L3+Buys,+John


 * ** U  ****NIVERSITY OF MAINE AT FARMINGTON **  **COLLEGE OF EDUCATION, HEALTH AND REHABILITATION **

**LESSON PLAN FORMAT **


 * __Teacher’s Name __****: Mr. John Buys ** **__Date of Lesson__: 3**
 * __Grade Level __****: 9-10 ** **__Topic__: New England: Beginning and the End Jewette and Frost**

Students will understand that complex characters interact with other characters to develop as the plot advances developing motivation, complexity, and theme. Students will know critical details and terminology for literature and mediums as well as important events and people. Students will be able to evaluate universal and regional characteristics and themes. Product: Essay using Google Documents
 * __Objectives __**

Common Core State Standards Content Area: Reading <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Grade Level: Grades 9-10 <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Domain: Literature <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Standard: Key Ideas and Details, Craft and Structure, and Integration of Knowledge and Ideas <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Clusters: 3, 6, & 7
 * __<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Maine Learning Results Alignment __**


 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Rationale: This lesson is designed to reinforce the influence of regionalism in the literary elements of the stories by providing students with more examples as well as opportunity to present their reasoning and understanding through their writing. **


 * __<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Assessment __**

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Section I – checking for understanding during instruction <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Students will discuss and debate about different regions and the presentation of regionalism within each literary work. The teacher will check for understanding based on the content of the debate and discussion. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Section II – timely feedback for products (self, peer, teacher) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Self/Peer/Teacher Rubric. The Google document provides the students' essays to be edited simultaneously while working on them and anywhere there is internet access. This process and a Rubric will be used to provide students with feedback for their essays.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Formative (Assessment for Learning) **

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">A Rubric detailing the necessary elements to a well-written literary analysis and persuasive essay on Regionalism within one of the already read literary pieces will be the summative assessment.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Summative (Assessment of Learning) **

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Technology: Google Documents provides the chance for students to recognize the collaborative qualities of working through online mediums.
 * __<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Integration __**

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Other Content Areas: New Historicism literary criticism will integrate into the essays as will fine art examples. The fashion related hook will also integrate the clothing industry for students.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Section I - Graphic Organizer & Cooperative Learning used during instruction <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Flowchart will detail how universal and regional influences effect different characteristics in literature by establishing how the details and events of the plot become part of structured evidence. Students will debate different regional texts according to different standards by different criticisms and prove their significance. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Section II – Groups and Roles for Product <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Etymologist, Questioner, Connector.
 * __<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Groupings __**


 * __<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Differentiated Instruction __**

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Linguistic: Debate and Googledocx. target linguistic learning strengths. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Spatial: Graphic organizers present thoughts in visual mediums. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Logical-mathematical: Graphic organizers allow logical students to categorize their thoughts on paper. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Kinesthetic: Body movement and gestures will be required for debate. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Musical: Background music while students are working on paper is a possible option. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Interpersonal: Both the debate and and peer editing on essay will encourage student interaction. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Intrapersonal: Googledocx requires students to work individually with their thoughts. Feeling toned time will be able produced from the one on one contact that Googledocx can allow students to express. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Naturalist: Windows onto learning exercise to discover regional versus universal aspects of perspective and point of view in literature.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">From IEP’s (Individual Education Plan), 504’s, ELLIDEP (English Language Learning Instructional Delivery Education Plan) I will review student’s IEP, 504 or ELLIDEP and make appropriate modifications and accommodations.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Modifications/Accommodations **

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Plan for accommodating absent students: <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Graphic organizers and other paper work will be saved in a file. Students who are absent will be able to have access to my lecture notes and access to other student's glogsters to understand the desired goal. Time for it to be turned in with full credit will match the number of days absent. Students are recommended to discuss what preliminary steps and follow up to go through with myself. If students are absent during debate secretaries will be established who will take notes on the range of arguments and discussions.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Type II technology: Google Documents' interactive and collaborative elements make it an ideal tool for the teacher reviewed, peer reviewed, and conferencing on essays.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Extensions **

