With snow on the playground outside, I did one of my favourite lessons/activities with my students today: "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening". Here's how I unpack this Robert Frost poem in my classroom:
First, I prepare envelopes, one per group, with a stanza from the poem in each envelope. The stanza is cut up into individual lines.
Then, after reading the title of the poem and having a brief discussion about rhyming vs non-rhyming poetry, and reviewing what we've done to date in terms of poetry reading and writing, I pass out the envelopes, one to each group. Students work collaboratively to guess the order of the lines in their stanza. They are asked to think about and explain their choices to their peers.
Next, I unveil the order of the first stanza, and we explore the rhyming pattern there (A-A-B-A).
Now students return to their group to make any changes to their predicted line order, based on the one completed stanza we just read together.
Finally, we unveil the remaining stanzas one by one, and the groups celebrate their success (most of them guess correctly by this point). We also look at the rhyming pattern of the poem holistically (Frost uses the third line's non-rhyming sound from each stanza as the first, second and fourth lines of each subsequent stanza, except for the final one -- the students are amazed to discover such attention to detail), and ponder the meaning of the repeated final lines and pattern break of the last stanza of the poem.
Afterwards, I hand out fancy paper for the students to write their favourite stanza on in creative lettering; they LOVE it!
With so much political stress going on in teaching in Ontario right now, not to mention the trauma of not-yet completed Term One Report Cards looming over my head, I felt like it was a good time to just do a fun and engaging activity that introduces students to a great poet!
First, I prepare envelopes, one per group, with a stanza from the poem in each envelope. The stanza is cut up into individual lines.
Then, after reading the title of the poem and having a brief discussion about rhyming vs non-rhyming poetry, and reviewing what we've done to date in terms of poetry reading and writing, I pass out the envelopes, one to each group. Students work collaboratively to guess the order of the lines in their stanza. They are asked to think about and explain their choices to their peers.
Next, I unveil the order of the first stanza, and we explore the rhyming pattern there (A-A-B-A).
Now students return to their group to make any changes to their predicted line order, based on the one completed stanza we just read together.
Finally, we unveil the remaining stanzas one by one, and the groups celebrate their success (most of them guess correctly by this point). We also look at the rhyming pattern of the poem holistically (Frost uses the third line's non-rhyming sound from each stanza as the first, second and fourth lines of each subsequent stanza, except for the final one -- the students are amazed to discover such attention to detail), and ponder the meaning of the repeated final lines and pattern break of the last stanza of the poem.
Afterwards, I hand out fancy paper for the students to write their favourite stanza on in creative lettering; they LOVE it!
With so much political stress going on in teaching in Ontario right now, not to mention the trauma of not-yet completed Term One Report Cards looming over my head, I felt like it was a good time to just do a fun and engaging activity that introduces students to a great poet!
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