Post by Martha on May 18, 2004 11:16:54 GMT -5
Here is the summary I promised of our three-family co-op's use of CWP. We decided to follow Schedule II because it was more appropriate for the older students. Some of the younger students worked through the lessons at a slower rate, and wrote shorter essays. We met for 1 ½ hours each week. During that time, the students recited a poem that they had memorized the previous week. I led the discussion for Day 1 Analysis and Imitation. It was not easy to fit all the work we wanted to do into the time allowed. Two hours would have been a better choice! Each family followed up with the lessons from Days 2-4 at home. There were some weeks that we needed to carry things over to a fifth day, especially during the first few weeks.
Our youngest student is 7 years old. The majority of her time was spent on copywork and browsing anthologies. Her mother did introduce some of the lessons informally during the time that they were reading together. She participated in the recitations with the older students, and by the end of the year could draw a picture suggested by the poem, determine meter, rhyme scheme, and give a summary of the model's content. She also wrote some brief paragraphs about the poets when the older students were working on essays. Most of the time, she worked with poems from Schedule I. She had worked in CW Aesop during the fall semester.
The oldest students are in high school, and they wrote longer essays. Because we had covered the lessons on “smoothing” essays while working on narrative writing in the fall semester, I reviewed those lessons in Week 7, and the older students began writing essays that week. The upper elementary students followed the schedule in the text for writing their essays.
We did make some substitutions of the models, but used the text examples for imitation exercises, especially in the first 3-4 weeks. Because my son had worked with poetry last year I added some review of “The Grammar of Poetry”. For Day 2, I adapted some of the figural analysis lessons to other figures he had studied. After Week 4, I added some review of anapestic and dactylic meters to the analysis lessons for Day 3.
My biggest challenges in teaching CWP were finding time to prepare adequately, and in learning how to pull an outline of what the students needed to have in their notes from the generous amount of information in each chapter. I tried to allow 2 hours for getting an overall view of the week's lessons, and doing some research on the model. I followed up with approx. ½ hour review and note taking before each day's lesson. On those days when I wasn't prepared to teach the lessons, it seemed better to take a day to browse anthologies than to try to “wing it”. Because of the co-op schedule, I did carry work over to a fifth day when necessary.
One thing I noticed when comparing the work done by the students of different ages was that their grasp of things like content, historical context, and figures was directly related to maturity and experience. On the other hand, musical training, rather than age, seems to be a better way to predict how quickly students learn to mark feet and determine meter. A young student who has worked for at least a semester in CW Aesop, and who studies music will probably be ready to follow a simplified program in CWP.
Some things that might help you keep track of each day's work:
1. Write the page numbers for each day's lessons onto a copy of the schedule.
2. Use tabs to mark chapters 6-13. I used a different color for each day, with one tab for analysis and another of the same color for imitation. In addition, I wrote the focus of each day's exercises on the tabs. I used content (D1), figure (D2), meter (D3), and stanza form (D4)
3. Use page points as you move through each chapter's lessons.
4. Use a highlighter to indicate lessons within each chapter.
5. Make an outline in advance of what you expect the students to have on paper by the end of each class. This is especially helpful for the imitation lessons. Have your students keep a notebook with headings that include the week, day, analysis/imitation, and the general subject of each lesson. You will be referring to earlier lessons as you work through the course.
During the evaluation of this year's co-op, we all agreed that while CWP is challenging it has been worth the effort. I've seen evidence that the students have a deeper appreciation for poetry, and are better prepared to read the Great Books.
Our youngest student is 7 years old. The majority of her time was spent on copywork and browsing anthologies. Her mother did introduce some of the lessons informally during the time that they were reading together. She participated in the recitations with the older students, and by the end of the year could draw a picture suggested by the poem, determine meter, rhyme scheme, and give a summary of the model's content. She also wrote some brief paragraphs about the poets when the older students were working on essays. Most of the time, she worked with poems from Schedule I. She had worked in CW Aesop during the fall semester.
The oldest students are in high school, and they wrote longer essays. Because we had covered the lessons on “smoothing” essays while working on narrative writing in the fall semester, I reviewed those lessons in Week 7, and the older students began writing essays that week. The upper elementary students followed the schedule in the text for writing their essays.
We did make some substitutions of the models, but used the text examples for imitation exercises, especially in the first 3-4 weeks. Because my son had worked with poetry last year I added some review of “The Grammar of Poetry”. For Day 2, I adapted some of the figural analysis lessons to other figures he had studied. After Week 4, I added some review of anapestic and dactylic meters to the analysis lessons for Day 3.
My biggest challenges in teaching CWP were finding time to prepare adequately, and in learning how to pull an outline of what the students needed to have in their notes from the generous amount of information in each chapter. I tried to allow 2 hours for getting an overall view of the week's lessons, and doing some research on the model. I followed up with approx. ½ hour review and note taking before each day's lesson. On those days when I wasn't prepared to teach the lessons, it seemed better to take a day to browse anthologies than to try to “wing it”. Because of the co-op schedule, I did carry work over to a fifth day when necessary.
One thing I noticed when comparing the work done by the students of different ages was that their grasp of things like content, historical context, and figures was directly related to maturity and experience. On the other hand, musical training, rather than age, seems to be a better way to predict how quickly students learn to mark feet and determine meter. A young student who has worked for at least a semester in CW Aesop, and who studies music will probably be ready to follow a simplified program in CWP.
Some things that might help you keep track of each day's work:
1. Write the page numbers for each day's lessons onto a copy of the schedule.
2. Use tabs to mark chapters 6-13. I used a different color for each day, with one tab for analysis and another of the same color for imitation. In addition, I wrote the focus of each day's exercises on the tabs. I used content (D1), figure (D2), meter (D3), and stanza form (D4)
3. Use page points as you move through each chapter's lessons.
4. Use a highlighter to indicate lessons within each chapter.
5. Make an outline in advance of what you expect the students to have on paper by the end of each class. This is especially helpful for the imitation lessons. Have your students keep a notebook with headings that include the week, day, analysis/imitation, and the general subject of each lesson. You will be referring to earlier lessons as you work through the course.
During the evaluation of this year's co-op, we all agreed that while CWP is challenging it has been worth the effort. I've seen evidence that the students have a deeper appreciation for poetry, and are better prepared to read the Great Books.