BCTELA

Joanne Panas is a coeditor of English Practice. She teaches part-time English in Richmond and is also an educational consultant and writer. Her biggest challenge is trying to put together all the wonderful things she's learning.  

Background: Teaching Responsively

Over the last couple of years I have been working to become a more responsive teacher. I do have a good idea of what students need to learn in any given year, based on both the ELA 8-12 IRP as well as my own experience of typical areas of growth for each grade. However, in every year, in every class, there are always areas of strength and areas that need work. I try to determine what these are in order to harness the strengths of each group of students and to address their needs. One area of need I have often noticed in the senior grades is in understanding the purpose of literary devices; for example, students can (usually) tell me what a metaphor is, find or give me an example, and even use one or two in their writing. But sometimes it becomes clear that although students can recognize a metaphor (or a parallel sentence or internal rhyme or even a great descriptive word), they don't understand the specific contribution it makes to a piece of writing. This translates into their writing when they choose a metaphor or simile that sounds good on its own but jars with the overall ideas they are trying to convey.

This was brought home to me in one unit I taught last year to my grade 12s. I assigned a paragraph asking students to explain how a writer had developed the theme of a poem using literary devices—a fairly standard analysis question. Several students struggled with this task. In particular, one student wrote that the poet used alliteration to develop the theme and proceeded to give examples of alliteration from the poem; however, he was unable to give any explanation other than the assertion that “the author used alliteration to develop the theme.” It was clear that this student was bluffing and, along with several other students, did not have any real understanding about how a poet develops a theme using literary devices. I realized that I had assumed that if they understood literary devices, and if they understood what the theme of a work was, that they would make the connection of how one impacted the other. Like most assumptions, it was false.

Clearly, I needed to support my students in seeing that every choice a writer makes—not just literary and rhetorical devices, but also form, words, sentences, punctuation, imagery, mood, tone, point of view, and even what is not written—is purposeful and has an impact on many levels. From that “aha” as a teacher (and as a writer), I developed a mini-unit called Choices Writers Make.

 

First Steps: Goals and Summative Assessment

My goal was clear: I needed students to see that literary devices were not just things writers tossed out at random to “spice up” their writing. Students needed to be able to connect what they already knew about literary devices and other choices to the impact of those choices on a piece of literature. My goals for this mini-unit were that students would:

◆ Understand that writers make a variety of purposeful choices in their writing.

◆ Explain how a writer’s individual and collective choices impact the text.

◆ Make purposeful choices that have impact in their own writing. Next, I needed a summative assessment that would match these goals. I created a multi-step assignment in which students were asked to: 1. Choose a short text appropriate to the class 2. Underline and number 15 choices the writer made in the text, using at least 5 different kinds of choices from the list below:

◆ form/genre

◆ individual words and short phrases, including deliberately misused words

◆ what is not stated/said/described (can’t be underlined, so make margin notes)

◆ sentences (e.g. syntax, length, types)

◆ structure, including paragraphing or stanzas

◆ imagery (e.g. sensory descriptions, comparisons such as personification or simile)

◆ other literary devices (e.g. sound devices, rhetorical devices, allusions, rhyme…)

◆ tone and mood

◆ irony

◆ contrast (or opposition)

◆ point of view

3. Explain the impact of each of the 15 choices on the work and/or on the reader (2-3 sentences each); number the explanations to match the underlined choices

4. Write a version of the piece used in #1 with 10 different choices (underlined and numbered); these do not have to correspond to the 15 choices the writer made, but do have to have an overall purpose (e.g., not random changes)

5. Explain the impact of each of the 10 choices they made on the work and/or on the reader (2-3 sentences each); number the explanations to match the underlined choices

6. Write a short paragraph or two explaining the overall impact of the 10 choices they made on their version of the piece, as well as explaining which version is better and why

 

Next Steps: Planning Instruction

When I had my goals in mind and a final summative assessment, I worked backwards to instruction. How could I help students make this significant shift in their thinking about what writers do and why they do it? Despite their experiences with the writing process, it seemed to me that many students had an idea that the pieces they studied just “came out that way” and that writers did not really have to work hard to make their writing have impact on audiences.

