Judith J. Katz
Background Thinking
When I was growing up I could tell what mood my mother was in and the likely reception she was going to give me using a number of aural clues. I'm guessing that most people can do the same. Specifically I knew I would be facing a different mother depending on what name she called me by: Judi, Ketzeleh (little kitten), Carol-Marsha-I mean Judi, Judith Joyce Katz. Any occasion that required her to use my first, middle, and last name was not going to end well for me.
Certainly word choice, diction, pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables, and syntax play an important role in comprehending who a speaker's audience is. In order to make a student's understanding of voice visible to him/her I would start Lesson 2 with a "Quick Write" in which you ask the student's a specific question and give them three to five minutes to write a response. The response will be thinking on paper and not formal writing to be corrected.
Activity I
Ask the students to write down the various ways in which their parent call to them. Ask them to use the literary elements of voice to describe how they (the audience) know what to expect from the parent (speaker). Use your own version of the demonstration above--how you were called by a parent as an example.
Ask a few students to share out their Quick Write encouraging students to use the literary elements of voice to describe how the speaker-listener connection works.
Activity II
Share the following quote with your students. Jordan clarifies the idea of writer/reader and speaker/listener, "[. . .] every sentence assumes the living and active participation of at least two human beings, the speaker and the listener[. . .] If your idea, your sentence, [your line of poetry] assumes the presence of at least two living and active people, you will make it understandable because the motivation behind every sentence is the wish to say something real to somebody real. (64)
Activity I: Teacher demonstration
Give students a clean copy of the graphic organizer used in Significant Task One and a copy of the Adrienne Rich poem
(Dedications)
from
An Atlas of a Difficult World.
Tell students that:
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1 You (teacher) are going to read the poem to them while they read along.
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2 You will read the poem two times in a row with a short break between.
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3 The student's job is to read/listen and to put a mark (underline, star, highlight) at every point in the poem at which they think they know who the poet's audience is.
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4 Explain that it is almost impossible to hear and mark everything you might want to even in two read-throughs.
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5 Remind them that, as with most pieces of writing, there can be more than one audience and that there are many possible answers.
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6 We are not looking/listening for a "correct" answer or a perfectly marked paper--we are trying to hear/feel our immediate responses in a non-judgemental way.
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7 Give them a "free" answer to start them off: each of us is the audience for this poem, even though Rich doesn't know any of us. At some point in the poem she speaks to each of us. That point will be the same for some of us and different for others. Be on the lookout for the moment when you know she is speaking to you--put your initials next to that part.
Activity II: Guided Practice
After you finish reading ask students to share the line(s) they put their initials next to. A quick way to do this is to have all students who chose the same line put their hands up when they hear "their" line. After all the personal lines have been shared ask students to share the other lines they have marked--telling the class who they think the audience for that line is and/or why they chose it.
Once students have identified audience in the poem have them take out the graphic organizer. Ask the essential question: what literary elements is Rich using to help us identify, ourselves and others as, her audience? The elements we are looking for will most likely be found in personalized content and syntax. Rich uses simple effective details. In a few well-chosen words she establishes where her audience is and that helps us establish who her audience is, and in turn that makes us (her actual audience at the moment) question where we are when we are reading. She makes you ask yourself which one (or more) of the people she is writing to are you?
Finally work with the students to write a new stanza for the poem in which Rich is speaking directly to us, in our classroom, at this very minute. How would she finish the stanza that begins "I know you are reading this poem. . .". Guide students to use words that include time, place, movement, and emotion. This is not an all day event. It is a group quick write (as in--I know you are reading this poem at your kitchen table in the dog days of a too humid summer, under deadline to complete a curriculum you will be teaching in September). It is not meant to be perfect. It is meant to be the first step in the Master/Apprentice method.
Write the students newly completed Rich-like stanza on a piece of paper that can be posted somewhere in the room. Have the students create a title under which you will write "Inspired by Adrienne Rich". Explain that this is a time honored tradition in writing and that as long as you give Rich the credit she is due you are not plagiarizing her work. . .she is inspiring you and you are gratefully acknowledging her for doing so. Have the students sign the paper and post it.