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Gifted Students: Gifted Students will be encouraged to include more than one story or contrast two regions furthering the complexity of their essay.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Graphic Organizer Venn Diagram, Persuasion Chart, and Windows onto Learning <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Laptops with Google Document <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Guideline for Debate <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Essay Handout
 * __<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Materials, Resources and Technology __**

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">http://www.eduplace.com/graphicorganizer/: Graphic Organizers <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">http://edtech.kennesaw.edu/intech/cooperativelearning.htm#activities: Cooperative Learning <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">[]: Persuasion Chart <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> [] : Notes on Robert Frost’s “After Apple Picking” <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">http://edu221spring11class.wikispaces.com/file/view/strategies.pdf: Check for Understanding <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">[] Understanding Google Docs
 * __<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Source for Lesson Plan and Research __**


 * __<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Maine Standards for Initial Teacher Certification and Rationale __**


 * //<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Standard 3 - Demonstrates a knowledge of the diverse ways in which students learn and develop by providing learning opportunities that support their intellectual, physical, emotional, social, and cultural development. //**

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Clipboard: A variety of graphic organizers, guidelines, and rubrics will help students who require additional structure and organization feel comfortable in class. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Microscope: The in-depth analytically writing work for the essay and discussion/debate oriented class will help students who require deep exploration and detail studies. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Puppy: In order to have a successful discussion and peer-reviewed work, crystalline guidelines for appropriate behavior will help students feel comfortable in class and respected throughout activities. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Beach Ball: Students will be provided with a variety of resources and personal choice in choosing what elements of regionalism and what stories they would like to analyze. Debates and Discussions also involve roles students can choose to emulate.
 * //<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Rationale: Curriculum standards are met while encouraging a variety of learners to understand in their own way. //**

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">CCSS: While analyzing the short stories key details and structures, students will understand literature on a complex level and how literary criticisms and other cultural elements can be integrated into forming compelling arguments.
 * //<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Standard 4 - Plans instruction based upon knowledge of subject matter, students, curriculum goals, and learning and development theory. //**

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Facet: Students' essays require them to make interpretations for different authors' perspectives and opinions and how they use literary elements to establish themes.


 * //<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Rationale: Both CCSS and Facets of Understanding as well as Differentiated Instruction are applied in this lesson. //**

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Linguistic: Debate and Googledocx. target linguistic learning strengths. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Spatial: Graphic organizers present thoughts in visual mediums. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Logical-mathematical: Graphic organizers allow logical students to categorize their thoughts on paper. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Kinesthetic: Body movement and gestures will be required for debate. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Musical: Background music while students are working on paper is a possible option. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Interpersonal: Both the debate and and peer editing on essay will encourage student interaction. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Intrapersonal: Googledocx requires students to work individually with their thoughts. Feeling toned time will be able produced from the one on one contact that Googledocx can allow students to express. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Naturalist: Windows onto learning exercise to discover regional versus universal aspects of perspective and point of view in literature.
 * //<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Standard 5 - Understands and uses a variety of instructional strategies and appropriate technology to meet students’ needs. //**
 * //<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">MI Strategies: //**

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Type II Technology: Google Documents provides the chance for students to recognize the collaborative qualities of working through online mediums.


 * //<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Rationale: All types of Differentiated Learning Styles are met and the Glogster is Type II for its integration and usage. //**

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Formative Assessment <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Section I – checking for understanding during instruction <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Students will discuss and debate about different regions and the presentation of regionalism within each literary work. The teacher will check for understanding based on the content of the debate and discussion. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Section II – timely feedback for products (self, peer, teacher) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Self/Peer/Teacher Rubric. The Google document provides the students' essays to be edited simultaneously while working on them and anywhere there is internet access. This process and a Rubric will be used to provide students with feedback for their essays.
 * //<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Standard 8 - Understands and uses a variety of formal and informal assessment strategies to evaluate and support the development of the learner. //**

