Topic
Role of the speaker in appreciation of Poetry
Level
Secondary 4 Express
Students’ Profile
30 students, high-ability, mixed learning styles.
Pre-requisites
- Students have been introduced to and taught how to interpret a variety of poetry and are aware of various literary techniques, though not necessarily experts. i.e. students are familiar with poetry as a genre as well as the conventions that are associated with it.
- Students have done practical criticism exercises.
Learning environment/Resources
- Classroom with teacher’s console, projector and working sound system.
- Handout with “Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost.
- Youtube videos:
Clip 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncIMCD0E5rE
Clip 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVXBFcnTn9U
Learning objectives
By the end of the lesson, students will be able to show that they understand, accepting or not, the dialogical nature of poetry by expressing verbally how the speaker's intentions, experiences and other factors may affect the interpretation of a poem.
Lesson duration
90 minutes
Lesson activities
5 minutes
- Teacher pairs students up for pair work later in the lesson.
- Teacher to display on the projector screen the title of the poem: "Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening.
- Teacher to inform students that he/she will be playing 2 clips from Youtube, which are 2 out of many different performances of the poem that are available, without displaying the visual projection i.e. students will receive only the auditory information.
- Before playing the clips, the teacher will instruct students to note down, and subsequently pay attention to as they listen to the clips, a few guiding questions:
- What kind of imagery is created, and how?
- What is the mood?
- What do you think is the theme, and why?
25 minutes
- Teacher to play Clip 1 (1 minute 5 seconds) twice, then allow around 3 minutes for students to respond to the clip individually using the earlier guiding questions.
- After which, students will be instructed to talk to their partners about their responses for about 5 minutes.
- Lastly, the teacher will invite a few students to share their responses with the rest of the class.
25 minutes
- Teacher to play the Clip 2 (approx. 3 minutes), then allow around 3 minutes for students to respond to the clip individually using the guiding questions.
- Students will then talk to their partners about their responses to this clip for about 5 minutes.
- Lastly, the teacher will again invite a few students to share their responses with the class.
10 minutes
- Teacher to distribute handout with the printed poem.
- Teacher to instruct students to now look at the printed text and analyze the poem using the practical criticism techniques that they have been taught.
15 minutes
- Teacher to lead a discussion on how or why there are so many different ways that people have chosen to perform the poem. Some questions that might help the discussion along:
- Do you like the 2 clips that you have heard? Why?
- Do you think those interpretations are "wrong"?
- Why do you think the speaker chose to perform the poem that way?
- Do the performances go against your textual analysis of the poem?
Follow-up
Students are to look for more videos of Frost's poem or any other poem that they like on Youtube and submit a review of the one that they like best.
Rationale
One characteristic of most of our students is that they, more often than not, prefer to have "correct answers" for everything. Even though the role of the teacher nowadays has shifted from that of a giver of knowledge to a facilitator for knowledge acquisition, it remains a prominent trend that students are reluctant to seek knowledge and new meaning themselves. This may be due to reasons like disinterest, lack of knowhow, among others. Indeed, with the explosion of Internet resources especially with the likes of Google and Wikipedia, it is ever more convenient to retrieve information.
It is my belief that as facilitators for knowledge acquisition, it is necessary for us to encourage our students to adopt a critical approach towards knowledge, and how knowledge is presented. Otherwise, they risk being undiscerning recipients of knowledge. Freire (1970) expresses this necessity most succinctly when he says that "no one can say a true word alone–nor can he say it for another, in a prescriptive act which robs others of their words." As he argues, meaning, and knowledge, is constructed through dialogue. If our students are passive participants in the exchange of knowledge, then they are subjecting themselves to what Freire calls "oppression". Although the real world can never be fully dialogical, it is still important to equip our students with a critical mind.
