Review Prereading information on page 639 and your answers to the Reader’s Journal question. Also, read the author biography on page 641. Consider the differences between your generation and the ones before you, such as differences between you and your parents’ or you and your grandparents’. Make a three-column chart, one for your generation, one for your parents’, and one for your grandparents’. List some characteristics of life during each generation, focusing on the standard of living, the social climates, predominant values, and the technological advances. Then, discuss how life is different today than it was when your parents and grandparents were your age. Finally, discuss the title of the poem. What connotation, or implied meaning, does the word ancients have? As you read the poem, consider what the author is trying to say given this connotation.
1. Follow along in the text as your teacher reads the poem aloud. Who is the speaker of the poem and who is being addressed? How does the childhood of the person being addressed differ from the speaker’s childhood? How does this relate to the information in the chart you made in the Before Reading activity?
2. Reread the poem on your own. Consider the connotations you listed for the word ancients. Does the speaker seem to embody those connotations? Explain your answer in a paragraph.
If you have difficulty applying the reading strategy, choose a new strategy to help you better understand the poem. You might try visualizing the images the poet includes to help you identify the hyperbole and the effect of its use. Read the poem and identify the sensory images included. Then, try to picture each image in your mind. Who is the speaker? How do the images make you feel about the speaker? Jot down answers that lead you to understand the statement the poet is making about the speaker.
With a small group, share your charts and discuss the connections you made between the charts and the poem. Discuss the author’s purpose, as stated in the biography. Do you think that he has achieved his purpose in this poem? Explain to the group your answer to the question.