What They Don’t Know Won’t Hurt Them

Linda Berlin

Grandville High School

lberlin@gpsbulldogs.org

Step One

Read the poem, mark anything you don’t understand

On a scale of 1 to 10 score your reading of the poem10 means you understand the poem thoroughly 1 means you drew a complete blank

Step One

Read the poem again Using a different pen, pencil, highlighter

mark anything you don’t understandOn a scale of 1 to 10 score your reading

of the poem10 means you understand the poem thoroughly 1 means you drew a complete blank

Step One

Read the poem a third time Using a different pen, pencil, highlighter

mark anything you don’t understandOn a scale of 1 to 10 score your reading

of the poem1 means you are drawing a complete blank 10 means you understand the poem thoroughly

Step One – Triple Read

Sheridan Blau, The Literature WorkshopStudents resist difficulty; when they encounter a difficult passage they throw up their hands and give up. It is our job to teach them how to tackle difficulty, how to embrace it.“Confusion represents an advanced state of understanding.”

Step Two

Before we talk about what you know, I need you to reflect on what you don’t know

Looking back at the poems, what didn’t you understand?

Take a few minutes to write down what you had trouble with in these poems.

Step Two – Writing as Learning

“Vygotsky and the Teaching of Writing”Asking students to put their confusion into words begins the process of working through that confusionWriting down what still remains troublesome take nebulous, abbreviated thoughts and makes them more complete and tangible

Step Three

What do you usually do when you don’t know/understand something?Look it up?Ask someone?Figure it out in context?Work around it?Other?

Step Three

Share in your group what you didn’t knowHelp each other work through what you

did not understand

What you still can’t work out in your group, we’ll talk about as a class

Step Three – Small group

Some students are afraid to share their ideas with the whole classfear of being wrongfear of looking like a know-it-all or a show off

Small group work allows students to sort through their ideas in a safe place

This also allows the “stupid” questions to be asked and answered

Step Four

Was the material you didn’t understand vital to your overall understanding of the poem?

What will you do on test day when you run across portions of a poem/prose passage that you have no prior knowledge to understand?

Step FourHow to write about a poem like this:One sentence summary of poem – 50

words or lessThesis statement highlighting complexityMove through the poem chronologically

stanza by stanza:What does it say? – quick summary What does it mean? – highlight “cool stuff” What does it matter? – tie back to complexity

Step Four – AP English Poetry Essay

Scored on a scale of 1-9Students hoping to earn college credit

should be able to earn a 6 or higherStudents who simply summarize the

poem, or who discuss the poets use of devices without addressing theme or complexity, can’t earn higher than a 5

Writing the AP English Poetry Essay

Students must recognize the complexity of the work and be able to write about theme, complexity, and poetic devices….

…in 40 minutes

They can only do this on the test if they have practice doing this in classGuided practice and writing opportunities

“But I don’t teach AP English.”

Poetry as flowerAppreciate the beauty, but also appreciate the

artistry of the poet

Don’t beat the poem to death or torture meaning out of it, but let the poem reveal itself

“But I don’t teach AP English.”

Poetry as ArgumentPoetry seeks to define, persuade, woo, entice,

motivate, inspire … the list goes onTeach poetry as an argument about love,

injustice, family, humanity, death, etc.Teach poetic structures or choices as part of

the argumentHelp students find both the argument and the

evidence in the poem

Getting started

Find a poem just a bit beyond your students’ level of understandinglanguage or meaning, but not both

Let the kids do all the workTriple read and mark upWriting to reflect on confusionSmall group discussion Informal or formal written response, visual

analysis, presentation

Resources

Sarah Bauer, “Viewing a Poem as Argument”

Sheridan Blau, The Literature WorkshopBarbara Everson,

“Vygotsky and the Teaching of Writing”Ogden Morse,

“SOAPSTone: A Strategy for Reading and Writing”