I decided to lead students through a number of mini-lessons in which we looked at a number of short pieces and examined the writers’ choices both as a class and in small groups. After each of these lessons, I would ask students to do a short task that was actually a step of the summative assessment (which students received later in the mini-unit). This way, I would be able to monitor their understanding and give them some practice with, and feedback on, the kinds of tasks that they would be expected to do at the end of the unit.

 

Next Steps: Instruction and Practice

Lesson One

I began the unit by explaining to the students the purpose of the unit and how it would be organized, with mini-lessons and practice assignments before giving out the summative assessment. The first text we looked at was Alice Walker’s wonderful short essay, “My Mother’s Blue Bowl.” I chose to begin with narrative prose as it is often more accessible for students than poetry, although sometimes it’s harder to notice writers’ choices in prose than in poetry. With each student following along in her or his copy, I read the first sentence aloud—and stopped. I began the discussion by modeling my thinking about a couple of the choices Walker made in the sentence. Then, working together, we listed all the choices Walker had made in just that one sentence: the choice to write in first person; the list of food (“soup, potatoes, rice” instead of, say, “chips, cookies, popcorn” or “Beef Bourgogne, Coq au Vin, Bouillabaisse”); the choice to omit the “and” from the list of food; the use of dashes instead of parentheses; the way she describes the bowl, including the “noticeably chipped” rim; the length and structure of the sentence; and her overall choice of vocabulary.

We discussed the impact of these choices both individually and as a whole before we went on to the second sentence, where we did the same type of close reading and analysis. The students caught on very quickly to the type of thinking we were doing, and soon were working their way through the essay in partners; before class ended, we stopped and shared some of Walker’s key choices. Students were asked to read the remainder of the essay, making notes on what they felt were the author’s key choices, as well as the impact of her choices on the piece as a whole.

 

Lesson Two

The next lesson included an overview of their thoughts about Walker’s choices, as well as any important ones I felt they had missed. We listed the types of choices she had made, which helped students begin to create categories of choices writers make. Next, we moved to a set of poems that the students were already familiar with and which they had previously annotated for literary devices (I find it helpful to use familiar or easier texts when teaching students a new concept). I asked the students which poem they wanted to look at together; they were nearly unanimous in their choice of “Lady Lazarus” by Sylvia Plath, which they had found quite challenging. Using the gradual release model, I modeled the thinking I wanted them to do on the first part of the poem, reading it in short chunks and reviewing the choices Plath had made and the impact of those choices. Working in pairs, they continued to work their way through the poem. We reviewed their thinking together, and then it was time for their first formative task.

I asked each student to choose a poem from the set; they were to underline five choices the writer had made, and write a two or three sentence explanation of the impact of each choice on the poem and/or the reader. Most importantly, they were to try to find different types of choices; they could not simply underline five vocabulary choices, or five metaphors. They had the choice of working on the same poem as their partner or a different one.

 

Lesson Three

When students returned to class, they began by sharing their thinking about the poet’s choices with a partner, and then I asked students to share one key choice the poet had made, and its impact on the poem, with the class (this worked well as all students had read all the poems in the set earlier in the year). I collected the students’ work so I could give them some feedback and see how well they understood the concepts.

The next step in the lesson was a lot of fun for me. I had prepared a re-write of part of “Lady Lazarus” which I put on the overhead and read aloud for the class:

 

Lady Lazarus

Originally by Sylvia Plath; re-written by J. Panas

She has done it again!

One year in every ten she manages it——

A sort of walking miracle,

Her skin bright as a lampshade,

Her right foot a paperweight,

Her face a featureless, fine linen.

Peel off the napkin O her enemy.

Does she terrify?——

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?

The sour breath will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh the grave cave ate

will be at home on her

And she a smiling woman!

She is only thirty.

And like the cat she has nine times to die.

This is Number Three.

What a trash to annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.

The peanut-crunching crowd shoves in

to see them unwrap her hand and foot:

The big strip tease!

Gentlemen, ladies!

These are her hands, her knees.

