Yesterday was a post about technology learning. Today is a post about atechnology learning. Sometimes the students and I need to get away from the computers and instead of creating something in the cloud, create something tactile. And I needed a lesson to keep them engaged right before spring vacation.

My tenth-graders had just finished writing a paper about gender stereotypes in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. We were coming up to spring break and had two classes. Classes at my school are 75 minutes long and meet every other day. The longer class period allows the students to work for longer periods of time without interruption — of the bell and of their own mental distractions. They are with what we are learning more because they know they don’t have to change classes for at least an hour. The longer classes foster a more intense, engaged mindset.

Anyway, I started thinking about what I wanted to teach them over these two days. The other challenge was that several students were leaving for school trips so I needed to create a lesson that did the following:

1. taught an independent unit that could withstand inconsistent student attendance
2. had them read poems
3. kept their attention when they really just wanted to be on spring vacation

They had just read Shakespeare and the next major text was going to be Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Frankenstein connects thematically with both major texts which the students had read thus far spring semester: Oedipus Rex and Macbeth. I knew that before teaching Frankenstein, I had to introduce them to the Romantic period, its ideas, and themes. I also wanted them to read Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner before we started Frankenstein. But I also knew that they would not have the toleration, stamina, or attention span to read Coleridge’s poem during these two days before spring break. That was just reality. Side note: sometimes I plan lessons based on the prevailing student mood, the time of year, and upcoming holidays. For example, just before Thanksgiving last year, on the suggestion of my colleague who teaches the other two sections of tenth grade, we read Rossetti’s “Goblin Market” because of the fabulous descriptions of all the fruits the goblin men have to sell. 

Another consideration was that I wanted to give them a sense for how the texts they have been reading connect to each other. Because of the way we teach books, students sometimes don’t see how the books are part of a time continuum. They say that Shakespeare is old English. That makes me cringe as a medievalist since Shakespeare in terms of the history of the English language is actually Early Modern. Old English is Beowulf. I thought then that I would just have them read a representative poem from each of the three major British Literary Periods: English Renaissance, Neoclassicism and Romanticism and I would tell them about each literary period and explain how each poem reflected its period. BORING. They would tune out after ten minutes of that. These students demand that they be active participants in their learning. They love to talk and debate. They don’t like listening to a teacher drone at them. (I wouldn’t either.)

Okay, next idea, I give them the poems and let them figure out how each poem represents a literary period and provide them with a little synopsis of each literary period. Better but still rather static.

Okay, next idea. I put them into groups and give them the poems and they have to figure out how the poems connect, ordering the poems by the birthdate of the poets. Better.

Now to find the poems and poets. Over the weekend, I attended a Philadelphia Orchestra concert featuring Beethoven’s Pastorale Symphony. Always a treat even if this performance was not very inspiring or innovative. In the program, they always include a timeline which connects the words in the program to each other and to other historical, literary, artistic events. Why not have the students create a similar timeline for the poems? Then I decided that I wanted to make sure the chain of poets between Shakespeare and Christina Rossetti was unbroken. I wanted to make sure that before one poet died, another was born.

Here was my first list of poets:

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
John Donne (1572-1631) “The Flea”
John Milton (1608-1674) sonnet on My Blindness
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Alexander Pope (1688-1744) extract from “Rape of the Lock”
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William Blake (1757-1827) “The Tyger”
William Wordsworth (1770-1850) “World is Too Much With Us”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) “Kubla Khan”
Christina Rossetti (1830-1894) “Goblin Market”

There were two breaks in the list and so I had to turn to my Norton English Anthology to fill in the gaps with:

John Dryden (1631-1700) — can’t find anything good
Thomas Grey (1716-1771) “Ode on Death of a Favorite Cat”

It was easy to find a poem from Grey — this ode is pretty funny as he personifies a cat as a demure maid trying to catch “the genii of the stream.” Dryden was another matter since he was most well known for his plays. But then I remembered his “Song for St. Cecilia’s Day,” which is a poem narrating the creation and destruction of the Christian world.  Handel turned in to a gorgeous choral piece. Just listen to the last part when the full chorus sings “the dead shall live, the living die / And Music shall untune the sky.”

The list of poets and poems was good: several sonnets; interesting thematic connections; not too hard. Except for “The Flea.” In my experience, students have a hard time seeing the dramatic scene between the lover-narrator and the woman with whom he wants to get into bed. Throw that out and put in his sonnet “Death be not proud.” That is famous for the first line alone.

Then Pope’s “Rape of the Lock” is rather long. Find an excerpt. Why not that part that describes the Peer cutting off Belinda’s lock? That has some pretty funny circumlocutions and that hilarious simile comparing Belinda’s scream of anguish to the cries “When Husbands or when Lapdogs breath their last.” Add some explanatory glosses and that one is done.

“Goblin Market” is too long and they had already read it before Thanksgiving. My colleague suggested Christina Rossetti’s sonnet “In an Artist’s Studio.” That was a brilliant suggestion because it was a sonnet and it was about how men see women and thus connected to a video about women in western art which the students had seen on Arts Day. If you have not seen the video, “500 Years of Female Portraits in Western Art” by Philip Scott Johnson, you should!

That completed the list of poets and poems. Next post will be about the directions for the actual lesson.