Web Quest Lesson Plan

Introduction
Students have explored the topic of the poetic revolution during the Civil War era. In this lesson, students will read poems by different poets and analyze their unique styles and topics. After reading poems on two Web sites, each student will select one of the poems and will identify its unique features. Then the students will write an original poem that incorporates several of those features.

Lesson Description
Students will read selected poems from “Poets” http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/58 and “Prairie Poetry” http://www.prairiepoetry.org/main.html. Then students will select a specific poet and examine their poem to identify its unique features, including use of language and imagery, style, and topic. Students will then write their own poems, incorporating one or more of the unique features of the poem that they chose to analyze.

Instructional Objectives

1. Students will use the Internet as a resource to get information.
2. Students will explore different poets and their different styles of writing poetry.
3. Students will choose a poem and identify its unique features, including style, use of language and imagery, or topic of the poem, and then write their own poems incorporating one or more of the features of the poem they have selected.

Student Web Activity Sample Answer
The isolation of the wind,
The hollow of its whine–
It begs the trees forgiveness
Of lonely passing time.

The seasons pass in glances
Before we blink to see–
First silent gray and then the green–
What more it means to me.

And when its time to leave once more–
The howling of good-bye–
I see the strains of passing time–
In dried leaves blowing by.

In my poem, I tried to mirror Dickinson’s topic of isolation with a glimmer of hope or possibility, as well as mimic her use of n-dashes.