How to See a Dragon

Direct students to read the title and study the poem illustration. Invite them to make a prediction as to what the poem is about.  

Ask volunteers to read aloud the Up Close box and the two white annotation bubbles for the class. 

Read the poem aloud, or play our Author Read-Aloud with Jacqueline Shirtliff. 

For fluency practice, have students take turns reading the poem aloud in pairs.

Ask students to underline words or phrases from the poem that they enjoy or have questions about. Invite your students to share what they underlined and why in small groups or in a whole-group discussion.

Discuss the poem as a class, using the questions that follow as prompts.

1. Read the title and first line of the poem. Why do you think a poem titled “How to See a Dragon” begins with instructions to “close your eyes”? (text structure) The poem begins this way because the poet wants us to close our eyes and use our imaginations in order to “see” the dragon in our minds.

2. The poem includes several sentences that tell us what action to take next, like “tiptoe silently” or “wait.” Why does the poet give us instructions? What does she want us to do? (author’s purpose) The poet wants to lead us on a journey in our minds to visit a dragon and to remember what it looks like when we open our eyes again. She gives us these instructions because the way to see a mythical creature without a picture or an illustration is to use our imaginations.

3. Read lines 2-4. Which details does the poet include to help us imagine how the scene looks, feels, and sounds? (sensory details) The description of the bridge as “old’ and “rickety” helps us imagine the bridge looking run-down, perhaps swaying and creaking as we cross it. The line “cobwebs glistening in the early morning mist” prompts us to imagine the look of sunlight hitting the cobwebs and the feeling of the damp morning air. The description of the “bubbling stream” helps us imagine the look and sound of the moving water.

4. The poem repeats the phrase “slowly, carefully” three times. What happens in your imagination each time these words appear in the poem? Why might we need to go slowly and be careful at these points?  (poetic devices) The words appear when we are  crossing  a rickety bridge, climbing steep and rocky steps up a mountainside, and in the cave of the sleeping dragon. The phrase is used at especially dangerous moments in the poem when it’s important to be very careful. 

5. How does the artwork illustrate the ideas from the poem? (text features) The artwork illustrates the ideas from the poem by showing a dragon that is being imagined by the child lying beneath the tree. We can guess that he’s been reading a book of stories that include dragons.

Distribute or digitally assign the Poetry Kit, which will take students on a deep dive into the poem and offer opportunities for students to connect the poem with other stories in the issue.