Round 2 Chuck’s Class
Synthesis of Step 3: Hypertexts
By Holly!
June 2007
What we all noticed: In each of our analyses of the student work from this step,
we noticed students were doing some of what we hoped they would be doing and yet
novice reading practices still persisted, which I suppose makes sense because it’s only
one lesson.
On some level, we all observed the lesson to be successful in several ways. We all
seemed to agree that students made progress in focusing on specific language—their
“vertical thinking” skills improved, remarkably so, for some students. They were able to
focus on “microanalysis” and work with denotation, connotation, and diction in really
interesting ways. Many students were paying very close attention to the figurative
elements in the poem, or trying to, as well as to the speaker and form. I believe we all
cited Margie Siggelkow’s effort in this area. Some other demonstrations of learning that
emerged out of this lesson were students who looked up unfamiliar terms and who
engaged in expert practices like considering the poem’s title. Some students
acknowledged the use of ambiguity within the work.
On the other hand, we were all struck by the students’ persistent novice
practices. Students appeared to struggle with deep analysis of form and content and the
relationship between the two of them. One of the problems Nancy noted was that many
students noticed form, but did little with that observation to take it to the next level.
Their attempts at deep analysis were also frustrated by misreading or poor
comprehension, or shallow approaches to the poetic language. Some students stated
opinions that are really facts (“In my opinion, this is not a sonnet”), or had difficulty
connecting their insightful microanalyses to the overall central concern of the work.
Both Nancy and Holly observed students’ inability to integrate small insights into an
analysis of the overall poem, and they remained disconnected from the poem’s larger
questions. Some students engaged in troubling practices like the intentional fallacy or
just plain making things up. See Nancy’s analysis for multiple examples of this.
Similarly, it seems that some of the barriers to learning were attitudinal. That is,
Chuck commented on how the “poetry is a problem” mentality continued in some
students’ work, the idea that poetry is inherently difficult, problematic, and
impenetrable and our efforts to crack the code are futile. Another attitudinal dimension
echoes last summer’s group noted by NC, the “literary analysis as party pooper”
approach. Chuck observed a general defensiveness about some students’ attempts at
literary analysis.
Finally, I would build on some of Nancy’s excellent observations about the
tendency to gloss over and read this poem by Collins on a purely literal level. I ask
below whether this poem is too deceptively simple, and I guess I would revise my
question here. It’s not that it’s deceptively simple; it’s that it’s remarkably complex in
that it requires a sophisticated understanding of the notion of poetic tradition and
national identity in order to “get” Collins’ poem, I think. Unless students have read T.S.
Eliot’s “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” I wonder if they’re missing out on the
figurative level because they just have no concept of the figurative level that undergirds
this poem, whether its Collins’ addressing of American poetry as a tradition or his
subversive critique of it. They just don’t think in genealogical or national ways about
poetry, and I wonder if it wouldn’t be helpful, if we were to revisit this lesson, to
restructure Step 3 so that it includes some of the background information that would
provide students some intellectual scaffolding to stand on as they tackle the language
and the ideas in this poem.
I’m pasting below some general observations and questions about the lesson, some
specific, some philosophical, about how to take students to the next level with literary
analyses.
General Remarks and Questions from the Analyses about the lesson itself:
o Individual links in the hypertext itself are still too random for me, often just
asking questions or hazarding guesses. I guess I need to rethink whether or not
this is good or bad, what the value might be, etc. On the flip side, maybe that’s
the point, thinking out loud along the way. I just wanted the students to be
more definitive, to make more statements, take stands, as many of Nancy’s did.
o It’s incredible how many students identify “poetry” as being the problem. It
does beg the question of what would happen if we used another genre.
o All said and done, our expectations compared to what the students are finally
producing…hmmm…I don’t think, in this set of assignments, that they are
reaching them.
o I like the addition of a space for commentary/interpretation of the form—
provides a mechanism for getting students to at least
hypothesize/theorize/comment on it.
o That said, what else can we do to better equip students to talk about some of the
other dimensions of literary study from allusion to form to meter to rhyme?
What degree of mastery do we expect of these aspects of analysis after this short
lesson? How much are they missing in a work if they can’t talk about the
technical or figurative elements with any substance? Some students could, but
many students could not. What level of expert-ness or novice-ness do we aim
for?
o Again with the poem choice—never happy I guess! Is this poem too deceptively
simple for students? I feel like students miss the figurative dimensions because
it appears so “self-explanatory” as one student noted. What do you think about
this? So many of the students were content to rest with “this is a poem about
sending postcards.” Similarly, since the form of the poem is so central to
understanding the commentary of the restriction of space, if students miss that,
they miss a whole lot about the poem.
o Many students miss the figurative/layers of meaning—though some didn’t.
Again, how much do we expect them to “see” about the poem’s form, structure,
language, and meaning?
o I’d like to see the individual comments more closely tied to the overall reading of
the poem—their individual comments need to be more complex than just
definitions, observations—how do we encourage them to ask the question “What
does it mean? Suggest? Imply?” or “What could it mean, suggest, imply?”
o Self-assessment tended to become assignment assessments—how do we revise
to get students to apply the rubric to their own work rather than comment on
the difficulty or ease of the assignment?