Lesson 6: Poetry of Graceland

What’s on for today and why?

            In this lesson students will read a section of Graceland put into verse and Leda and the Swan.  They will interpret these as a class, contrasting them, looking at the language each piece used and what clues about the language helped uncover meaning.

            This will get the students to examine language more closely, while seeing how poetry is not just a removed medium that is always studied separately.  They will be analyzing the book and seeing if there is additional meaning in the text after reading the poem.

What to do?

1.      Journal:

Students will be given a handout of the paragraph beginning “The Swanti” on page 91 written out and made into verse.  They will be told to interpret it, writing anything that comes to mind about it.

2.      Leda and the Swan:

Students will be handed out “Leda and the Swan” by William Butler Yeats.  As a class, they will question what the poem means, with the teacher’s guidance, giving mythological information if necessary.  Once they analyze the poem, they will start pulling out similar ideas or words from the Graceland poem and “Leda.”  The students will put these words on the board as they come up with them.  Once they do this, they will reevaluate the section in the novel and ask if any additional meaning is brought out through this new knowledge.

3.      Brief Debriefing:

Students will write a few paragraphs about any additional meaning they have discovered, whether it being an analysis or interpretation of a particular word or an overall idea that was brought to light. These will be handed in, graded and then put in their portfolios.

4.      Homework:

Read Chapters 11&12

How’d it go?

            If students were able to uncover the meaning behind this poem, understand it, and then move on to make it connect in some way with Graceland, they did it!  If students pulled out words, they are closely reading and making connections.  If students asked lots of questions, and then used that new knowledge, they are using the sources around them at their disposal and putting them to use.

            The Leda and the Swan analysis will be graded according to the portfolio checklist.