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Summative (Assessment of Learning): <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">A Rubric detailing the necessary elements to a well-written literary analysis and persuasive essay on Regionalism within one of the already read literary pieces will be the summative assessment.
 * //<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Rationale: //** **//<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">A variety of formative and summative assessment techniques are deployed in the lesson. //**

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Day One: <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Hook (20) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Assign Jewette Story and key details (10) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Preparation for debate (30) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Review Regionalism (10) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Day Two: <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Discuss Jewette (20) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Debate (40) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Assign Essay and Frost (20) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Day Three: <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Discuss Frost (20) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Discuss topics and paper mechanics (40) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Work on essays (20) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Day Four: <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Final Edits (20) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Self-Assessment (20) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Wiki-Updates (40)
 * __<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Teaching and Learning Sequence __****<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">: **

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">The classroom will be oriented with the desks in a circle for discussion. Students will understand that complex characters interact with other characters to develop as the plot advances developing motivation, complexity, and theme. Globalization and increasing world diversity are imperative for global citizens to understand. Key Details and Details and Craft and Structure. Student will recognize this reality by analyzing the diversity of the clothing they are wearing and reflecting on it. This discussion will discuss location, art influence; cultural presences throughout their varied expressions as a group after students personally analyze and write about what they are wearing why and what its influences are.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Where, Why, What, Hook, Tailors: Spatial, Linguistic, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal, Logical-mathematical, naturalist, and kinesthetic. **

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Sarah Orne Jewette's "A White Heron" and an assortment of Robert Frost poems will be the content to specifically begin analyzing literature. The students will then be prepared to review the formerly read pieces and be prepared to recognize original interpretation as well. These discussions become the purpose of the debate. To communicate and defend arguments about the different regional influences and literary aspects of the entire read short stories and narrative poems. Flow charts for observations from Windows into Learning and persuasion chart graphic organizers will help students also being to establish their sense of argumentation and providing appropriate textual evidence. The teacher takes on more of a facilitator role to encourage students' original thinking often incorporating indirect teaching. Direct instruction will be used for discussions on Google Documents and essay styles. The editing process will involve initial teacher-student conference then peer-review and final teacher-student conferences before the final draft is due.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Equip, Explore Rethink, Revise Tailors: Visual, Linguistic, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal, Logical Mathematical, Kinesthetic, Naturalist, Musical **

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Students will be able to evaluate universal and regional characteristics and themes through Students' essays which require them to make interpretations for different authors' perspectives and opinions and how they use literary elements to establish themes. Students will be able to choose between the roles of etymologist, questioner, and connector or from the perspective of a particular region or branch of criticism for their interpretations to come alive in debate. Throughout the editing process students will rethink and revise their essays until the final paper is turned in.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Explore, Experience, Rethink, Revise, Refine, Tailors: ** **<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Interpersonal, Intrapersonal, linguistic, **

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Throughout the essay process with Google Documents students will be peer reviewing and getting feedback from the teacher as well. A final self-assessment of their paper based off of the original rubric will be included to self-assess their work. A final grade will be administered with feedback which should be more reflective on the process if students and teacher have effectively communicated throughout the Google Document process. This paper will be a midterm review in effect and set the standard for the students’ next level of comprehension needed for future analyzing of Regionalism's influence.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Evaluate, Tailors: ** **<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Spatial, Linguistic, Logical-Mathematical, Interpersonal, and Intrapersonal **


 * __<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Content Notes __**

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Finding Sylvia in “The White Heron”

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">In Sarah Orne Jewett’s short story “The White Heron,” the young heroine Sylvia encounters the white heron coveted by an unnamed huntsman and Ornithologist so he can add the rare specimen to his collection and research. The tempting attractiveness and superficiality of mankind in the huntsman’s offer of financial reward and friendship for the locale of the bird’s nest tests Sylvia’s spiritual connection she shares with the natural world. Sylvia resolves to find the location of the heron; however, once Sylvia finds the heron her life changes. The heron leads Sylvia to resolve her internal between humankind and nature, making Sylvia conscious of her devotion to the environment.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">To find the white heron, Sylvia must initially conflict with nature by climbing the landmark pine. Jewett describes the culmination of the climb saying:

