NATIONAL READING PROGRAM (Catch-Up Fridays)

English 10
Grade Level / Learning
School Tanza National Trade School 10-English
Area
March 15, 2024
Teaching Date and
8:00-9:00, 9:00-10:00; Quarter Third
Time
and 10:00-11:00
Objectives:
A. Review what a metaphor is,
B. express your own experiences and prior knowledge about people, places and ideas; and
C. justify ideas, thoughts, or insights presented.

Time Activity
Activity 1
➢ Ask the students to read the following sentences:
1. “The sun was a toddler insistently refusing to go to bed: It was past eight thirty
and still light.”—Fault in Our Stars, John Green
2. “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”—As You
Like It, William Shakespeare
3. “Her mouth was a fountain of delight.”—The Storm, Kate Chopin
4. “But, soft! What light through yonder window breaks? / It is the east, and Juliet
is the sun.”—Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare
5. “Behind him, sitting on piles of scrap and rubble, was the blue kite. My key to
Baba’s heart.”—The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini

What are the two things being compared in each of the sentence?
Answer:
1. Sun and toddler
2. World and stage
3. Mouth and fountain of delight
I. Pre-
4. Juliet and sun
reading
5. Blue kite and heart

➢ Discuss the definition of metaphor.

Time:
Metaphor-a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or
8:00 AM - action to which it is not literally applicable.
9:00 AM
-describes an object or action in a way that isn’t literally true, but helps explain an
idea or make comparison without the use of the word “as” or “like”

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 ➢ Draw a semantic web on the board as shown below then let the students write
the word/s that they can associate to the word “life.”

ACTIVITY 2

What words can you associate to the word “life?”

Life

➢ Ask the students to read their answer using the given format,
Life is ____________________ because __________________________________.

➢ Give the students 5 minutes to read the poem silently.

➢ Ask the class to read the poem altogether.

Mother to Son
‘Well, son, I'll tell you:
Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
It's had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor—
II. While Bare.
Reading But all the time
I'se been a-climbin' on,
And reachin' landin's,
Time:
9:00 AM - And turnin' corners,
10:00 AM And sometimes goin' in the dark
Where there ain't been no light.
So, boy, don't you turn back.
Don't you set down on the steps.
'Cause you finds it's kinder hard.
Don't you fall now—
For I'se still goin', honey,
I'se still climbin',
And life for me ain't been no crystal stair.

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 ACTIVITY 3
Processing Questions:

1. Who is the speaker? What is her attitude towards her son?

2. What are the positive parts of crystal stair?
3. What are the tacks and splinters of life and “boards torn up” means?
4. What advice is/are the mother giving to her son?
5. What is/are the moral lessons of the poem?

Answer key:
1. In “Mother to Son,” by Langston Hughes, the speaker is a mother addressing
her son. Since the mother has successfully faced the challenges of life, she wishes
her son to be courageous and bold in the face of these challenges and to also
succeed in life.

2. It is an easy life of wealth and luxury, smooth, and a clear path to achieving
one’s goals.

3. Answers may vary.

➢ During her life she has been hurt in many small ways just as a splinter
hurts in a small way.
➢ She has not given up. She could have sat down on any of the landing of
her life but she did not.
➢ She is afraid that her son is close to giving up. He has stepped on so
many tacks, has so many splinters in his hands that he is afraid of the
dangers in climbing up the stair.

4. The mother is simply trying to tell her son that she knows what he is going
through because she has been in rough times herself. All she wants for her son
is for him to keep climbing, and never give up.

5.This poem, “Mother to Son,” by Langston Hughes teaches a valuable life

lesson about never giving up. Even when life is getting more difficult and one
thinks they cannot go on, they need to keep climbing.

Activity 4
Write the metaphors that can be found in the poem, “A Mother to Son” by
Langston Hughes.

Answer key
1. tacks and splinters
2. boards torn up
3. life and crystal stair
4. day and light
5. climbing and reaching
6. landing and turning corners

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 ACTIVITY 5

Directions: After reading the poem, explain the following metaphors given below.

1.…tacks in it and splinters…

III. Post
Reading 2.…boards torn up….

3.I’ts been a-climbin’

Time:
10:00 on…reaching
AM -
11:00 landing…turning corners…
AM
4.…life ain’t been no crystal
stair.

➢ Ask volunteer students to read one item from their answers in front of the
class.
Answer key (Answers may vary)
1. It puts an emphasis on how difficult life has been for the mother.
2. This are used to relate the hardships of the mother's life to the hardships of
climbing up battered stairs. The mother doesn't want her son to avoid this
staircase, the life, she wants him to forge onward and upward.
3. It actually mean things that she has encountered in her life. She says that she
reaches landings, which means that she has come up on place where she could
rest. When she says she turns corners, it is when her life changes and she has to
turn away from her original path.
4.The mother, who is talking to her son, is saying life is not just something you can
walk through with ease. It is a long and hard journey.

Prepared:
MARICEL R. CHAVEZ LENIE F. CASTRO JOSEPHINE M. GARLOTA
CARLO L. HERMOCILLA NICAH E. BAJADO SHERLENE J. GUYURAN
ROSELLYN L. UMALI

Checked:
LOVELY G. RECOSALEM
Head Teacher III, English Department

Approved:

ROLANDO P. DILIDILI EdD

School Principal IV

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