Lesson 6

Lesson Goals

Texts

Core

• • “Living Like Weasels,” Annie Dillard, Harper Perennial, 1982
  • “Sojourns in the Parallel World,” Denise Levertov, New Directions Publishing, 1996

Materials

Tools

• Attending to Details Tool

• Forming Evidence-Based Claims Tool

• Responding to Questions Handout

• Vocabulary Journal

Reference Guides

• Annotating and Note-Taking Reference Guide
• Claims Reference Guide
• Literacy Toolbox Reference Guide
• Questioning Reference Guide

Question Sets

• What Does It Mean to Live a Life Well-Lived?: Section 1 Question Set

Editable Google Docs

• Attending to Details Tool

• Forming Evidence-Based Claims Tool

• What Does It Mean to Live a Life Well-Lived?: Section 1 Question Set

• Vocabulary Journal

Activity 1: Read – Discuss – Write

We will begin to consider how encounters with the natural world might define and enrich our lives by reading a Denise Levertov poem titled “Sojourns In The Parallel World.” we will identify the claims and commentary implicit in this poem and interpret the language and imagery used to convey its message about the “Parallel World” of nature.

Step 1

Review and discuss the concept of a claim, defined in the Claims Reference Guide as "an opinion or conclusion that a writer or speaker wants others to consider or accept." Consider how this concept is connected to the meaning or message in a speech like George Saunders’s "Advice to Graduates" or even in a poem, such as "To Be of Use" or "Kindness."

Discuss the idea that claims are sometimes directly stated (as in an argument or speech) but sometimes only implied indirectly through the language, imagery, and metaphorical meaning of a literary work like a poem.

Review the first three steps listed in the Claims Reference Guide for identifying claims. Think about how these steps might be applied when reading a poem or personal essay.

Step 2

As a class, access the poem "Sojourns in the Parallel World" by Denise Levertov. Begin by discussing the meaning of the word sojourns in the title and what parallel world might mean. Add both terms to your Vocabulary Journal.

Listen and follow along as the first 10 lines of the poem are read aloud. Think about them as claims the poet is making about our lives. Pay attention to the ideas and language of these opening claims, and consider this question:

1. What claims about how we live our lives in relationship to nature does the poet make at the start of "Sojourns in the Parallel World"?

To respond to this question as a class, do a close reading and annotation of each of the first two statements or claims of the poem (written out here as if they were prose rather than poetry). Pay careful attention to the words Levertov uses and the opinion or conclusion she is conveying:

We live our lives of human passions, cruelties, dreams, concepts, crimes and the exercise of virtue in and beside a world devoid of our preoccupations, free from apprehension—though affected, certainly, by our actions. A world parallel to our own though overlapping.

2. What words does Levertov use to characterize our lives? What does she imply with the phrase "in and beside a world"? What phrases does she use to characterize this "parallel world"?

   We call it "Nature"; only reluctantly admitting ourselves to be "Nature" too.

3. What might Levertov be suggesting when she capitalizes the word nature and puts it in quotation marks? What does the phrase "reluctantly admitting" imply about our relationship with nature?

In your Learning Log, write two sentences that paraphrase what you think Levertov is saying about our lives and our relationship to nature when she makes these opening claims.

Step 3

Now listen as the next section of the poem (12 lines) is read aloud, again thinking about the central statement or claim being made by the poet. Closely read and annotate the claim she makes:

Whenever we lose track of our own obsessions, our self-concerns, because we drift for a minute, an hour even, of pure (almost pure) response to that insouciant life… then something tethered in us, hobbled like a donkey on its patch of gnawed grass and thistles, breaks free.

4. What does the word insouciant mean and how does it relate to our obsessions and self-concerns?

5. How does Levertov’s simile, "hobbled like a donkey," relate to what is tethered in us and then breaks free?

In your Learning Log, paraphrase what you think Levertov is saying about our lives in this part of the poem. Add a definition of insouciant to your Vocabulary Journal.

Step 4

Individually, consider the stream of natural images that Levertov inserts in the middle of this claim statement. Think about images that stand out to you as particularly vivid or interesting:

cloud, bird, fox, the flow of light, the dancing

pilgrimage of water, vast stillness

of spellbound ephemerae on a lit windowpane,

animal voices, mineral hum, wind

conversing with rain, ocean with rock, stuttering

of fire to coal

Make a note in your Learning Log about what picture of the natural world this succession of images creates for you.

Activity 2: Discuss – Read

We will learn about forming our own claims about a literary work, using the Forming Evidence-Based Claims Tool. We will then finish reading “Sojourns In The Parallel World” and form a claim about its final commentary on how encounters with nature can change us.

Step 1

Follow along as your teacher introduces the Forming Evidence-Based Claims Tool and models its use. It is similar to the Attending to Details, Analyzing Relationships, and Evaluating Ideas Tools. This tool organizes a similar process of responding to a text-specific question by working from textual details to an analysis of those details, but now it sets up the writing of a claim about the text.

Follow along as your teacher introduces and overviews a related Reading Closely Tool, the Forming Evidence-Based Claims Tool. Note that like the Attending to Details and Analyzing Relationships Tools, this tool guides the following process:

• considering an initial guiding question

• selecting key details related to the question

• analyzing the details

• explaining connections among the details

However, the tool takes you one step further: forming, or writing, a claim that states a conclusion you have drawn based on your analysis of the details.

Read and discuss the information about the purpose and process for using the Forming Evidence-Based Claims Tool from the Literacy Toolbox Reference Guide.

Step 2

As a class, reconsider the first text-specific question you addressed in the previous activity, and write it at the top of a class Forming Evidence-Based Claims Tool:

1. What claims about how we live our lives in relationship to nature does the poet make at the start of "Sojourns in the Parallel World"?