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">At last the sun came up bewilderingly bright. Sylvia could see the white sails of the ships out at sea, and the clouds that were purple and rose-colored and yellow at first began to fade away. Where was the white heron’s nest in the sea of green branches, and was this wonderful sight and pageant of the world the only reward for having climbed to such a giddy height? (169)

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">The tree’s landmark status and the nervous feeling the height creates in Sylvia reflects the immensity of the climb for the girl. Though dangerously high, Sylvia fixates on the majesty of her view illuminated by the “bewildering bright” of the sun. The view immediately contrasts the “white sails” of mankind and vibrant colors, “purple, rose-colored, and yellow” describing the clouds, defying the expectation of clouds as conventionally white. Sylvia obsesses over the scenery rather than mankind revealing mankind’s inferiority to the pristine beauty of nature. In searching for the hunter’s reward, Sylvia finds reward in the splendor of nature forgetting the pressures of mankind for the environment. Nevertheless, Sylvia still does not attain the goal she searches for. The author describes the view as a pageant, an elaborate display and ceremony, setting the stage for Sylvia’s encounter with the heron as the ritualistic reward she longs for.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Sylvia’s reward materializes in the heron who accentuates her character’s connection with nature. The heron’s emergence into view fills Sylvia with obsession:

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Now look down again, Sylvia, where the green marsh is set among the shining birches and dark hemlocks; there where you saw the white heron once you will see him again; look, look! A white spot of him like a single floating feather comes up from the dead hemlock and grows larger, and rises, and comes close at last and goes by the landmark pine with steady sweep of wing and outstretched slender neck and crested head. (169-170)

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">The urgency to find the heron and repetition of the commands to look build the suspense of the meeting’s importance for Sylvia. The vividness of the description of the surrounding forestation contrasts directly with the surfacing of the heron’s blurred description from object to being. From a white spot as a floating feather, the author characterizes the final description of the heron to out shine even the aforementioned birches. The white spot enraptures Sylvia as it lightly glides from being purposeless, like a feather, until her awe is rewarded in the full embodiment of the heron. Sequentially, the heron’s growth occurs conjunctionally as the heron “grows larger and rises and comes closer and goes” as well as the description with “steady sweep of wing and outstretched slender neck and crested neck.” As with each “and” the description grows, the bird’s presence within Sylvia grows simultaneously. She finds not only the reward of the nest’s location, but the bird in all the majesty of its sweeping entrance and detailed form as well.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Though she achieves the desired goal for her Ornithologist, Sylvia continues her experience with the heron. Caught in the exchange with the heron, Sylvia heeds her internal commands crying:

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">And wait! Wait! Do not move a foot or finger, little girl, do not send forth an arrow of light and consciousness from your two eager eyes, for the heron has perched on a pine bought not far beyond yours, and cries back to his mate on the nest and plumes his feathers for the new day. (170)

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Sylvia’s encounter with the heron demands her to be as one with nature beyond her physical limitations. She must abandon the hunter mentality metaphorically described as an arrow, a hunter’s tool. The importance of this consciousness exposes the relationship Sylvia finds with the heron; Sylvia communicates beyond speech, into spiritual depth. She sympathizes with nature as she sympathizes with the heron she knows visually, orally, and spiritually. As the heron “plumes his feathers for the new day,” he brings Sylvia with him, though into a new life where the reward is in nature.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Her experience with the heron is brief, but impacts colossal change within Sylvia. This echoes within the passage saying:

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">The child gives a long sigh a minute later when a company of shouting cat-birds comes also to the tree, and vexed by their fluttering and lawlessness the solemn heron goes away. She knows his secret now, the wild light, slender bird that floats and wavers, and goes back like an arrow presently to his home in the green world beneath. (170)

