28.4: Lesson Plan for Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself (Group Anthology Contribution 2019)

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Page ID: 40847

Robin DeRosa, Abby Goode et al.
Plymouth State University/

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Anthology Contribution – Lesson Plan

Materials

Text (Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself)
Notebook
Pencil/pen/laptop

Procedure:

Opening Move:

Print out certain sections of the poem and randomly pass them out to the class. Have students look for themes. They get roughly five minutes to look for themes and write them down.

Main Lesson:

The students get into groups based on the passage that they received, and they pick the theme they liked the most. The instructor writes those themes on the board, then the instructor writes the themes that they themselves found on the board.

Have the students connect the passage to the theme that the instructor gives them (randomly assign everyone a theme from the class list of themes). If there is any time left over when a group is done, they pick a theme from the instructor’s list, and try to connect it to that theme.

Have each group share what themes they found.
Have class discuss overarching themes of the poem, allowing them to freely discuss as a class.

Through the discussion the instructor takes notes of important ideas and topics that were presented in the class’ discussions, connecting them to show what the students came up with and how it all connects together.

Extra Time?

If we have extra time at the end, pick sections of the poem to talk about, or have them write an English summary of the passage they read.

Section:

Section 2: Existence, romanticism, nature, personhood, identity

Section 3: Humanity, time, sexuality

Section 6: Life, birth, innocence, age, time, death

Section 13: Humanity, understanding, curiosity, sexuality

Section 14: Nature, love, purpose

Section 16: Growth, diversity, peace

Section 17: Uncanny, transcendentalism, purpose

Section 18: Juxtaposition, Death, Success, Failure

Section 19: Equality, humanity, utopia, uncanny

Section 20: Existence, identity

Overarching themes: Crescendo, Purpose, Self, Transcendentalism, Romanticism

Discussion Questions (for end of lesson):

How does passage 10 relate to the previous texts and topics we have worked with?
After so much discussion on themes, are there any major overarching themes throughout the entire poem?
What is the point of the poem? What is Whitman trying to say/tell us?