
 Prayer
Preparations Introductory  Uniform and seating arrangement checks
-How will I Activity  Attendance Check
make the
learners MOTIVATION
ready?
DEFINING POETRY (STAR-UP ACTIVITY) 5
-How do I
MINUTES
prepare the
learners for Instructions: In a ¼ sheet of paper, write your own
the new
lessons? definition of poetry in 2-3 sentences. Submit your
papers to me and I will call each one of you to explain
your answer why you give such kind of definition.
Compose a 2-verse poetry afterwhich.

Processing Questions (Big-Group Activity)

5 minutes
Presentation
Ask:
-How will I Analysis
a. By defining what poetry is, how will you know that it is a poem?
present the
b. Do you have any idea what skill are we using in the activity?
new lesson?
c. After making 2-verse poetry, how did you come up with a topic? How
did you come up with an idea?

Note: The teacher uses these guide questions as a transition from the start-up
activity to the proper discussion of the lesson.

Discussion connects here:

Teacher: From this activity, what you did is writing. You put it into writing
your own definition of poetry. You wrote also a-2-verse poetry without any
criteria in constructing a poem. By that, you are enhancing your writing skill
and imagining the things in creating a poem. From the activity that you have
made a poem freely opens our topic about a-FREE VERSE and a BLANK
VERSE POETRY. Now, we should know first what is a free verse poetry and
how should we get into a poetry of free verse as well as a blank verse.

Stimulating Question:

Teacher: Before I introduce with the type of poetry that we’ll be discussing
today, how will you first define free verse poetry and a blank verse poetry?

WHAT IS POETRY?
 Poetry is a type of literature, or artistic writing, that attempts to
stir a reader’s imagination or emotions. The poet does this by
carefully choosing and arranging language for its meaning, sound,
and rhythm. Some poems, such as nursery rhymes, are simple
and humorous. Other poems may try to express some truth about
life, to tell a story, or to honor a person or a god. Poetry appears
in a great many forms and styles. This makes it difficult to define
exactly.
One thing that makes poems different from other types of writing is their
structure. The words of a poem are arranged in lines and groups of lines,
called stanzas. For example, here is the first stanza of the poem “From a
Railway Carriage,” about an exciting train ride, by Robert Louis
Stevenson:
Faster than fairies, faster than witches,
Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches;
And charging along like troops in a battle,
All through the meadows the horses and cattle:
All of the sights of the hill and the plain
Fly as thick as driving rain;
And ever again, in the wink of an eye
Painted stations whistle by.

WHO ARE WRITERS OF POETRY? POET

WHAT ARE THE IMPORTANT ELEMENTS OF POETRY?

IMPORTANT ELEMENTS OF POETRY

RHYTHM

 Poets use patterns of rhythm to create various effects. Some

syllables, or parts of words, in a line naturally receive more
emphasis, or stress, than others. For example, in the phrase
“hedges and ditches,” the hedg and ditch sounds are stressed more
than the other sounds. The stressing of certain syllables creates a
particular rhythm. A poem’s rhythm is called its meter.

SOUND
 Poets also use patterns of sound. Some poems rhyme, or use two
or more words that end with the same sound, such as hat and bat.
 A poem may repeat sounds in many other ways. For example, in
“high as a kite,” the long “i” sound is repeated. In “a stroke of
luck,” the “k” sound is repeated. Alliteration is another way a
poem repeats sounds. A group of words that start with the same
sound, such as “a dark and dangerous day,” uses alliteration.
Another poetic sound device is onomatopoeia. Onomatopoeia is the use
of a word or words that sound like what they are meant to
represent. Buzz, hiss, and cuckoo are examples of onomatopoeia. The
following lines from the poem “The Brook” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
provide another example. They reproduce the sound of water flowing in a
brook:
I chatter over stony ways,
In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles.
FORMS
 Some poems follow strict patterns of meter, sound, and length.
For instance, the sonnet is a form of poetry that consists of 14
lines of 10 syllables each. It also follows a set pattern of rhythm
and rhyme. Haiku is a form of poetry with three lines. Each line
has a fixed number of syllables: five syllables in the first and third
lines and seven syllables in the second line.
Some poems do not use any set form. Instead they use rhythms that are
closer to those of everyday speech. These poems are known as free verse.
However, the poet may still carefully arrange the sounds and rhythm.

FIGURES OF SPEECH
 A figure of speech is a way to express the meaning of something
without saying it directly. Figures of speech are used frequently in
poetry. In fact, metaphors are considered to be the basic language
of poetry. A metaphor can be used to compare something
unfamiliar or difficult to understand with something that is
familiar to the reader. William Shakespeare used metaphors
throughout his plays. In his play As You Like It, he writes:
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts…

In these lines Shakespeare uses a metaphor by comparing life to a play.

A simile is also a figure of speech. It is a more direct way to compare two
things. Similes use the words like or as to show how one thing is similar
to another. “She is as wise as an owl” or “he eats like a bird” are both
examples of similes.

BLANK VERSE AND FREE VERSE

WHAT IS A BLANK VERSE POEM?

 Blank verse is poetry written with a precise meter—almost

always iambic pentameter—but that does not rhyme.

When a poem is written in iambic pentameter, it means each line

contains five iambs—two syllable pairs in which the second syllable is
emphasized.

As an example, consider the opening line of Shakespeare’s “Sonnet

130”:

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun

With proper iambic emphasis, the line would be read aloud in the
following way:

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun

While Shakespearean sonnets exemplify iambic pentameter, they are
not examples of blank verse. Why? Because Shakespearean sonnets
rhyme and blank verse does not. However, Shakespeare himself wrote
extensively in blank verse. He did so in the text of his plays. Consider
Romeo’s famous monologue from Act 2, Scene 2 of Romeo and Juliet.
It begins:
But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?
It is the East, and Juliet is the sun!
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief
That thou her maid art far more fair than she.

Romeo speaks in blank verse, as he does throughout much of the play’s

dramatic action. If we place iambic emphasis on his first line, it reads:

But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?

WHAT IS FREE VERSE?
 Free verse is a literary device that can be defined as poetry that is
free from limitations of regular meter or rhythm, and does
not rhyme with fixed forms. Such poems are without rhythm and
rhyme schemes, do not follow regular rhyme scheme rules, yet
still provide artistic expression. In this way, the poet can give his
own shape to a poem however he or she desires. However, it still
allows poets to use alliteration, rhyme, cadences, and rhythms to
get the effects that they consider are suitable for the piece.

Features of Free Verse:

 Free verse poems have no regular meter or rhythm.

 They do not follow a proper rhyme scheme; these poems do not
have any set rules.
 This type of poem is based on normal pauses and natural
rhythmical phrases, as compared to the artificial constraints of
normal poetry.
 It is also called vers libre, which is a French word meaning “free
verse.”

Example of free verse:

A Noiseless Patient Spider (By Walt Whitman)

“A noiseless patient spider,
I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space…
Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.”
 If you are looking for free verse examples, then Walt Whitman is your
guy. He is known as the father of free verse English poetry. In this poem,
only a simple metaphor is used to mesmerize readers without employing
regular rhyme scheme or rhythm. We can see normal pauses in the poem
unlike the typical limitations of metrical feet.

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FREE VERSE AND BLANK VERSE:

Despite their similar names, free verse poems and blank verse poems are
very different. Free verse poetry has been popular from the nineteenth
century onward and is not bound by rules regarding rhyme or meter.
Blank verse poetry came of age in the sixteenth century and has been
famously employed by the likes of William Shakespeare, John Milton,
William Wordsworth, and countless others. Unlike free verse, it adheres
to a strong metrical pattern.

Abstraction Wrap-up (Big-Group Activity) – 5 minutes

Wrapping up will be done by throwing the following questions to the class:

a. Can you define what poetry is?

b. Can you compare blank verse from free verse?
c. Can you identify a blank verse and free verse?
d. Now that you already determined poetry and the two types being
discussed, what do you think is its importance?

Practice WORD-SCRAMBLE POETRY

-What Application (Paired Activity)-10 minutes
practice
Teacher: I have here a pile of words cut out on individual pieces of paper. They
exercise/
can be specific words that I collected. You should organize the words to create
application/ any poem you would like without adding new words. Create at least 2 poems of
activities will blank verse and free verse.
I give to the
learners?

How will I assess?

Levels of What will I How will I
Assessment Assessment assess? CREATING (INDIVIDUAL ACTIVITY) score?
10 MINUTES
KNOWLEDGE 50 points
Instructions: Create a 5-stanza for each type: for every
blank verse and free verse. poem. A
total of
100 points.

Assignment Reinforcing Short activity. After discussing the Poetry, Blank Poetry and Free verse,
the day’s what have you learned? Fill-in the 321 chart with your answer. Write it in a ½
lesson crosswise paper.

3
Things I
learned/Key
Ideas
 2
Interesting
Ideas

1
Question

References Follo APA 6th or 7th edition style

Britannica Kids. (n.d). Poetry. Retrieved from

https://kids.britannica.com/kids/article/poetry/353645
Literary Devices. (n.d). Definition and Examples of Literary Terms. Retrieved from
https://literarydevices.net/free-verse/
Short, K. (2019).Edutopia. Every Student Can Be a Poet. Retrieved from
https://www.edutopia.org/article/every-student-can-be-poet

Prepared by:

JARRE A. LABORTE

ENGLISH 3B