Romantic Poets

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Teacher Lesson Plans

Lesson: Cooperative Learning Groups

Possible Adaptations:

May be used for large amounts of work
May be used with any group of works or authors
May be adapted to a one day lesson or a one week lesson (to study three poems in one day, for example)
May be used for any material which may be too mature for high school students to research by themselves

Goal of Lesson:
To teach a large volume of material in a short period of time, allowing students to become "experts" on one Romantic poet.

Materials Needed:

Directions
Two sets of group assignments--EXPERT groups will work together; DISCOVERY groups will be comprised of one member of each expert group
Hypertext author biographies
Supplemental works
Disks for each group
Guiding Questions for reading (see examples)

Description of Activity:
1. Preteach the genre of literature. (This example uses Romantic poets, so background information on Romanticism would be taught.)

2. Assign EXPERT groups. Each expert group will study a different author and his works. Give each expert group a folder containing the following:
    --disk with hypertext biography on it
    --supplemental works
    --assigned works from textbook
    --two sets of guiding questions: one for biographical information, one for reading the poetry
       (see examples)

3. Allow students one week to become experts on their poet and his work. Tell them that they need to know their author well enough to teach him to another group. Require students to discern what information is MOST important to relate to the rest of the class about both the author and his work. Suggest that they come up with catchy ways to remember the information they will teach. Suggest that they use visuals when teaching.

4. At the beginning of the second week, rearrange group assignments into DISCOVERY groups, which are comprised of one member from each expert group. Allow students a few days to teach their poet to the rest of the group, using visuals and memorization tricks.

5. As students learn about the Romantic poets, have them fill in guiding questions to make sure they are getting all the information they need for each poet.

6. At the end of the group work, review with the class, encouraging them to use the chart to make comparisons between poets (which poet was most reclusive; which poets focused on nature; which poets were most religious, educated, rebellious, etc.).

7. Grade students according to rubric, or test on unit as a whole.