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.

Three-Sentence Overview of this Lesson:

Student writers will select four different stanzas from Wallace Stevens' "13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird."  Choosing a different topic (other than a blackbird) to write about, they will borrow Stevens' sentence structures and write an impersonation of the four stanzas they have chosen.  When all four stanzas are read together, the student will show that he/she has gained new knowledge about the topic being explored through this writing. Teachers: click here to read the entire lesson plan.

6-Trait Overview for this Lesson:

The focus trait in this writing assignment is idea development; students will hone in on interesting details and facts about their topics, and they will explore details within these facts in their stanzas.  The support trait in this assignment is sentence fluency; impersonating Stevens' sentence structures will make a writer more aware of the language's complexity.