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J-M students feast on Poe's 'The Raven'
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At left, ninth-grade teacher Rochelle Morelli makes comments to her class during a video clip from an episode of “The Simpsons,” which featured a reading of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven.” Morelli’s students used high-tech learning tools to teach the fourth-graders about Edgar Allan Poe and his classic poem. Morelli’s class is studying Gothic literature.
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Fourth-grader Bailee Thorn participates in an interactive poetry lesson on “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe Thursday. Ninth-graders at Jackson-Milton High School helped to teach fourth-graders during their language arts classes.
By Kristine Gill
kgill@vindy.com
NORTH JACKSON
Jackson-Milton elementary and high school students paired up Thursday for a poetry lesson.
Ninth graders helped fourth- graders to interpret Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” a dark but musical poem with 18 stanzas of rhyming verse about a mysterious bird who visits in the night, shaking the narrator with distressing news.
Students in each grade had already read the poem in class before Thursday’s lesson.
“In the class, we turned the lights off and there were all the shadows,” said 9-year-old Rose Pallotta.
Their teacher, Dody Shar, said reading the poem in shadows mimicked the mood of Poe’s work.
“It shined leaves all along the back of the room,” Shar said.
“I was just staring,” said 9-year-old Marisa Jonesco, letting her jaw hang in mock awe.
Ninth-grade language arts teacher Rochelle Morelli said her students were excited about working with the young bunch. “They were talking about it all week,” she said.
Morelli’s class is working on a unit about Gothic literature and delved into Poe’s background as part of this lesson. She said it took some time finding a poem that students of such different ages could understand and learn from.
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
‘Tis some visitor,’ I muttered,
tapping at my chamber door —
Only this, and nothing more.
First published in 1845, students of the 21st century didn’t just read the poem from a book. The class first watched a video of “The Simpsons’” interpretation of the work on the classroom SMART Board.
“Did you know you could learn poetry from ‘The Simpsons?’” Morelli asked to a chorus of “no.”
They broke into pairs to complete a worksheet using an interactive web site they accessed with several small laptops. The site provided definitions when students moused over bigger words and highlighted use of poetic devices such as alliteration.
“We’re noticing that some students (who struggle) are really responding to this because it’s hands-on,” Shar said.
Ninth graders Maddy Tomaino, 14, and Salim Al-Qaadir, 15, were there to help Marisa and Rose when Poe used words such as “surcease” and “obeisance.”
“When we were reading through, some of the definitions were complicated, and I had to explain what it meant specifically because they were big words,” Maddy said. “It helped me learn more helping them learn it. It helped me understand it.”
Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore.
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door -
Perched upon a bust of
Pallas just above my chamber door -
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.
By the end of the lesson, Shar’s students had picked up something new about poetry and Poe’s work.
“One student told me, ‘I learned a poem can be a story,’” Shar said. “It’s not just funny, silly rhyming.”
“There you go,” Morelli said. “We’ve done our job.”