She may be skin and bone, nevertheless,

she is the same, identical woman!

The first time it happened she was ten.

It was an accident.

The second time she meant to last it out

and not come back at all.

She rocked shut as a seashell.

They had to call and call and pick the

worms off her like sticky pearls.

Dying is an art, like everything else,

she does it exceptionally well.

She does it so it feels like hell.

She does it so it feels real.

I guess you could say she has a call!

 

The students enjoyed my “circus sideshow” version and were able to identify the choices I had made and explain the impact of those choices. They also had quite a good discussion about which version they liked better (alas, Sylvia won that vote). All this was excellent preparation for their second formative task. Using the poem they had chosen for the first task, they had to re-write all or part of it (about 100 words or so) making five different choices. They also had to explain the impact of each of their choices and give their opinion on which version they thought was better. Most students were quite keen on this task and had fun thinking and brainstorming with their partners about how they would rewrite it.

 

The Last Step: Summative Assessment

Lesson Four

To begin this lesson, students shared their re-written poems and the choices they had made with their partner from the last class. A few brave students read their versions aloud. I collected their work for feedback, and then introduced the final assessment. After reviewing it (the steps were familiar to them by now as they had done most of them), students got to work choosing the text they would use for the assignment. There were several guidelines for this choice:

◆ It had to be a published piece of prose or poetry (no personal pieces)

◆ It had to be between 250 and 1000 words long—students could use an excerpt

◆ The piece could be published in hard copy or online, as long as it was appropriate in content and sophistication for the class (e.g. no nursery rhymes or children’s stories)

◆ Students could not choose a piece we had used in class

I gave students access to a number of anthologies as well as permission to use the library and/or computer lab to find a piece for the assessment. Once students had chosen their piece and shown it to me, they were able to get to work on the assessment. They had the remainder of the class and two additional classes to work on the assessment, which gave me the chance to review their last formative task as well as to make sure they understood the summative assessment (including the criteria) and were doing it correctly. In the summative assessment I looked for evidence that students:

◆ Understood literary devices/concepts/terms

◆ Could correctly and purposefully use literary devices/concepts/terms

◆ Supported clear and thoughtful explanations with details

◆ Were thinking carefully and insightfully about the choices writers make

◆ Used structure, conventions and style correctly and purposefully to enhance their writing

The criteria for this task was not ideal, in that I did not use a rubric; rather, I gave students points for completing each section of the task (e.g. students got 0, ½, or 1 for each explanation of a writer’s choice), a practice which is not typical for me but which I resorted to for the sake of expediency. In the end, it did not matter much as most students got an A on the assessment; it was clear throughout the instructional activities and the formative assessment tasks that they understood the concepts and could apply them readily.

 

Reflection and Further Application

This mini-unit was probably the most successful I had last year with that group of students. Although it was created on the fly, in response to a specific gap in their understanding of literature, I will definitely use it again and I will use it earlier in the year; I will also adapt it for my younger students. The main change I will make for all grades is to change the assessment to a rubric, which I will co-create with the students.

This unit was fun for me to teach, because I could sense that it was an “eye-opening” experience for many students as we worked together; there was a real sense of discovery in the class as many students finally “got” what it is writers do to make their work engaging and powerful. Students enjoyed choosing a text to analyze and having a crack at rewriting it; several chose pieces they knew and loved, which they wanted to explore more deeply. Probably the most telling comment came from one student who said that he found the assignment “really fun and challenging”—music to any teacher’s ears!

Students were given the chance to apply their learning about choices writers make in the final unit of the year, which was on the personal essay. They wrote amazing pieces on topics about literature, such as how a book or author had affected them personally. They worked hard to make powerful choices, from sentence length and structure (bring on the rhetorical devices!) to vocabulary, tone, and literary devices. The essays were by far the best ones the students wrote all year, especially in terms of their style. One of the essays from that class was selected for publication in English Practice, and you can read it in the Musings & Meanderings section. And, when I teach the “Choices Writers Make” unit again, I will definitely follow it up with some kind of personal writing unit/task to give students the opportunity to transfer their learning into a meaningful, authentic task.