UNIT PLAN

THE POETRY OF ROBERT FROST

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.

DAY ONE
TIME	STRATEGIES	MATERIALS
20 minutes	Pass out the poem “Fire and Ice” and allow students time to read and follow the directions, including producing a piece of writing about the text.	“Fire and Ice” by Robert Frost
5 minutes	Ask students to form partners and read verbatim what they have written. The partners exchange readings. Students must read what they have written and not summarize their ideas. Ask if any student would like to share what they have written with the class. Students who read should be rewarded with a brief round of applause.	Brief student written responses.
30 minutes	Pass out the support essay on poetry, including the brief explication on “Fire and Ice.” Ask student to read this essay twice and to highlight, underline and/or make marginal notes on the second reading. After students have read the selection at least twice, circulate around the room, helping any students who have difficulty. When students are finished, collect the work they have done on “Fire and Ice.” Some may have added to what they wrote after reading the essay. [Flesch-Kincaid Grade level = 6.1]	The Poetry of Robert Frost [continued] [This essay has a Flesch-Kincaid reading level of 6.1]
Homework	Pass out copies of the poem “The Flower Boat.” Ask students to follow the directions and bring in their work tomorrow.	“The Flower Boat” by Robert Frost
DAY TWO
15 minutes.	Choose different partners and have the students read their analyses to each other. Ask for volunteers to read theirs to the class. Reward those who do with applause. Conduct a general discussion about the meaning of the poem. Do not interject any ideas of your own. Simply find out what the consensus view is of the class. Ask students to rate their understanding of the poem by percentage and tally those on the board: 100 90 80 etc.	Written responses to “The Flower Boat”
20 minutes	Pass out the interpretation to “The Flower Boat.” Give students sufficient time to give it multiple readings and then allow them time to add more to their interpretation if they choose. [Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level = 7.5] Collect their work on this poem.	Interpretation of “The Flower Boat.”
Homework	Pass out copies of the poem “Fragmentary Blue.” Tell the students to follow the directions for homework.	“Fragmentary Blue”
DAY THREE
15 minutes	Follow the same opening day procedures as Day Two. Choose different partners and have the students read their analyses to each other. Ask for volunteers to read theirs to the class. Reward those who do with applause. Conduct a general discussion about the meaning of the poem. Do not interject any ideas of your own. Simply find out what the consensus view is of the class. Ask students to rate their understanding of the poem by percentage and tally those on the board: 100 90 80 etc. In addition, there will be no written interpretation of this poem. It is time to display this short poem on an overhead transparency and conduct a discussion of the features of the poem and a possible interpretation. This can be explicit instruction. There isn’t much going on in this poem, I think. So this discussion can be conducted in a few minutes. Students should be gaining some confidence in their ability to handle poetic text. Collect student work on this poem.	Written responses to “Fragmentary Blue” Overhead transparency containing the text of the poem and colored markers.
25 minutes	Pass out copies of the poem “The Line-Gang” and ask students to follow the directions. After 10 minutes or so, circulate around the room assessing where students are with this text and helping individual students.	“The Line Gang”
Homework	Let the students take this poem home and try to write their best interpretation of it.	“The Line Gang”
DAY FOUR
10 min.	Pass out the writing rubric for poetry. Allow student time to read it at least twice. Ask for student questions and clarify for student understanding.	Rubric for scoring response to literature using Writing Standard 2.2
35 minutes	Pass out the interpretation to the poem “The Line Gang” and give students a few minutes to read it twice. Ask for any student responses. [Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level = 7.5] Pass out the poem “Good Hours.” Have students read the poem several times, marking up the text. When they are ready, students should begin to write an interpretation. This is practice for the progress monitoring assessment scheduled for tomorrow.	“Good Hours”
Homework	Tell the students that tomorrow they will write an in-class essay on a poem they have not seen before. This will be a dry-run for the student and progress-monitoring for the teacher. Give the students the explication of “Good Hours” for them to study for homework. They should compare their own analyses to this analysis and then to the rubric for scoring writing standard 2.2. [Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level = 9.0]	Explication of “Good Hours”
DAY FIVE
45 minutes	Today is the major progress monitoring assessment for the unit. Pass out the poem “Acquainted with the Night” which contains directions for the assessment. Give students 45 minutes to study the poem and write a multi-paragraph response.	The poem “Acquainted with the Night” by Robert Frost.
10 minutes	When the students are finished, have them pick up a rubric and self-assess. They need to fill out a detailed rationale for the score point they have chosen to assign themselves.	Rubric for scoring “Acquainted with the Night” for writing standard 2.2.
Homework	Pass out the essay on poetic characteristics and poetic subjects and ask them to read this at least twice for homework. [Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level = 10.3] There is also an excerpt from one of Frost’s own essays at the end of this selection. They should mark up the text to help them understand it. [Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level = 7.5 ]	Essay on poetic characteristics and poetic subjects, plus an excerpt from an essay by Frost himself.
DAY SIX
15 minutes	Display the poem “Acquainted with the Night” and conduct a full-class discussion of it. Color code the rhyme scheme and discuss the tone, mood and theme as students are able.	Transparency on poem “Acquainted with the Night.”
10 minutes	Pass back the progress monitoring assessment with both your grade and the student’s grade on it. Circulate around the room answering student questions.	Progress Monitoring Assessment
20 minutes	Display a transparency with the following excerpts from last night’s essay: Frost’s poems often move from an event or an object through a metaphor to an idea in a smooth, uninterrupted flow. Within this pattern, Frost usually describes a complete event rather than a single vision. The heart of the process is the image or metaphor. Frost himself saw the metaphor as the beginning of the process. It should be of the pleasure of a poem itself to tell how it can. The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom. No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader. For me the initial delight is in the surprise of remembering something I didn’t know I knew. Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting. A poem may be worked over once it is in being, but may not be worried into being. Display the four excerpts one at a time and ask the students to write for 2-3 minutes before you conduct a discussion on each passage. Everything should aim at understanding what is said.	Transparency with excerpts
Homework	Pass out the poem “For Once, Then, Something.” Ask the students to examine this poem in terms of Frost’s poetic characteristics and subjects, as well as his own description of how he writes a poem. This will be in the directions as well.	The poem “For Once, Then, Something.”
DAY SEVEN
15 minutes	Display the poem “For Once, Then, Something.” As the students to offer observations about the poem, to include meter, rhyme, devices, ideas.	Transparency for poem “For Once, Then, Something.”
15 minutes	Pass out the interpretation of the poem “For Once, Then, Something.” Have students read this interpretation at least twice. Brief discussion. Are there any observations students want to share? Does this make sense? Does it change their sense of the poem? [Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level = 10.6]	Interpretation of “For Once, Then Something.”
15 minutes	Review the rubric for scoring in-class essays written to standard 2.2. Highlight the various features of the score points.	Writing rubric 2.2
Homework	Review all poems, sample essays and rubrics for tomorrow’s summative assessment.	All poems, sample essays and rubrics.
DAY EIGHT
45 minutes	Pass out the summative assessment. Students will follow only written directions while analyzing and writing about the poem “The Sound of Trees.”	“The Sound of Trees” assessment.
10 minutes	Self-Assessment. Students will turn in their essay and pick up a rubric to self-score. They should keep the poems until after they have self-scored so they can check the rubric score points against the poem. They should then turn in both assessments and rubrics.	Writing Rubric 2.2 for “The Sound of Trees”