Dustin's+WA

I. **Results**
 * A. Primary goal: What do you want the students to understand more fully about "Song of Myself"? Frame this as a question. Why is this topic important to Whitman? How does this topic connect to other themes or concerns of the poem? How might this topic or question engage students' interest and/or experience? How does this topic or question related to broader issues in literature? How does it relate to broader cultural or social issues?**

What does Whitman accomplish in juxtaposing an opium eater, a prostitute, and the President, among others, into one contiguous thought?

How does Whitman reconcile his early assertion that "every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you?" In other words how does Whitman assimilate notions of the self, which the poem is largely preoccupied with, with notions of the whole?

Of course his juxtaposition of characters, and even his objectification of characters, leads to a sympathetic relationship with both characters that occupy the landscape of the poem and the objects that make up that landscape.

This question would engage students because it would suggest they find a similar object or character in the poem that they relate with, admire, are disgusted by, love, hate, and show them that those characters and objects need to be worked forward and backward in order to understand their place and context in the poem both aesthetically and culturally.

The interweaving of the possibility of characters and objects inhabiting social, temporal, cultural, linguistic, and aesthetic spaces (the last two of primary importance in what is conceived of as "poetry" rather than politics or sociology) can profoundly effect the way students interact with all literature.

The choice of a cultural object, or a culturally objectified character, can lead to interesting inquiry about the historical/cultural context of the poem.


 * Secondary goals: what do you want students to understand about reading poetry? about how to write about poetry? about how to connect text and context?**

Students should come to understand that is one chooses to engage in a poem every line needs to be read forward and backward, because what can seem like an object has the possibility (in the rhetorical world of poetry) to be used as a subject and every subject can be objectified. There is the text and the context and both must be reconciled, or at least played with, through images, objects, subjects, and language.


 * II.** Evidence of learning**: How will students demonstrate that they are answering the question? What will your evidence of student learning look like? A types of writing/evidence:

i. formal writing or project (summative) essay; curation; rhetorical;

ii. informal writing (formative)

B. How will this show you that they've learned? how will you evaluate its success or failure in relation to your goals?**

The student will display evidence of learning by a critical engagement with objects and subjects present in the poem. In a writing assignment the student will cite, using evidence from the text, where particular objects are subjectified and where certain subjects are objectified. How does one, using the cultural context of certain subjects and objects, read the poem in light of this interaction? By doing this does Whitman convince us that "every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you?"

The student will be asked to write a poem that attempts a similar reconciliation.

Learning will be shown by an engagement with their chosen objects and subjects and the analysis, in their summative writing, of that relationship.

knowledge about the poem; cultural or historical knowledge; knowledge about Whitman? skills in reading? skills in analysis/making connections? skills in writing?
 * III.** Design
 * A. what knowledge or skills will students need in order to produce their evidence of student learning?

B. what kind of activities will develop these knowledges and skills? what kinds of things will students need to do to acquire these knowledges and skills? reading; writing; finding; collaborating;

C. how will you structure these activities? do some have to come before others? which? why? are some more or less important than others? are some more or less formal than others?**

Students will not need a comprehensive understanding of the social, political, and historical context surrounding the poem to produce and engaged sense of understanding of the interplay between subject and object in the poem, but it might help to see how one cultural aspect operating within the poem can lead to an inquiry of this interaction. They //will// need to understand the concept of "close" or careful reading. They will need to understand the concept of connecting smaller ideas, conveyed through subject/object interaction, metaphors, and other rhetorical devices, to larger, sometimes more elusive, even comprehensive notions of the poem as a whole. They will need to begin to understand the idea of parts and images representing, or trying to represent, larger ideas.

The first activity in the learning process will necessarily be reading the poem, thoroughly. Writing a brief reflection on their first encounter with the poem might also be helpful. The second activity might be a sort of lecture where an example of a scholarly engagement with the poem might be given. Perhaps a discussion where students can voice their initial ideas and impressions on the poem. Perhaps the question could be posited: Do you want to engage further in this poem? If so, how could you do it? What does the poem inspire you to do? To write poetry? To write analysis? To explore the historical and cultural context of the poem? Well good, we will do all three.