Building Blocks for Poetry: Vertical Team Sequencing for Effective Poetic Analysis is a model of implementation that recognizes that knowledge required for adept poetic analysis must be acquired over significant and consistent periods of exposure to varied engagements with poetic texts at sequential levels of Bloom's Taxonomy (knowledge, understanding, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation). Hence this curriculum proposes the use of a single work, presented in a progressing structure of poetic analysis from the ninth to the twelfth grades-not as a packaged plan, but as a purposeful process.

This process involves six layered readings of a single work of poetry, poet's works or period. Through a concentrated adaptation of skills relating to poetry analysis from ninth to twelfth grades, this curriculum supports backward design and offers a snapshot of how English teachers might smoothly collaborate to align vertically curricular goals using a single work at each grade level, so that students ultimately gain necessary analytical skills for notable advancement. Many poems might be used to illustrate this unit's purpose; however, two works are used, Edgar Allen Poe's "To Helen" (1831) and Hilda Doolittle's "Helen" (1924).

(Developed for AP Literature and Composition, grade 12; recommended for English and Language Arts, grades 9-12, and AP Literature and Composition, grade 12)