ELA 8 - Unit 1:  Choices

Before YOU Read

What decisions have you made this week?  Did you choose to stay up late one night?  Did you go to bed earlier than usual?  Did you go to the football game?  Did you choose to eat breakfast?

You can probably think of hundreds of decisions and choices that you have made this week?  What choices had consequences. Were they big or small?  

All choices have consequences, whether big or small.  The poem, "The Road Not Taken" is about making choices.  As a matter of fact, the entire poem can be read as a metaphor about making choices.

 

What is a metaphor?

A metaphor is a figure of speech that describes an object or action in a way that isn’t literally true, but helps explain an idea or make a comparison.

Here are the basics:

• A metaphor states that one thing is another thing
• It equates those two things not because they actually are the same, but for the sake of comparison or symbolism
• If you take a metaphor literally, it will probably sound very strange

 

Activity 1 - Define Vocabulary

1.  diverged - verb - branched off; moved in a different direction

2. undergrowth - noun - small trees and plants growing beneath larger trees

3. fair - adjective - promising; favorable

4. claim - noun - demand or right

5. trodden - verb - walked on

6. hence - adverb - from this time

Meet the Author

 

Activity 2 - Copy the poem on a piece of paper.  Circle the vocabulary terms.  

The Road Not Taken 

BY ROBERT FROST

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

 

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

 

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

 

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

 

 

Activity 3 - Comprehension Guide

Click HERE