Think again about what this question is asking you to do and what kinds of details it might cause you to look for. In the previous activity, you identified, annotated, and analyzed the two key statements, or claims, that Levertov makes in the opening section of the poem. You will now use your previous thinking as you respond to this question using the Forming Evidence-Based Claims Tool.

Step 3

As a class, return to your annotations and select three key details that you see as being central to the question and the presentation of the poem’s opening claims. Record these in the Select Key Details row of the tool.

For example, you might record Levertov’s opening lines in the first cell of the row:

We live our lives of human passions,

cruelties, dreams, concepts,

crimes and the exercise of virtue

Then record additional details or quotations from the poem about how we do so "in and beside a world" of nature and how we "only reluctantly [admit] ourselves to be Nature, too."

Next analyze the details by explaining how they are connected to the question and its emphasis on claims about how we live our lives and our relationship with nature.

As the last step before forming a claim, think about how you might explain connections among the details. What are the relationships the details suggest?

These two evidence-based analyses should lead you to a claim you can form about what Levertov is saying when she makes her opening statements and claims in the poem. For example, you might form a claim such as the following:

In the opening lines of "Sojourns in a Parallel World," Denise Levertov claims that we live confused lives of "passions, cruelties, dreams, concepts, crimes and the exercise of virtue" that are both a part of and apart from the natural world around us.

Activity 3: Discuss – Write

We will discuss the claims and meaning inherent in “Sojourns In The Parallel World,” form a claim about the poem’s commentary, and write a reflective narrative about encounters with nature that have had personal meaning for us.

Step 1

Join a new reading and discussion team, with whom you will work for the rest of this and the next lesson. Introduce yourselves by describing an experience with nature that you found to be interesting or meaningful.

Read and discuss the final five lines of the poem, paying close attention to what Levertov claims happens when we’re "caught up again / into our own sphere."

Step 2

As a team, use a new Forming Evidence-Based Claims Tool to respond to this final question about "Sojourns in a Parallel World":

1. What is the poem "Sojourns in the Parallel World" suggesting about how encounters with nature cause us to "break free" and to "have changed, a little"?

Discuss the ways in which Denise Levertov has used language and imagery to poetically express her claims about how we live our lives in relationship to the "parallel world" of nature.

Step 3

Following the process with the tool that you used in the previous activity, select key details from the final eight lines of the poem, where Levertov describes the process of breaking free and how we return to "our own sphere."

Analyze and connect the details your team has selected.

Use those details to form a claim about what "Sojourns in the Parallel World" suggests about our encounters with nature and how they affect us.

Step 4

Share the claims each team has developed with the class. As you compare those claims, note similarities and differences in the conclusions you have reached and the claims you have stated. Explain the evidence you selected and how you analyzed and connected it. Discuss the idea that the claims we make about a text usually depend on the evidence we consider as well as the question we are responding to.

As a class, use the Responding to Questions Checklist from the Responding to Questions Handout to assess how thoughtfully and completely the team claims have addressed the question.

Step 5

Considering the reading of the poem and the claim your team has formed about its meaning, write a short reflective narrative in your Learning Log. Discuss a personal encounter with nature that you have had and its effect on you. Then relate your experience to what Levertov wrote about how we live our lives in relationship to the "parallel world" of nature and how such encounters change us.

Activity 4: Read – Discuss

In reading teams, we will review a question set we will use to examine Annie Dillard’s essay “Living Like Weasels.” each team will focus on one section of the essay and group of questions in the set, in preparation for presenting a claim about its language and meaning in a jigsaw discussion.

Step 1

As a class, access a personal essay by Annie Dillard titled "Living Like Weasels." Listen and follow along as the first three paragraphs of the essay are read aloud. Then discuss how Dillard frames her essay by first stating a simple claim ("A weasel is wild") and an accompanying question, then relating two stories about encounters with weasels that illustrate her claim.

1. What are the strange and interesting details about the two weasel stories Annie Dillard tells to illustrate her opening claim: "A weasel is wild"?

2. What visual images come to mind when you listen to these two stories? How does Dillard use language to make them come to life?

3. What seems to be the perspective from which Dillard introduces her essay about "living like weasels"?

Before returning to your reading and discussion teams, anticipate and discuss what you think will happen in this narrative essay following Dillard’s statement about her encounter with a weasel:

I startled a weasel who startled me, and we exchanged a long glance.

Step 2

Rejoin your reading and discussion team from the previous activity. Individually, do a first reading of the rest of "Living Like Weasels" and respond to this question:

1. How does Dillard’s third story, about her personal encounter with a weasel, further develop her opening claim: "A weasel is wild"? What seems to be her perspective as she describes that encounter?

As a team, discuss your first impressions and reactions to the essay, using the text-specific question to guide your discussion.

Step 3

Your teacher will assign your team one of six sections of the essay to read more closely, in light of a set of text-specific questions located in the Section 1 Question Set.

Review your team’s set of questions, and use the Responding to Questions Handout to consider what type of question each is and what kinds of details you might be looking for as you reread and annotate your section of the essay.

Step 4

In preparation for a homework rereading of the essay, assign one of your text-specific questions to each member of the team. All members will look for sentences that they find to be examples of interesting thinking and artful writing.

Form a response, which may also be a claim, to the question you are assigned so that you can share it in the next lesson.

Activity 5: Read – Write

For homework, we will read our section of the essay closely and develop a response to a text-specific question.

For homework, read your section of the essay closely and develop a response to the text-specific question assigned to you. Be prepared to share and explain your response at the start of the next lesson.

In forming and framing your response, you might use a Forming Evidence-Based Claims Tool.