Accordingly, this lesson is designed with the sole intention of debunking students' conception that there is such a thing as a right answer. One important assumption of this lesson plan is the ability of the students. The students are assumed to be high-ability and at a level of maturity capable of handling such challenges. Although students should have already been taught that "there is no right answer" when analyzing poetry, especially in adopting the new criticism approach, students may still form opinions that there is a certain "correct" way to analyze the text of the poem. The lesson activities will hopefully lead them towards realizing that while a purely textual analysis of a poem has its merits, a belief in a pure form of literary analysis is naive, as there will always be multiple parties and perspectives involved in meaning. Teaching this idea through the use of poetry, in which there is the poet, the text, the speaker, and the listener would be apt. Furthermore, by keeping all factors except one (the speaker) constant, students will hopefully be shown how a variation in one participant can make all the difference. These ideas will not be explicitly verbalized to the students directly. Rather, it is my hope that by responding to the guiding questions, as well as the teacher-facilitated discussion, students will be able to come to a conclusion that related to this idea. Given that the students are of a high ability, it is not entirely unrealistic to expect that the students are able to come to such conclusions with skilful scaffolding by the teacher using appropriate questioning techniques.
Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening by Robert Frost
Hi Joel, would it be useful for you to expose the students to the new historicism approach to practical criticism as well? Because in order for dialogue to occur, I believe that one should know as much as possible about the stance (and possibly context of production?) by another.
ReplyDeleteBut I do agree that it would be in their best interests to realise and accept that there is no one "right" answer in critquing a work.
Hey is 3 minutes enough for students to respond? Also some of them may have NEVER seen snow before in their life. Will they be able to respond accordingly? mayvbe find a poem and examples that is close to heart?
ReplyDeleteHi Joel,
ReplyDeletein my opinion, I think your lesson demonstrates what Literature is all about - there are no right answers. Hence, by providing 2 different versions of Frost's poem, you are not only showing students that there are existing different interpretations but are also encouraging them to come up with their own interpretations, whether in this poem or others.
Since students learn that they can either subscribe to existing interpretations of a poem, or refute it, I think it may be a good idea to challenge students a bit more with regards to their follow up activity.
This could be done by perhaps asking them to pick any poem they like and providing atleast 2 different interpretations to it? Or they could work in pairs and find a poem each on a similar theme and present it with differint POV. Something like that may reinforce the lesson learnt that Literature is never one-dimensional, and also train them to think critically by exploring beyond their comfort level.
This is AWESOME.
ReplyDeleteIt's true, "most of our students is that they, more often than not, prefer to have "correct answers" for everything". I feel our students are not encouraged enough to believe in that there's value in their own opinions. And you hit bulls eye with your lesson objective, to help them consider "the speaker's intentions, experiences and other factors may affect the interpretation of a poem". Your lesson helps students to gain confidence by tweaking variables and provoking them to decide if the interpretation is 'correct' or 'wrong'.
I have nothing bad to say...
Hi Joel,
ReplyDeleteJust two bold comments lol.
1. What do you mean by dialogical "nature" of poems? Is there such a thing? You seem to be actually referring to the "approach" to interpreting/writing about poetry in your elaboration of the point..
2. What do you mean by students are familiar with the "conventions" associated with the genre of poetry? That is, apart from literary criticism techniques and types of poetry..
Thanks! :)
JdJn - my idea of dialogue is that 2 parties "negotiate" (to quote another tutor) and build a common understanding about a matter. Here, my point is that there are many different levels of production - Frost writing the poem, the speaker performing the poem, the reader/listener interpreting the poem in their minds. But yes, I suppose a New Historicism approach is useful, BUT, what exactly are the requirements of the prac crit exam? Anyway, preparation for the exam isn't the objective of this lesson, but beyond the exam. They should already (assumed under pre-requisite :p) know how to do prac crit sufficiently.
ReplyDeleteKav - I actually deliberated allowed a short time for the students' individual response as I did not want the students to start searching for "the right answer". So being under that very tight time constraint hopefully forces them to respond with their own response.
nas* - That's a great idea for the follow-up activity! I must admit I was a little slipshod with my original follow-up. :p
Serene - Thanks!
Teddy:
ReplyDelete1. Yes, I'm referring to the approach to interpreting poetry. Basically I disagree with the idea that the text is a sufficient and necessary entity on itself, devoid of authorial intention.
2. Conventions, or stereotypes about poetry, like, it must be read with a type of "arty-fartiness", that the language is necessarily "more beautiful", etc etc.
This is well-planned and thought-out, Joel, but I doubt if 10 minutes is enough for students to do a "practical criticism" on the poem. 15 minutes to unpack the poem with the teacher's help seems a little ambitious too. Perhaps you should try this out in class for Microteaching?
ReplyDeleteHow many different interpretations does Frost's poem inspire? How exactly are you expecting students to respond? For example, do you think that listening to different verbal renditions of the poem will lead to different readings of the poem's theme? Or different readings of the poem's tone? How does the verbal performance of a poem alter interpretations of its imagery, its use of metaphor and symbol?
