If all of the elements of this lesson plan are employed, students will develop the following powers, skills, and understanding:
- 1
Students will practice close-reading poems for literal and figurative meaning.
- 2
Students will think and write analytically about poetry, using examples from the text to support arguments about how poems function.
- 3
Students will become familiar with Walt Whitman's life and work and its greater impact on American literature.
- 4
Students will become familiar with transcendentalism and realism in American literature and will identify aspects of the movements in Whitman's poetry.