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Sylvia finds and relates to the heron to discover his secret: her connection to life untamed described as “wild”, rejecting the science, wealth, and superficial life offered by the Ornithologist. Lawlessness chases away the heron, whose reverence contrasts directly with his flight from lawlessness and description of solemnest. Sylvia’s own lawlessness from her natural spirit leaves as well. Ironically a new arrow has struck the heart of Sylvia, not by the huntsman, but by the heron whose return to the green world parallels Sylvia’s returning home, a place of comfort and familiarity, or her allegiance to the nature.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Sylvia’s encounter with the heron permanently impacts her decision to identify with nature. In Sylvia’s moment of decision between mankind and nature:

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">the murmur of the pine’s green branches is in her ears, she remembers how the white heron came flying through the golden air and how they watched the sea and the morning together, and Sylvia cannot speak; she cannot tell the heron’s secret and give its life away (171)

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Nature speaks within Sylvia. What she shares with the heron brings Sylvia to identify with nature. The bird’s description compares to an angel by the whiteness of the bird “flying through golden air” to imprint Sylvia’s memory with her divine purpose for nature, rather than mankind, even the personification of the trees murmur to remind Sylvia of her allegiance to nature. The meeting becomes more than a fleeting memory as it includes the action of watching the “sea and morning together” and the secrets shared together. In meeting the heron, Sylvia cannot take away the “secret” or “life” of the heron. She sacrifices relationship with humanity for her identity in nature the final cost of her internal conflict.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Sylvia’s dynamic internal change from her conflicting ties to humankind to her identity within nature results from who encounter with the heron within Jewett’s “The White heron”. Sylvia climbs the landmark pine searching for the heron as property of the ornithologist to share an experience with the heron to accentuation her distinctive quality with nature. Not only does the encounter create change but results in permanent identification with the natural world for Sylvia. Sylvia finds meaning and life through the encounter with the white heron. The significance of nature in Jewett’s short story impacts through her presence as a Regionalist writer.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 14pt;">After Apple Picking:

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Notes from sparknotes (online)

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">This is a rhyming poem that follows no preordained rhyme scheme. “After Apple-Picking” is basically iambic, and mostly in pentameter, but line-length variants abound. Line 1, for example, is long by any standard. Line 32 is very short: one foot. The poem’s shorter lines of di-, tri-, and tetrameter serve to syncopate and sharpen the steady, potentially droning rhythm of pentameter. They keep the reader on her toes, awake, while the speaker drifts off into oblivion.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Form **

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">First, a comment on form. Throughout the poem, both rhyme and line-length are manipulated and varied with subtlety. The mystery of the rhymes—when will they come and how abruptly—keeps words and sounds active and hovering over several lines. We find the greatest separation between rhyming end-words at the poem’s conclusion. Sleep comes seven lines after its partner, heap, and in the interim, sleep has popped up three times in the middle of lines. Sleep is, in fact, all over the poem; the word appears six times. But the way it is delivered here, the last rhyme is masterful. Heap first rhymes internally with sleep, then again internally with sleep, and then again, and only pairs up with the end-word sleep in the poem’s last line. At this point, we’ve nearly forgotten heap. Sleep seems to rhyme with itself, with its repetition, like a sleepy mantra or a sleep-inducing counting of sheep. The poem arrives at final sleep not through a wham-bang rhyming couplet but more “sleepily.”
 * <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Commentary **

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">“There are many other things I have found myself saying about poetry, but the chiefest of these is that it is metaphor, saying one thing and meaning another, saying one thing in terms of another, the pleasure of ulteriority.” This is Robert Frost in 1946, in an essay for The Atlantic Monthly. “After Apple-Picking” is about picking apples, but with its ladders pointing “[t]oward heaven still,” with its great weariness, and with its rumination on the harvest, the coming of winter, and inhuman sleep, the reader feels certain that the poem harbors some “ulteriority.”