Activity Three: Student Independent Work
Students will work in small groups. The teacher will prepare a two-page packet for each group that contains a sheet with a short poem printed on it multiple times so that each student in the group can have a copy to work with. Students can rip or cut the paper into individual poems. (Some suggested poems appear below in Readings.) Each student will also receive a blank copy of the Literary Elements of Voice Graphic Organizer used in Lesson One. Each group should receive a different short poem to analyze. Packets can be assigned by the teacher, chosen by lottery, or grouped in any way that the teacher fancies.
The poems recommended for this task were chosen because they clearly seem addressed to one or more people, or kinds of people, that can be identified. In addition each poem is:
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1 By a great poet.
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2 Very short (bite size) so that the groups can read the poem (several times) and analyze it in a relatively short period of time (20 minutes tops).
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3 Famous enough to be found in anthologies and/or online.
The student objectives below should be reviewed with the class before they start. Students may also need a quick review of the Literary Elements and the graphic organizer. Students should be made aware that it is their group's job to make sure the class understands what the group has learned: each group will teach the rest of the class. Students will be graded on their informal presentations by the other groups and teacher. The rubric is below.
Student objectives--the students will:
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1. Read the poem, to the class at large, two times at the start of the presentation. They need to read slowly and clearly since everyone will not have a copy in front of them.
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2. Identify the person(s) the writer of the poem is trying to reach (the audience).
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3. Determine what "something real" the writer is trying to communicate.
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4. Choose, and be able to describe how, one or more of the literary elements of voice helped them answer objectives one and two.
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5. Share their findings in an orderly and informative manner. The findings are more important that the presentation--the presentation will be informal.
Readings
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1 "Dedications" from
An Atlas of a Difficult World
by Adrienne Rich (Gioia
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2 "This is Just to Say" by William Carlos Williams (Gioia 158)
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3 "Love That Boy" by Walter Dean Meyers
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4 "288 (I am nobody)" by Emily Dickinson
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5 "We Real Cool" by Gwendolyn Brooks (Gioia 147)
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6 "Learning English: by Luis Alberto Ambroggio (translated from the Spanish by Lori M. Carlson)
Advanced Reading:
Teaching the Ape to Write Poems, by James Tate (Gioia 839)
Assessment
Students and Teacher will be assessing each group by scoring them 0, 1, 2, or 3 in each of the following categories. Students will come to a concensus within their group of the scores that they are giving the presenting group. Groups may be challenged, on why they gave the score they did, so they should be prepared to explain. Examplars using Adrienne Rich's
(Dedications)
are given below. The exemplars are in response to objective two: identify the audience. The quoted example is: "I know you are reading this poem as you pace beside the/stove/warming milk, a crying child on your shoulder, a book in/your hand/because life is short and you too are thirsty."
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1 Score 0-- The group did not accomplish the stated goal in this area.
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o Exemplar--the students did not identify an audience for the quote
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2 Score 1--The group presented an unsupported answer--gave no evidence for why they answered as they did.
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o Exemplar--Rich's audience is a new mom
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3 Score 2--The group presented a well supported answer--gave text based evidence for why they answered as they did.
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o Exemplar--Rich's audience is a new mom with a "crying child". She's trying to get the baby's bottle ready "warming milk". She's busy with the baby.
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4 Score 3--the group gave a well-supported answer, with text based evidence, and shared an insight or connection that they had while working.
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o Exemplar--gave the evidence in Score 2 and added an insight like--it's cool the way Rich makes it seem like the mom is thirsty and the baby is thirsty--but for different things: A book and a bottle. She tells us the mom is reading the poem and then shows us the mom reading the book.
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1. Read the poem to the class at large two times at the start of the presentation.
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2. Identify the person(s) the writer of the poem is trying to reach
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3. Determine what "something real" the writer is trying to communicate
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4. Choose, and be able to describe how, one or more of the literary elements of voice helped them answer objectives one and two
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5. Share their findings in an orderly and informative manner. The findings are more important that the presentation--the presentation will be informal.
The teacher should keep track of the student scoring and can use it in any way desired when giving actual grades for participation in the work. The highest score available is 15.
Projected Length of Lesson
Three to four class periods.