Activities
Explication
Explication is a very difficult skill because there are so many different lenses in which to look at poems. I strongly suggest choosing poems that lend themselves to many different lenses that students have practiced. The purpose of this activity is to have students practice applying several specific lenses to a poem and have them explain their explication to the class.
Students should be placed in groups of 3-4 students and be given a teacher selected poem. Students will read through the poem twice and try to identify any distinguishing characteristics. Students will then visit five stations with their poems: rhetorical analysis, sound devices, structural foundation, thematic understanding, historical context. They should take notes on their own for purposes of this assignment. If the teacher wants to guide the assignment more carefully the teacher can then provide very specific questions at each station that the students visit. Students should spend about five minutes on each station, have five minutes to formulate their findings to the class, and have five minutes to report their findings. Times can be adjusted depending on your class length and level of students.
Scansion
Scansion is a difficult skill that also takes time and practice. The purpose of this assignment is to have students perform basic level scansion to help them identify the differences between English and Italian sonnets. Students should be prompted with a lecture about sonnets and primed with the vocabulary internal rhyme, couplet, quatrain, sestet, octave, sonnet, Italian sonnet, English sonnet, volta, and enjambment. This assignment can also extend to other kinds of sonnets.
Students can either work alone or with a partner. Students will read the poem twice aloud to one another. They will go through the following steps:
1.Mark the rhyme scheme for each of the sonnets (remind students that sometimes rhymes aren't exact)
2.Based on the rhyme scheme identify the sections in the sonnets. Do you see quatrains, sestets, octaves, couples? Where are they located?
3.Now, identify what kind of sonnets they are. What kinds of similarities and differences do you notice?
Advanced classes can take this a step forward and do the following:
4.Mark the beats and meters for each line. What do you notice? Are there any shifts or changes in the meter? How does that shift signify any other changes within the line or poem?
5.Locate the volta? Is it what you expected, why? Is it out of place and, if so, what do you think was the author's purpose? Why?
Socratic Seminar
The purpose of this lesson is to help prime the argumentative process needed to be fleshed out in their final paper. Students should be primed by having access to the poems beforehand. I also suggest giving them an assignment that makes them think and respond to the text. This pre-exercise only needs to be 3-4 questions that are focused, scaffolded, and connected to the seminar. This is also a chance for you to provide any background information necessary for students, as well as, any clarification of vocabulary.
Before students enter the classroom seats/desks should be in a circle and students should have their nameplates available. Students should enter the classroom, set-up their nameplate, and have their assignment visible. The facilitator should be ready with a plentiful list of questions to help continued conversation through the allotted time. The Socratic seminar should begin with all students individually answering a yes or no question about a text. The question needs to be specific to the topic, but also fair and balanced in that students will select a fair amount of both "yes" and "no" answers. A fully planned lesson would include a variety of these questions as a way to facilitate strong conversation. It should also be emphasized that a successful seminar is often when students make reference to someone else's thought and/or returning to the text to support their own claims.
- Questions that you could consider for this lesson:
- Shakespeare's "Sonnet 130": Read through lines 13 and 14 again. Are you convinced by the speaker's claim?
- Jonson's "On My First Son": Read through this poem again. Is this poem a sonnet?
- Bishop's, "Vists to St. Elizabeths": Read through this poem again. Does the nursery rhyme scheme fit the function of this poem?
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