1.)Literature should be puzzling, magical and mystifying. The best literature hinders easy interpretation and compels return visits. Poetry serves this purpose perfectly. Poetry is not meant to be solved. The ambiguous nature of the poem is one of the reasons it is not a favorite of the majority of class, but rather the minority.Poetry allows me to teach my students how to write, read, and understand any text. It also provides a healthy outlet for swelling teenage emotions. Some of the most empathetic and trusting moments in the classroom community for me over the past twenty years has come from students sharing their original work, to say nothing of the speaking and listening SOLS that are often overlooked in high school English. This lesson is for the discovery of poetry.

This resource presents an approach for reading memoirs with students that examines the role of truth in the genre and in the specific work(s) chosen. It gives suggestions for activities during the reading and focuses on a culminating activity in which students engage in research to investigate the facts behind the accounts the author(s) present in the memoir. Students learn about evaluating sources, locate a reliable source and discuss its credibility and impact on their understanding of the events,. Finally, they present their findings and analysis to the class.