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">“Final sleep” is certainly one interpretation of the “long sleep” that the poet contrasts with human sleep. The sleep of the woodchuck is the sleep of winter, and winter, in the metaphoric language of seasons, has strong associations with death. Hints of winter are abundant: The scent of apples is “the essence of winter sleep”; the water in the trough froze into a “pane of glass”; the grass is “hoary” (i.e., frosty, or Frosty). Yet is the impending death destructive or creative? The harvest of apples can be read as a harvest of any human effort—study, laying bricks, writing poetry, etc.—and this poem looks at the end of the harvest.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">The sequence and tenses of the poem are a bit confusing and lead one to wonder what is dreamed, what is real, and where the sleep begins. It’s understandable that the speaker should be tired at the end of a day’s apple picking. But the poem says that the speaker was well on his way to sleep before he dropped the sheet of ice, and this presumably occurred in the morning. The speaker has tried and failed to “rub the strangeness” from his sight. Is this a strangeness induced by exhaustion or indicative of the fact that he is dreaming already? Has he, in fact, been dreaming since he looked through the “pane of glass” and entered a through-the-looking-glass world of “magnified apples” and the “rumbling sound / Of load on load of apples coming in”? Or is the sheet of ice simply a dizzying lens whose effect endures? If, in fact, the speaker was well on his way to sleep in the morning, does this lend a greater, more ominous weight to the long sleep “coming on” at the poem’s end? <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">The overall tone of the poem might not support such a reading, however; nothing else about it is particularly ominous—and Frost can do ominous when he wants to. How we ultimately interpret the tone of the poem has much to do with how we interpret the harvest. Has it been a failure? Certainly there is a sense of incompleteness—”a barrel that I didn’t fill.” The speaker’s inner resources give out before the outer resources are entirely collected. On the other hand, the poet speaks only of “two or three apples” remaining, and these only “may” be left over. Do we detect satisfaction, then? The speaker has done all that was within his power; what’s left is the result of minor, inevitable human imperfection. Is this, then, a poem about the rare skill of knowing when to quit honorably? This interpretation seems reasonable.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Yet if the speaker maintains his honor, why will his sleep be troubled? There were “ten thousand thousand”—that is to say, countless—fruit to touch, and none could be fumbled or it was lost. Did the speaker fumble many? Did he leave more than he claims he did? Or are the troubled dreams a nightmare magnification and not a reflection of the real harvest?

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Lines 28-29 are important: “I am overtired / Of the great harvest I myself desired.” If there has been failure or too great a strain on the speaker, it is because the speaker has desired too great a harvest. He saw an impossible quantity of fruit as a possibility. Or he saw a merely incredible quantity of fruit as possibility and nearly achieved it (at the cost of physical and mental exhaustion).

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">When we read “After Apple-Picking” metaphorically, we may want to look at it as a poem about the effort of writing poetry. The cider-apple heap then makes a nice metaphor for saved and recycled bits of poetry, and the long sleep sounds like creative (permanent?) hibernation. This is one possible metaphoric substitution among many; it seems plausible enough (though nowise definitive or exclusive). However, our search for “ulteriority” may benefit from respecting, not replacing, the figure of the apples. Apple picking, in Western civilization, has its own built-in metaphorical and allegorical universe, and we should especially remember this when we read a poet whose work frequently revisits Eden and the Fall (c.f. “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” “Never Again Would Birds’ Song Be the Same,” “It is Almost the Year Two Thousand,” “The Oven Bird”). When the poet speaks of “the great harvest I myself desired,” consider also what apples represent in Genesis: knowledge and some great, punishable claim to godliness—creation and understanding, perhaps. This sends us scurrying back to lines 1and 2, where the apple-picking ladder sticks through the tree “Toward heaven still.” What has this harvest been, then, with its infinite fruits too many for one person to touch? What happens when such apples strike the earth—are they really of no worth? And looked at in this new light, what does it mean to be “done with apple-picking now”?

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">All of these questions are enough to make one forswear metaphor and limit oneself to a strict diet of literalness. But that isn’t nearly as much fun.


 * __<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Handouts __**

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