Worksheet

White Coat, Brown Coat

Read an original poem about a snowshoe hare and explain how its six stanzas fit together to follow one full year.

Grade 5ELAInteractive · Printable

Aligned toRL.5.5

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What’s included

Single worksheet
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1 Common Core standard
Printable answer key
10 questions
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Details

Format: Interactive · Printable
Grade: Grade 5
Subject: ELA
Question types: Fill in the blank, Multiple choice, Matching, Circle the answer, Short answer

About this worksheet

What students practice

Students explain how the stanzas of a poem follow a pattern of seasons.
Students describe how one stanza sets up or answers another stanza.
Students explain how the first and last stanzas give a poem its circular structure.

How to use

Read the poem aloud once, then have students reread it stanza by stanza before they answer. Discuss the last question as a class.

Curriculum

Common Core standard covered

RL.5.5

Explain how a series of chapters, scenes, or stanzas fits together to give a story, drama, or poem its overall structure.

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Name Date

White Coat, Brown Coat

See how six stanzas follow a snowshoe hare through one year.

Read the poem

Read the poem. Each numbered part is one stanza.

White Coat, Brown Coat

1When the aspen leaves turn gold and drop,
and each day ends a little sooner,
the hare in the thicket begins to change.
One white hair, then ten, then a hundred
creep along her ears and paws,
until she wears a patchy coat
of brown and white, like a field
where the first snow has not quite stuck.

2But this year the snow is slow to come.
Her coat turns white before the ground does,
and she sits in the brown leaves
as bright as a lantern in the dark.
She feels every eye in the forest upon her.
She hops from shadow to shadow,
waiting, waiting, for the sky to catch up.

3Then one gray night the snow arrives.
It falls and falls until morning,
and the whole hillside matches her at last.
Her wide back feet, furred like slippers,
carry her over the drifts
where heavier animals sink.
She nibbles twigs and willow bark
and rests in the hollows under the spruce.

4At dusk the lynx comes walking,
its big paws soft and silent.
The hare does not run.
She tucks her ears and holds so still
that she becomes a little hill of snow.
The lynx sniffs the cold air,
looks right past her,
and pads away into the trees.

5In spring the drifts sink and shrink under the warm sun.
Brown earth shows through in patches,
and so does she:
brown hairs push through the white
until she is a puzzle of both colors,
changing as the hillside changes,
melting, it seems, along with the snow.

6By summer she is brown again,
hidden among ferns and fallen logs,
with tiny brown babies tucked under the leaves.
And when the aspen leaves turn gold,
the first white hair will appear
along the tip of her ear,
and the year will begin its circle once more.

How the stanzas fit together

Use the poem to answer each question.

How is the poem organized?

A. Each stanza tells about a different animal in the forest.
B. Each stanza tells about a different place the hare visits.
C. The stanzas follow the hare through the seasons of one year.
D. The stanzas give steps for finding a hare in the woods.

Match each stanza to what happens in it.

Stanza 1
Stanza 2
Stanza 3
Stanza 4
Stanza 5

A. She stays still while a hunter passes by.
B. Snow falls, and she finally blends in.
C. Brown hairs come back as the snow melts.
D. Her coat starts turning white as days get shorter.
E. Her white coat stands out on the bare ground.

Write the number of the stanza in which the snow finally falls.

Stanza

What problem in stanza 2 is solved in stanza 3?

A. The hare is hungry until she finds twigs and bark to eat.
B. The hare is easy to see until snow covers the hillside.
C. The hare is lost until she finds her way back to the spruce.
D. The hare is cold until her winter fur grows thick and warm.

Read stanza 3 again. Underline the sentence that shows the problem from stanza 2 has been solved.

Then one gray night the snow arrives.It falls and falls until morning, and the whole hillside matches her at last.Her wide back feet, furred like slippers, carry her over the drifts where heavier animals sink.She nibbles twigs and willow bark and rests in the hollows under the spruce.

How does stanza 4 build on stanza 3?