Your attempt to make students listen to the sound of poetry is a valid exercise in itself. You go further, though, by suggesting that different MULTIMODAL REPRESENTATIONS of the poem can affect reader-response. The second clip combines the text with music on a stage performance; the first contains the diegetic sound of wind and clinking of metal. So what precisely do you want your students to pay attention to? The relationship between the original unspoken text and its spoken/sung interpretation? A similar question underlies the common practice of using film versions of Shakespearean texts in the classroom: What is the focus of the analysis: the film or the playtext? If you want students to analyze the interplay of text, sound, and moving image, you'll need to equip them with more tools of analysis than practical criticism can provide. (Dr Yeo's lesson on film analysis might lead you to think about this more deeply...)
Relatedly, you might rethink/rephrase your lesson objective. You state: "By the end of the lesson, students will be able to show that they understand, accepting or not, the dialogical nature of poetry by expressing verbally how the speaker's intentions, experiences and other factors may affect the interpretation of a poem." In your last comment in response to Teddy, you assert your disagreement with the New Critics.
So now, are you asking students to interpret the poet's (Frost's) intentions or the reader's/singer's interpretation of Frost's poem? How will the students be able to find out more about the "intentions, experiences and other factors" behind the anonymous reader's and the Singaporean girl's reading of the poem?
Hi Warren, in response to your comments, from back to front:
ReplyDeleteFirstly, my disagreement with the New Critics lie in the notion that there is an inherent truth value in the text, that the text can be sufficient to contain one, or all possible meanings. I do not intend for the students to find out more about the intentions, experiences and other factors behind the different readers' readings of the poem. Rather, the message to my students is that there is simply too many variables that can affect one's reading of a particular poem, and that therefore there can be no correct answer or divine truth. The exercise is not a truth/knowledge-seeking enterprise; rather it is an appreciation task, to appreciate difference.
This is my lesson objective, and I was unsure as to how best to phrase it concisely. Would it be better if I changed "by expressing verbally how the speaker's intentions, experiences and other factors may affect the interpretation of a poem" to "by expressing verbally how it is possible for various different readings of a poem to come about" ?
In terms of multi-modality, the decision to use the Youtube videos was borne more out of convenience than the need to be multi-modal. That is why I tried to reduce it to a mere listening exercise, and not showing the visual images to the students. I am not looking for the students to examine the relationship between the unspoken printed text and the spoken/sung version, as I believe that once you see the unspoken printed text your perception of the text will be affected by your own readership. As such, being mere listeners allows for a more authentic appreciation of the ambiguity of the poem. By giving the printed text to students only after they have listened and responded to the performed versions of the poem, and through the subsequent discussion, students will hopefully see the point that I have just made.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI also have a belief that poems should in fact exist as oral performance, rather than printed texts. With the exception of those poems that play with the form and layout of the printed text (which I personally see as immensely clever but really belonging to a different species of literature), all poems should be performed. And it is a pity that there does not seem to be a culture or tradition of oral performances of poetry. Poetry and drama, I consider them to be artistic expressions, and like dance, music, and even other forms of visual art, must be allowed to take on a life of its own, to be free of institutionalized control. It is commendable that we try to educate our students to understand the language of the particular art, like how music students go through lessons in music theory to learn the language of music to understand its expression better, but ultimately it is up to themselves to appreciate and revere or despise any particular piece of musical art.
ReplyDeleteWhich is why I find it most disagreeable that we should bind literature to printed sheets of paper and studied academically as printed sheets of paper. The result of this is that the literary art has been socially engineered. I feel that the fight for literature's survival in education is a false one, because the fight is taking place on the wrong battlefield
By the way, a last response regarding the time allocation. I allocated only 10 minutes for students to do a prac crit, because I assumed that having heard the poem (albeit performed orally) a couple of times before will make their task easier and hence, requiring less time. Is that a wrong assumption to make?
ReplyDeleteWould my time allocation be better if instead of 5-25-25-10-15 (in order of activity, I allocated 5-20-20-15-20? When planning the lesson, I could not gauge whether 25 minutes was too much time for the response activity. In the end, I decided to give more time for that, and maybe finish the last activity, if there was not enough time, in the following lesson. Is that taboo?