Student Teaching Exercise: literary terms in Yeats' "The Lake Isle of Innisfree"

     I had two terms that I wanted to discuss with my students regarding "The Lake Isle of Innisfree." I wanted to talk about the pastoral literature and the Irish Literary Revival. At first, I just wanted to teach them the term, and then ask how the terms were applied in each case. (It wasn't until well into the planning stages that it occurred to me how these two terms were potentially related.) I was trying to think about applying Harold Bloom's taxonomy [the revised version]; I wanted to amp up the class by doing something different. I usually start with the verbs in the owl diagram (see my previous blog post here: http://paedagogusperplexus.blogspot.ca/2014/11/verbage-using-more-verbs-in-lesson.html) and this time I started thinking about "teaching": how could I get my students to teach each other? So here's what I came up with:


Student Teaching Exercise:

Learning Objectives:

By having students learn the term and then try to teach it to the rest of the class, I'm engaging a few different learning styles: social, visual, oral, and aural. 

Instructions: 

I have a class of 25 students and 2 terms: do I split them into two? This makes for ungainly "groups" and fewer people talking within them. More groups creates more opportunities for people to speak in the small group setting. 

As a drawback, it means that the students hear one term three times and the other term twice, sometimes with some repetition. Is it repetitive? Turns out, it's just repetitive for me, as the students found that hearing the term that they didn't study more than once was actually good for them. 

Each group had a handout with the following on it:

a) a page-length definition of the term. 

As noted in the slide above, they must summarize the information. I used definitions from Encyclopedia Britannica and cited the sources. 

b) An incomplete thesis statement. 

(Eg. "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" contains examples of pastoral literature, which is important because ________. They're practicing the "because" part of their thesis statement; once you've seen that a pattern exists in the text, why does it matter? In this case, I've given them the pattern. They have to decide what the pattern means).

c) space for quotations or information from the poem

(Eg. Irish Literary Revival was hard here, but one of the things that they could mention is the lyrical quality or the form, which is unlike any of the English (ie British) poetry they've seen so far, which indicates Yeats' departure from the British canon). 

d) a template for how I wanted them to present their findings. 

Practice organizing and practice preparing answers for an audience!

In the summary part of the class, we discussed what they learned from the other groups. It was difficult, but as they learn to trust each other a bit more in the class, this kind of thing will become easier. 

Some key points that we came up with:

* the pastoral is a mode that has been popular throughout the body of western literature; beginning with Hesiod, it begins its heyday in the 16th Century. As we pointed out, Yeats is writing in the 19th Century, which means that he's reviving it for some reason. 
* with some prompting, we discover that Yeats is probably reviving the pastoral as a modernist commentary.
* the Irish Literary Revival is a result of the Irish being culturally oppressed by the British; it is part of the Irish Renaissance. Yeats is referring to an Irish place, and he's using a form and lyric style that departs from traditional English (and British) literature. ||| There's a more complex argument that the lyrical quality is reminiscent of Irish folk song, but I didn't expect us to get that far. 
* The two terms tie together because the pastoral mode in an Irish context hearkens to historical Irish people: the relationship between Irish folk music, folktales, and the land are inextricably linked, so by using the pastoral mode, Yeats is participating in the renaissance, also. 

"A Rose for Emily" Diction Debate

“A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner

Diction Debate

What are the most important words in “A Rose for Emily”?

Here are six that appear most frequently: (besides “Miss,” “Emily,” etc)

Smell

Old

Father

Dust

We

Rose

1)      Your job will be to find the word given to you where it occurs in the text. Underline, highlight, or copy the passages containing the word.

2)      How many times does the word occur?

3)      At what point in the text does the word occur? (Early, late?)

4)      What does your word tell us about the text?

5)      Why is your word important? (Think of your word as “doing work”; what kind of work is your word doing in order to convey meaning?)

The word you have appears multiple times in the text. Your word tells us many things about the story. Compared with the other five words, explain why your word is the most important in the story for giving context and meaning to the plot / characters.

