American Studies Commons^™

Thoreau’S Walden: Experiential Learning And A Transcendental Walk, Adam Kotlarczyk

Early American Literature (before 1900)

Many English classes struggle with Thoreau’s dense and often ponderous prose in Walden. Classes often become mired in his text and its romantic ideals of seclusion and self-reliance. This activity rips the words of Walden off the page and puts them where they belong: outside. It compels students to move beyond basic interpretations of Walden as “connecting with nature” and “keeping life simple,” and instead to see and interpret their modern, living world through the lens of Transcendentalism, as Thoreau did.

This lesson encourages students to see and interpret their worlds as Thoreau did through a modeling-based writing experience.

America In Verse: The Laureate Project, Leah Kind, Dan Gleason, Erin Micklo, Margaret T. Cain

Understanding Poetry

The purpose of this project is to allow students to use their (developing) skills of poetic explication and close reading, combined with research and analysis, to discover and establish a solid case for a poet they will nominate as the next American Poet Laureate. Working in groups of 3-4, students will identify a published, living American poet who has not yet been designated a laureate. The project demands a wide array of skills as the students research bibliographic information on the poet: read and analyze the poet’s body of work and select one central poem to represent that poet; amass …