Teaching the Common Core Standards with Walt Whitman’s Poetry

Megan Essman

ENGL 459, Gwiazda

May 7, 2015

Answering the Questions …

• Can Whitman’s poetry be constructively used in a Maryland public upper elementary classroom?

• How can his poetry be used then?

• How will his poetry be constructively used?

Thesis

Despite the regimented structure of the Common Core adapted in Maryland Public Schools as Maryland's College and Career-Ready Standards, public upper elementary* school teachers should explore using traditional literature to meet the set standards, such as Walt Whitman’s poetry, in their classroom to create innovative and effective reading, writing, art and social sciences lesson plans.

Upper elementary is grades 3rd to 5th*

Inspiration

• Myra Cohn Livingston, children’s poet and academic scholar, “Poetry cannot continue to be considered as a frill or fringe of the reading/language arts program, because ‘poetry is a way of growing, of coming to grips with the self and its relationship to the external world, of communication with all the other selves who are also striving to grow and communicate the meaning of their lives through universal symbols’" (Livingston, 309).

• Montgomery County Maryland member of National Council of Teachers of English, 1939, “ Literature is not the written expression in the form of the essay, novel, poetry, or drama, but rather is the living growth experienced by a person as he cooperates with the realities of life … it is the expanding living made possible fro him through the symbolized representation (words)” (Rubin, 134).

What is Maryland's College and Career-Ready Standards?

• These standards incorporate the nation wide Common Core State Standards. Maryland is one of the first states to adopt these standards in 2010, thus they are firmly imbedded in all MD public schools.

• These education standards establish a set of shared goals and expectations for what students, grades K-12, should understand and be able to do at certain benchmarks of their student career in order to be prepared for success in college and the workplace.

• Example: Maryland College and Career Ready Curriculum Framework, Reading Literature Grades 3 through 5 (1 out of 6 Frameworks)

• http://mdk12.org/share/frameworks/CCSC_Reading_Literature_gr3-5.pdf

Units of Study

• These standards are meet during different Units of Study, which break down the pace of the school year.

• GRADE 3: Determination, Relationships, Protecting One Another, Speaking of Change

• GRADE 4: Actions Speak Louder than Words, Heroes, Nature's Wonders and Woes, Polar Challenge

• GRADE 5: Earth (A Fine Balance), Making a Difference, Faces of Immigration, What's News

Example Lesson: Conceptualizing Poetry Objective is to meet RL Standard 1: “Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text.”

• Materials: Paper with space for a drawing, and a sentence or two of writing, pencils for sketching and writing, multiple copies of selected short Whitman poetry. Focusing on title from First Annex, Sands at Seventy (Moon, 425). Poems such as: “The First Dandelion,” “America,” “Memories,” “To-day and Thee,” and “After the Dazzle of Day.” These poems are chosen for their shorter length and use of imagery. Furthermore, each poem is different and there's likely to be poem of the bunch to strike each student’s interest.

• Instruction: Read aloud each poem, make sure students have copies of the poems to read along. After reading each poem have a short discussion based on the question, “What does the poem make you feel or see?” It is here where comprehension should be developing, students should be engaged and wanting to share their provoked thoughts. Have students mark the poems they liked as you read along. After each poem is read and discussed instruct the students to draw their favorite poem, do not provide much more detail in your instruction other than repeating the questions, “What does the poem make you feel or see?” to insure genuine response. After you noticed they have completed their drawing instruct the student to write a sentence or two about what they drew.

• Assessment: Students will be assessed on the product turned in after the lesson. If their work is clearly connected to their chosen poem then their comprehension of poem is clear. The objective states students will be able to, “make logical inferences from it [the poem].” If there work shows images or ideas from the chosen poem then they have meet the objective. Their inferences can be made through either spoken, illustrated, or written modes. Although they need to be clearly linked to the text.

• Note to adapt to the Units of Study group two or three of the poems into the appropriate unit, such as “The First Dandelion,” “Memories,” and “After the Dazzle of Day” can be used with Grade 3: Speaking of Change or Grade 4: Nature's Wonders and Woes or Grade 5: Earth (A Fine Balance).

Why this Lesson Works: It’s Multimodal

• Children benefit from the experience of multimodal texts because they think multidimensionality when they come to representing their meaning (Bearne, 22). In other words children can not express their thinking in one way.

• Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Components are meet to provide multiple means of engagement, representation, and action & expression. If all components are meet within a lesson then the lesson is considered multimodal.

• Lesson’s Engagement: When discussing poetry students will not be forced to participate but given the option based on their own comfort levels. Students are told to mark the poetry which engages them the most.

• Lesson’s Representation: Students will be provided written copies of the poem and be able to hear the teacher read aloud. Poems are color coded for recognition.

• Lesson’s Action and Expression: Students will be able to both write and draw to represent their feelings from the provided poetry. Furthermore they get to pick the poem they would like to reflect on.

• “One of the classroom implication of children's multimodal experience is the need to make explicit how different modes work and how meaning can be translated from one mode to another” (Bearne, 24). Here students are given three opportunities to express their take away from the poetry, each opportunity also builds upon its self.

Other Quick Lesson Ideas

• Using the poem, “When I heard the learn’d astronomer,” or another poem with events, a teacher can foster a prediction activity. Read the first four lines of the poem and then discuss what Whitman did when he heard the astronomer, read on and discuss. Or do a sequencing activity such as giving the first two lines of the poem, then give the remaining lines of the poem are below, but they are in the wrong order. Have students decide what order the lines should be in, and say why.

• Using the poem, “O Captain! My Captain!” a teacher can teach metaphors, extended metaphors, imagery, etc. Or could teach the significance of Lincoln’s death to the Nation.

• Students can compare and contrast Whitman’s first notebook with later notebooks. Students may consider how Whitman’s writing and thinking changed in the years between the writing of these notebooks, and what might have caused these changes. Or simply look at surface changes depending on the standard objective of the lesson.

Questions or Comments?

Works Consulted

• Morrow, Lesly M. Literacy Development in the Early Years. 7th ed. N.p.: Pearson Education, 2012. Print.

• "New" Literacies and Children's Ways of Using Them." Literacy Moves On: Popular Culture, New Technologies, and Critical Literacy in the Elementary Classroom. Ed. Janet Evans. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2005. 13-29. Print.

• "Teaching with Primary Sources: Found Poetry." Library of Congress (n.d.): 1-7. Web.

Works Cited

• Livingston, Myra Cohn. The Child as Poet--myth or Reality? Boston: Horn Book, 1984. Print.• MD State Department of Education. "Maryland College and Career Ready Curriculum Framework." Reading

Literature Reading Literature Grades 3 through 5 (2014): n. pag. Aug. 2014. Web. 9 Apr. 2015.• ""New" Literacies and Children's Ways of Using Them." Literacy Moves On: Popular Culture, New

Technologies, and Critical Literacy in the Elementary Classroom. Ed. Janet Evans. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2005. 13-29. Print.

• Rubin, Joan Shelley. "Listen, My Children." Songs of Ourselves: The Uses of Poetry in America. Cambridge, MA: Belknap of Harvard UP, 2007. 107-64. Print.

• Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass and Other Writings: Authoritative Texts, Other Poetry and Prose, Criticism. Ed. Michael Moon, Sculley Bradley, and Harold William Blodgett. New York: Norton, 2002. Print.