This Lesson's Title:

Four Ways of Looking at __...

mimicking Wallace Stevens
when writing about
a cross-curricular topic

This lesson was created by NNWP Teacher Consultant Corbett Harrison. You can access all of Corbett's on-line lessons by clicking here.

This on-line writing prompt is based on the poetry of Wallace Stevens. Before writing to this assignment, students should hear and discuss the style of this American poet.

Click here to learn more about this poet.

If you are a Washoe County teacher, click here to search for a collection of works by this poet that you can check out from the county library.

Step one (sharing the published model):  Wallace Stevens' 13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird. is a complicated poem, with interpretations that can be discussed endlessly by scholars.  For this writing assignment, students simply need to know that Wallace Stevens has chosen to examine a simple topic--blackbirds--with thirteen different sets of "poetic eyes."  It's a simple idea that Stevens does with remarkable language structures.  Some of the stanzas will undoubtedly baffle your students, but ask them to focus on the structure of the sentences when the content seems too complicated to them.

Read the poem as a whole class, after giving the above explanation.  Allow student groups to attempt to interpret one or two stanzas that pique their interest.  Ask, "What is the poet saying about a blackbird in this huge and complicated world of ours?" 

• Wallace Steven's "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"

Step two (introducing student models of writing):   In small groups, have your students read and respond to any or all of the student models that come with this lesson.  Encourage the students to talk about the idea development in each poem, and then to talk about how sentence fluency was accomplished by the writer.

• We're looking for student samples for all grade levels for this prompt!  Help us get some, and we'll send you a free resource for your classroom!  Contact us at publish@writingfix.com for details.

Step three (thinking and pre-writing): For this assignment, your students will choose four of Stevens' stanzas, and they will use the stanzas' sentence structures to explore a different topic.  Students may write about science topics, math topics, history topics, or about characters from literature.  This writing assignment allows students to shape learned facts into original statements.

Below you will find a two-page handout to print and share with your students.  The first page is a teacher model, to be shown on the overhead.  Two of Stevens' stanzas are impersonated, using the moon as their topic.  Two other stanzas are included on the worksheet to complete together as a class...also about the moon.  Before assigning independent impersonation, use this worksheet to help everyone understand the thinking that needs to be done to complete this assignment.

The second page is a blank handout where students can begin crafting their impersonations of Stevens' stanzas.  The first time you use this assignments, allow students to work in pairs.  If you choose to use the assignment for a different topic later on, students can be challenged to create their impersonations independently.

Using this assignment repeatedly will not only help students talk about learned topics in interesting ways, but it will also make them very familiar with a poem that many of them might see in later years, especially if they attend a university.

• An overhead model and a blank worksheet

Step four (revising with specific trait language):   To promote response and revision to rough draft writing, attach WritingFix's Revision and Response Post-Its to your students' drafts.  Make sure the students rank their use of the trait-specific skills on the Post-Its, which means they'll only have one "1" and one "5."   Have them commit to ideas for revision based on their Post-It rankings.  For more ideas on WritingFix's Revision & Response Post-Its, click here.

• Sheet of 6 Idea Development Post-It Notes
• Sheet of 6 Sentence Fluency Post-It Notes

Step six (publishing for the portfolio):   When they are finished revising and have second drafts, invite your students to come back to this piece once more during an upcoming writer's workshop block.  Their stories might become a longer story, a more detailed piece, or the beginning of a series of pieces about the story they started here.  Students will probably enjoy creating an illustration for this story as they get ready to publish it for their portfolios.

Interested in publishing student work on-line?  We invite student writers to post final drafts of their original at WritingFix's Community of Student Writers.  This is a safe-to-use blog for students and teachers. No writing is posted until it is approved by the moderator. Contact us at publish@writingfix.com if you have questions about getting your students published.

Learn more about poet Wallace Stevens
by clicking here.