Teaching Backwards
The Poetry of Robert Frost
In a recent weblog entry I speculated that writing produced from models with little explicit instruction would be far superior to process writing, the kind advocated by Jane Schaeffer and in use in many middle and high school classrooms. I recruited a teacher of 7th graders to run such an experimental unit after I had observed the outstanding job she had done with process writing. I photo-copied the final papers and asked to also photo-copy the final product of writing from models. I wrote an 8-day unit on the poetry of Robert Frost and also wrote the explications to be used by the students as models. I also incorporated the strategy of ‘teaching backwards,’ the emphasis being placed on students encountering learning from text first. The unit plan began with these assumptions:
The over-all
objective of this writing unit will be:
1. To increase the extent to which students can learn from text, not talk. All direct instruction will take place via text. [Students can and should learn from text, but they are not used to learning this way. It may take several days before they become accustomed to learning this way.]
2. To gain an appreciation of poetry in general and Robert Frost’s poetry in particular.
3. To understand the basic elements of poetic text, such as verse, lines, rhyme, meter, imagery and figurative language.
4. To become more powerful writers by exposure to models and to use the act of writing to discover ideas and shape thinking.
The basic pedagogy
can be described as follows:
1. The students must encounter all, or nearly all, concepts from text first. If students do not understand the text, the first intervention is to have them return to the text for a second reading. Students should be encouraged to go beyond two readings, if necessary, and to mark up text as a way of entering it. It is crucial that students become independent learners and able to master text independently if they are to be successful in academic life. Every effort should be made to hold students to this high standard.
2. There will be a subset of students who are consistently confused by text and cannot proceed without scaffolding. Once a teacher has determined that a student fits this description, scaffold as necessary. However, a scaffold is a temporary support. The goal should be to remove the scaffold as soon as the student can function without it. Test routinely for independence. There may be an even smaller subset of students who will need some scaffolding at the beginning of the unit, but who can abandon it as they proceed.
3. Teacher modeling is crucial in this kind of learning. Read when the students read and write when the students write. Feel free to share your writing after students have shared theirs.
4. The premise of this kind of writing instruction is that logic is embedded in the grammar of language; it does not need to be explicitly taught to most students and most will absorb the logic of writing by exposure to good models. Student writing is a function of wide reading. The more a student reads and studies good writing, the more exposure he has to strong models and the more likely he is to embed good writing techniques. Again, there will be a subset of students for whom this does not happen, or happens at a much slower rate. Scaffolding, in the form of temporary supports, are needed here, but continually test for independence.
5. Avoid TELLING students the right answer, or how to proceed. Try to transfer instructions to text and have students learn by decoding and comprehending text.
When the unit concluded, I asked the teacher to write a reflection. Here is what she wrote:
This unit was
difficult for me to teach at first. It
is so hard for a control freak to give up control! My students also struggled in the beginning;
they were frustrated because I would not answer their questions, but rather
made them read and reread until an answer presented itself. Notice I said "an" answer. Even at the end of the unit, my kids were not
always correct in their interpretations.
However, they became very adept a justifying their thinking and
connecting individual thoughts to the larger picture. They also impressed me with their ability to
take the academic language from the explications I provided and use similar
language in their own explications.
Answers went from, "This poem stinks. I think it's about someone who likes
fire," to "Although this was a challenging poem, I believe Frost was
trying to express..." Quite a bit
of improvement! I think the concept of
reading, rereading, and rereading again was critical to success. Students resisted at first, but they soon
began to follow these steps without prompting from me. I even heard students whispering to each
other, "How many times did you read it?" The room was filled with sounds of "Oh,
I get it!" It was very encouraging!
Without
hesitation, I can say that I will be teaching this unit again in the
future. I made some notes to myself
along the way in regards to adaptations for next year. For example, I will give a brief introduction
to the unit in which I discover student's prior knowledge and discuss poetic
terms. Initially, I was hesitant because
of the high level of reading and writing presented in the unit. I have never been so happy to be proved
wrong! All of my students made
tremendous improvements. 100%...how
often can a teacher say that?
As
a matter of fact, I would be very interested in another Farrell creation for
8th grade. My colleagues agree. I'm not sharing with the other grade levels yet(; This was a
great experience, Jack. Thanks for the
faith and the confidence. I feel like a
better teacher for having taught this unit.
Comparing the process writing with
modeling became a bit like comparing apples with oranges. The process writing was multi-draft in nature
and there was considerable opportunity for students to remove errors and revise
to improve their pieces. The writing
from models was first-draft, timed writing in the classroom, responding to
material encountered for the first time.
Having said that, though, I was impressed by the authenticity of the
voice, the use of academic language and the internal logic of the prose found
in the student writing responding to models.
While the process writing was sound, and virtually error free, I found
the writing to be artificial, formulaic and voiceless. The logic was directly derived from the
graphic organizers used as pre-writing activities. This is not an indictment of the teacher in
any way. The same teacher taught both
units. I consider the process writing
model to be fatally flawed and the writing from models approach to be a superior
alternative.
I have provided the links below to
the following: the unit plan, all the
poems, followed by either their explications or their rubrics, writing from
student #1 and writing from student #2.
All of the Frost’s poetry presented
here is in the public domain. However,
the ideas quoted from Edgar Roberts’ book are protected by copyright.
Follow the
links below to observe and/or copy the documents in the unit:
Unit Plan
The Poetry of Robert Frost
The Poetry of Robert Frost (continued)
"The Flower Boat"
"The Flower Boat" Interpretation
"Fragmentary Blue"
"The Line Gang"
2.2 Writing Applications
"The Line Gang" Interpretation
"Good Hours"
"Good Hours" Interpretation
"Acquainted With the Night"
"Acquainted With the Night" Rubric
Poetic Characteristics
"For Once, Then, Something"
"For Once, Then, Something" Interpretation
"The Sound of Trees"
"The Sound of Trees" Rubric
Writing from Student #1
Writing from Student #2