·        

Your first argument must be strictly argumentative information: it must explain why your word is important.

·        Your second and third arguments can also be arguments in your favour; however, they can also be “deconstructive” arguments, which means they can be aimed at one or more of the other five words, showing why they are not important.

·        You must use at least three quotations containing your word (or that of your opponents) in each of your arguments.

·        Once you have 3 major reasons why your word is the most important to the story (or why somebody else’s isn’t), then we will have a debate.

How to Debate:

1)      Give your arguments as if they were a speech: in complete sentences, explain how your arguments prove that your word is the most important out of all of them. Be as convincing as you can.

2)      Take notes while the others are speaking; when they inevitably say something disparaging about your word, you should write it down to address it in your speech. Explain why they are wrong, giving specific reference to what they said.

3)      The person to go first will have a free minute at the end of all the speeches to address any points that may have been made against their word by his or her opponents.

4)      You will be given hand signals to indicate time: minute signals, 30 s signal, 10 s signal, 15 s grace. Use the last 15 s grace period to say the following: “Because of all of the reasons I have given you, our team believes that the word, __________ is the most important in “A Rose for Emily”

Here is a copy of the instructions I wrote for myself:

Divide the room into groups; we should have 22 students, 4 groups of 4 and 2 groups of 3 (Are there six people with laptops?)

Assign each group a word.

Give the following example:

The word “Miss” is the most important word in “A Rose for Emily”

1)      The word “Miss” is used to refer to Miss Emily consistently throughout the story. The word is repeated throughout the story 35 times. At the beginning of the story, the narrators claim that when she was “alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care,” indicating that she has several roles within the community. While they must take care of her, they mark her as a “tradition” and a “duty” which corresponds with their decision to consistently refer to her as “Miss”; the word Miss is a traditional way to refer to an unmarried woman, and thus they use the honorific as a means of maintaining their Southern traditions of politeness and propriety.

2)      While the word “Miss” indicates her unmarried status, and is usually thought to be a polite term, as previously mentioned, it may also be superficial: by constantly referring to her as “Miss” despite her elderly age, the community may also be thinking of her as a little girl who can’t quite take care of herself. In calling her “Miss,” the townspeople are behaving both ironically and mockingly: she is obviously no longer a young lady, and she is well beyond “marriageable” age. As though becoming married enables a woman to participate in society, they call her “miss” as if she has missed a step in becoming a person, and is stuck in the virginal temporal space of being a “Miss.” The townspeople claim that they “had long thought of them as a tableau, Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the background, her father a spraddled silhouette in the foreground.” They see her as a static unchanging figure in white – suggesting virginity – and behind her father – suggesting that she is fully at his mercy and control. Her identity is defined by her disused body and her lack of a father and husband. Her name, then, represents that feeling that she should be pitied for having not found a husband, and secretly mocked for the same.

Together, these two ideas of the word Miss used both as a tradition and as an insult demonstrate further insight into the actions and beliefs of the Southern community. The complexity of their feelings towards Miss Emily are wrapped up in the way they name her: with pity, mockery, and disdain. In calling her “Miss” they can call her all of these things, too, without breaking the rules of propriety set by their Southern society.

3)      The lack of the word “Miss” in the title is particularly interesting, because it is the only place where her name is not preceded by the honorific. The title itself is worthy of further thought, because it indicates a “rose” for Emily, and yet there is no rose within the story. A rose for Emily may be an offering of marriage or a relationship, and it may also be the gift of a rose. However, I think the rose might be an offering at her funeral; while the community disdains and mocks her, the story itself becomes a rose offered to her as a means of saying that she is understood, if not by the speakers, than at least by the writer. The writer gives her this rose – the story – as a way of saying that she isn’t crazy or pitiable, but that her motivations and actions can be comprehended. Likewise, she is called “Emily” rather than “Miss Emily” in the title, because she is being recognized as a person with real thoughts and feelings, rather than the mockingly and ironically named Miss Emily.

Give debate instructions.