Poems As Puzzles: A Pair of Poets Study - Grade 8
The work in this study focuses on sets of poems by two American poets: Kay Ryan, the United States Poet Laureate from 2008-2010, and Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), one of America’s great poets. Ryan’s work has often been compared to Dickinson’s. The poet and critic Dana Gioia, for example, in his essay “Discovering Kay Ryan” deems Dickinson the genius loci of Ryan’s poetry and asserts that Ryan, like Dickinson, is a “theorist of human conduct.” Unlike Ryan, Dickinson lived a reclusive life and saw only a handful of her poems published during her lifetime.
Table of Contents
Writing Tasks
Title: Argument Pieces of a Larger Puzzle: Kay Ryan
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 5
Place students in groups of twos or threes.
Give students time to work in their small groups on the task. Use this time to confer with groups about the work. Be sure to encourage students to be as precise and detailed in their note taking as possible.
Use this time to confer with groups about the task. Encourage students to make use of the notes and charts generated during the earlier work with the poems.
Suggested Student Materials: Interpretative/Argument Student Checklist
Title: Strange Things in Emily Dickinson’s Poems
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 10
Give groups time to complete the assignment.
Use this time to confer with groups about the task.
Title: Writing Like Emily Dickinson
Session 12
Students should use this time to begin work on the “Writing Like Emily Dickinson” assignment. Specifically, they should work in pairs to do the initial review of poem 657, “I dwell in Possibility.”
Encourage students to confer with you after they have completed the review work. After that, they’ll be ready to write.
Title: Argument Pieces of a Larger Puzzle: Emily Dickinson
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 16 – 19
Suggested Student Materials: Interpretative/Argument Student Checklist
Charts for Discussion
Title: Important or Confusing Moments in “So Different”
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 1
Read the poem aloud, instructing students to follow along as you read, marking moments in the poem that seem important or that raise questions for them.
Afterwards, give students a few minutes to share their important moments and the questions they have. Record these on a two-column chart. Place an excerpt or summary of each important or puzzling moment in one column (along with the corresponding line number). In the other column, place a symbol marking it as an important line or a line they have a question about (it might be both), along with a brief notation. The focus of this exchange should simply be to generate a list. Resist the temptation to launch into a full-blown discussion as this listing is intended to scaffold the more involved interpretive work of the sessions ahead.
Title: Poetic Devices in Kay Ryan’s Poetry
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 4
Point out to students that by now they’ve had an opportunity to get oriented to a set of poems by Kay Ryan. They’ve also taken some time to explore how she uses “recombinant rhyme,” an example of what is generally referred to as a “poetic device.”
Create a new chart titled “Poetic Devices in Kay Ryan’s Poetry.” Ask the class to help you translate the information on the recombinant rhyme example chart created in the last session to make the first entry on the “Poetic Devices” chart. The entry should consist of the term, a short definition, and an example (with a citation, including poem title and line number).
When this is finished, explain to the class that this session’s work period will be dedicated to looking for other poetic devices that appear in Ryan’s poetry. Explain that students will work on this task in small groups during the work period and then, during the closing meeting, the class will reconvene to report out and distill their findings by adding additional items to the “Poetic Devices” chart.
Title: Poetic Devices in Emily Dickinson’s Poetry
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 10
Reconvene the class and use the following procedure to guide the conversation:
Call on volunteers to share the “strange” things that their group found.
A student from that group should direct the class to a specific place in a certain poem and share the label the group created for that move.
Ask the rest of the groups if they found anything similar in their poems. If so, ask them to direct the class to specific moments in specific poems. Ask them to share their name for that move.
Create a new chart titled “Poetic Devices in Emily Dickinson’s Poetry” and, as with the Ryan chart, work with the class to craft entries that consist of a term (or terms), a short definition, and an example (with a citation, including poem title and line number).
Title: “I dwell in Possibility” Comparison
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 13
Once again, display a copy of the “Writing Like Emily Dickinson” assignment for the class to see. Remind students that any “write like” task provides them with an opportunity to emulate a writer they have studied. In this case, it gives them a kind of “insider” view of the work poets do in poetry.
Tell students that during the next session, they will have a chance to share their poems and to explain how their poem is, in important ways, like 657, “I dwell in Possibility.”
Using drafts and notes of your own poem modeled on “I dwell in Possibility,” take a few minutes to walk students through your own work with this task.
Afterwards, answer any questions students have about your work.
Wrap up the focus lesson by working with the class to isolate and chart moments in your poem that are like “I dwell in Possibility.” Be sure to jot down on the chart, lines or phrases from both your own poem and from “I dwell in Possibility” to make the comparisons clear. (You will need this chart in the next session.)
Checks for Understanding
Title: Recombinant Rhyme
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Session 3
Reconvene the class and ask students from each group to share the examples they found.
For each example shared, have the student locate the example in the poem for the rest of the class and read the example aloud. After this reading, ask the class whether the line stands as an example of recombinant rhyme. If it does, add it to the example chart. If it doesn’t, discuss why: Was the group incorrect in calling it an example of recombinant rhyme? Does the class definition need to be revised?
Wrap up the session by discussing the following questions with the class:
How do recombinant rhymes affect them as readers?
How do recombinant rhymes affect the poem? (Note: Of the two questions, this one is the most challenging. People regularly ask how writing moves affect a reader, but to ask how a move affects the poem is harder and requires students to talk about poems as written things shaped by the various ways of writing or devices working in them.)
Record the class’ thinking on the board and then, when the discussion is over, work with the class to add a distillation of the class’ thinking about each question to the “Recombinant Rhyme” example chart.
Towards the end of the discussion, and only then, you might consider sharing Ryan’s own description of the effect recombinant rhymes have on a poem: “It’s like how they add a snip of the jellyfish’s glow-in-the-dark gene to bunnies and make them glow green; by snipping up pieces of sound and redistributing them throughout a poem I found I could get the poem to go a little bit luminescent.”
Independent Reading
Title: Reading Log
Teacher Manual Instructions:
Independent Reading
As you transition to independent reading, discuss how students can keep a reading log. Show students how you would like them to set up and use their reading log to record their independent reading this year. An example of one way a reading log could be set up is provided nearby. You may choose to have students create a table in their notebooks, use a pre-made sheet, or a digital format.
Explain to students that they should make an entry in their log only after they have finished a book. You will need to negotiate with students how to handle the entry of magazine readings (for example, entire issues versus individual articles).
After students have set up the log, including proper headings, creating the grid, etc., show students how to make an entry.
Answer any questions students have about the reading log.
Begin independent reading.
Consider conducting individual reading conferences with students as they are engaged in independent reading. In No More Independent Reading Without Support, Debbie Miller and Barbara Moss (2013) suggest that during early conferences, you should listen to students and work to build trust: Ask students how they view reading and how they think of themselves as readers; ask what they are interested in. Over time you can ask more about what they are reading and about how you can help them or what they are struggling with. Use what you learn from these conversations to guide additional instruction with groups or with the class.
Title: Independent Reading – Individual Planning Sheet
Instructions:
Title: End of Marking Period Self-Assessment
Instructions:
Unit Resources
Title: Strange Things in Emily Dickinson’s Poems
Title: Pieces of a Larger Puzzle: Emily Dickinson
Title: Scaffolds and Modifications: Descriptions and Use