Objectives
My goal for this unit is for students to identify successfully the tone of a passage and explain how it relates to the author's purpose. By focusing students on the sound of the text, along with the more traditional analytical devices normally emphasized in the course, I hope to enhance the recognition of how the relationship between the content and the sound work together to establish tone and meaning. The fundamental question is how to get the students to move from their appreciation of tone in their everyday spoken interactions to a reading experience. The incorporation of poetry into the curriculum will allow students to establish these skills and bring the same techniques of analysis to the study of prose, primarily nonfiction. Students will focus on the sound of poetry as they complete text-based analysis without the introduction of outside context such as biographical information. As an originally oral form, poetry foregrounds the "how" of verbal communication and will serve as an effective bridge between the verbal and written formats. Eventually, the improvement in skill will facilitate the establishment of their own voices in their writing.
Comments: