1. SIFT Poetry Analysis Catherine Hillman EDUR 6961
Best Practice:
SIFT Poetry Analysis
Catherine Hillman
EDUR 6961

2. Best Practice description
SIFT Method:
The SIFT Method is designed to help students learn to analyze poetry by focusing on specific poetic devices that appear within all poems. Students read a poem multiple times, with each reading focused on a different element, to gain a better understanding of a poem’s overall meaning and purpose. Through the analysis, students will annotate the text to identify elements and display their knowledge of the poem, which will ultimately prepare them to write a literary analysis paper.

3. How it works How it Works:
Before using the SIFT Method, students will know and understand poetic devices including:
Rhyme Scheme
Imagery
Figurative Language (Simile/Metaphor/Personification, etc.)
Tone
Theme
This strategy aids students in their literary analysis and helps them write sustained arguments about literature, skills that are both relevant to the Common Core in terms of Reading and Writing standards.
Target Population:
This practice is best used in English classes as it is working primarily with poetry. It is ideal for grades 9-12.

4. Demonstration
We will read the sample poem, “Fire and Ice”, and go through the SIFT method together, annotating the text to identify each element at each stage of the reading.
We will discuss each element and determine the dominant one in the text and how it affects the poem’s overall meaning.
We will discuss strategies to approach writing about the poem and look at a sample literary analysis paper.

5. Adaptations
Have students work in groups and assign each student to be an “expert” on a particular element.
Allow visual learners to create visual representations of the elements in the poem. Allow kinesthetic learners to act out their interpretation of the poem.
Write a “class” literary analysis paper that all students contribute to in order to model analysis and lower affective filters.
Pair two companion poems together and have students work in pairs to compare and contrast the poems as they complete their analysis.
For gifted students, assign more challenging elements to identify and write about (ex. consonance, allusion, rhythm, etc.).

6. SIFT Method You will need: Each pen will be used for a different step:
Copy of the poem (lit book or handout)
Four different color pens (blue, red, green, black)
Each pen will be used for a different step:
S tructure = BLUE
I magery = RED
F igurative Language = GREEN
T one / Theme = BLACK

7. Steps to Analyzing Poetry: Structure
Read through poem
Structure
Identify rhyme scheme
Find breaks in rhyme scheme
Read through again and summarize each stanza
Identify why rhyme scheme is broken in certain stanzas
Determine if physicality (layout) of poem reflects anything in it

8. Steps to Analyzing Poetry: Imagery and Figurative Language
Read poem stanzas again
Identify the imagery
Figurative Language
Identify the various types of figurative language
Ex: metaphor, simile, allusion, personification, alliteration, assonance, consonance, anaphora, hyperbole, irony, onomatopoeia, parallelism, repetition

9. Steps to Analyzing Poetry: Theme and Tone
Read the poem again
Read the summaries you wrote for the stanzas
Identify the theme
Identify the tome
Look back over the page and whichever color is dominant at the end, focus on that area in your short-write (tone, figurative language, etc.)

10. Sample: Poem “Fire and Ice” by Robert Frost Imagery Taste desire
Know enough of hate
Fig. Lang.
Alliteration: “some say,” “world will,” “favor fire”
Assonance: “hold with those,” “if it”
“Fire and Ice”
by Robert Frost
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
Structure: Rhyme Scheme A B C
Theme/Tone
Theme: Destruction of the world might be fire or ice and both will work but the speaker prefers ice.
Tone : matter-of-fact rather than emotional
Structure: Summary
World can end in fire or ice
Poet seems to prefer fire
Both ends would work

11. Sample: Theme Analysis
In the poem, “Fire and Ice,” Robert Frost uses a specific rhyme scheme to write about the destruction of the world in a single stanza lyric poem. At first, there does not seem to be a rhyme scheme, but when examined closer, a pattern emerges at the end of the lines: “fire,” “desire,” and “fire” (Frost 1-4). The main theme of the poem is that the world will end, but how it will end is unsure. These words form the specific A pattern in the rhyme scheme, showing that fire is important to this main theme since it may be how the world ends. Next, the rhyme scheme moves to the next idea with lines ending in a different rhyme: “ice,” “twice,” “ice,” and “suffice” (2, 5, 7, 9). The words in rhyme scheme pattern B emphasize the other half of the main theme. The poem now states that the world may end in ice instead of fire. Finally, a comparison of the two patterns shows the speaker’s view of the destruction of the world: “I hold with those who favor fire” (4). Despite this statement, the B rhyme scheme for ice has four rhymes, while the A rhyme scheme for fire only has three. Although the speaker states a preference for fire, the poem’s rhyme scheme shows the preference is really for ice, since ice is emphasized by more lines. Analyzing the rhyme scheme of Frost’s poem reveals the speaker’s true opinion how the world should be destroyed—by ice instead of fire.