Name: Ben Garcia
Age/Grade Level: 12th
Subject Area(s): Language Arts
Unit Title: Romantic Poets
Lesson Title: Percy Shelley
Estimated Time: 50 minute period
Purpose/Rationale for lesson:
This lesson plan is to be the seventh day of a unit plan about Romantic Era poets. Today
students will learn about Percy Shelley the English poet and dissect his poem Ozymandias. This
lesson is preceded by a lesson plan about Byron and Proceeded by two lesson plans on Keats.
The spirit of Romantic Movement was one of rebellion against the status quo; the absolute
empiricism of science; the orthodoxy of religion; and the Industrial Revolution with its
destruction of nature, which to a romantic poet is the individual’s sacred natural environment.
Shelley’s life was one rebellion after another, from getting kicked out of Oxford for his
published pamphlet The Necessity of Atheism to shortly after moving to Ireland to support their
nationalist cause, which produced Address to the Irish People. The purpose of this lesson is to
interrogate the central theme of Ozymandias which is the transience of all things, especially
empires however mighty in their own time, by the hand of nature.
Curriculum Framing Questions:
-Essential Question: What is the lasting significance of Romantic Poetry?
-Unit Question: Why was Romantic Poetry rebelling against the status quo?
-Lesson Question: Does Percy Shelley’s poem Ozymandias tell us that nature conquers all?
Goal:
The intent of this lesson plan is to gain insight into the life and times of Romantic Poet
Percey Shelley and to analyze the themes of Nature and Transience in his poem Ozymandias.
Learning Objective(s):
1. Students will be able to find symbols in the poem that lend to the themes of the power of
Nature and the Transience of life.
2. Students will locate irony and hyperbole in the poem and discuss their use.
3. Students will discuss the importance of rhythm and speed in the poem through
enjambment and commas.
Curriculum Standard(s):
EL.HS.RE.03 Make connections to text, within text, and among texts across the subject areas.
EL.HS.RE.04 Demonstrate listening comprehension of more complex text through class and/or
small group interpretive discussions across the subject areas.
EL.HS.RE.07 Clearly identify specific words or wordings that are causing comprehension
difficulties and use strategies to correct.
EL.HS.RE.22 Infer an author's unstated meaning and draw conclusions about an author's stated
meaning based on facts, events, images, patterns or symbols found in text.
Materials Needed:
Paper, pencils, copies of poem, any necessary books and access to a computer and
internet will be needed due to written assignment that will be assigned for homework.
Background knowledge or skills students need prior to lesson:
During the first few days of the Unit Plan students will learn about the historical and
social context of the Romantic Era and its general aesthetic philosophy. They will be introduced
to prevalent themes expressed by its artists and will have analyzed many, which should serve as
a model to discussing and writing about Ozymandias. Also by the 12th grade students should
have ample experience with Literary Elements and Devices that will help them interpret the
poem’s motifs and main themes. Instructor will model an interpretive deduction of the poem
using text based evidence to figuratively interpret. Students will have to utilize writing skills in
written assignment and oral skills in group discussions.
Hook or Introduction:
Instructor will ask students how and when they think the world will end. After a brief
discussion the instructor will use Google and search: When will the world end? A scientific
estimate for when the earth will be inhospitable to life, due to its eventual impact with the sun,
will be projected on the screen and students will be asked to write about their feelings relating to
the prediction of science in a free write.
Procedures:
1. Intro (10 min)
2. The poem will be read twice by two different students and a brief lecture about the
themes of Transience and Nature will follow. The instructor will lead class discussion
about the images (specifically focusing on “two vast and trunk-less legs of stone” and
students will be asked to share their ideas about the importance of this image, other
interesting images and whether any seem symbolic. (5 min)
3. Next the instructor will point out the line "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: / Look
on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" and ask students to get into small groups to
discuss whether they think the line represents use of Irony or Hyperbole. Students should
know these devices already but instructor will briefly review each. The big questions here
is why does the line feel like an exaggeration or overstatement and also why is weird that
those strong words are printed on a ruin of a now long-gone empire. Each group will be
asked to elect a speaker that will defend their group’s decision when the groups are asked
to report back to instructor. (10 min)
4. The instructor will remind students how the literary device enjambment works and point
out that along with commas it is used to control the speed of the poem. Students will be
asked to point out, through class discussion, where the poem slows down and when it
speeds up and why it changes its pace. Commas are so simple yet so important when it
comes to controlling the speed of language and perhaps nowhere is this more important in
poetry. (5 min)
5. Students will be asked to think than write in their journals about a manmade structure in
the U.S. that perhaps could be discovered by a distant traveler in the future when our
empire has long succumbed to the ravages of time. They will be asked to imagine what
this traveler might surmise about this long lost civilization based upon this object. (10
min)
6. Students who want to share with the class what they wrote will do so and then the
instructor will share his journal in which he will write a poem that will be about meeting
a distant traveler who stumbles upon the giant boy holding a donut in L.A. which will be
a desert. The themes of Transience and Nature will be revisited and the instructor will ask
the students how they would feel if they were transported to the distant future and saw
their home town as ancient ruins barely recognizable—how would they feel and what
does passage of time make them think of. The instructor will ask the students for any
final thoughts. Than students will be told that the homework for the night will be turning
their journal writings into a poem paying close attention to the devices discussed in class
that day (hyperbole, irony, enjambment and commas use in a poem.) (10 min)
Differentiation/Accommodation:
IEP’s of students that have needs will be consulted and the proper accommodations will
be made for those students. Also the educational team members that work with students that have
accommodations will be sought out for any necessary support or advice. There are four students
that I will make sure to accommodate specifically: Randall, a boy with Asperger syndrome;
Jennie, a girl reading 2 grades ABOVE level; Martin, a boy reading two grades BELOW level &
Mariko, a girl from a Japanese-speaking household. I have had Jennie and Martin work in group
settings together before so I will make sure that they are placed in the same discussion groups so
that Jennie can help Martin when needed. Randall is very into star wars and due to his
fascination with characters within the movie I will allow him to make the statue in the poem into
an object from Star Wars such as a ruined Death Star, and I will help him make parallel
connections between what a ruined Death Star in Star Wars might mean to a distant space
traveler stumbling upon that galaxy millions of years later—this will help to bring his attention
to the assignment. He will more than exceed at this as I have found in the past. Mariko, being
relatively new to the country still struggle a bit with language but is learning quickly, I will make
sure to have the Paraprofessional (John) work with her as he has many times in the past with
plenty of pointers from myself and the ESL teacher. He also helps the other three special needs
students in the class with my direction and support.
Attention to Literacy:
The strategies that are being employed in this lesson are oral and written because students
have to talk about their ideas in small groups and with the class. Also students will engage in two
journal free writes which instructor will read. These oral and written exercises are designed to
activate student creativity which will hopefully drive them to write more than they usually would
further improve their literacy.
Closure:
It will be emphasized with the instructor’s humorous journal entry poem at the end of
class, and pointed out by the instructor, that there are many endeavors and creations by humanity
that are interesting, humorous and unbelievably creative. The instructor will make the point that
perhaps one of the student’s poems written that night might become a classic and inspire students
in the future to ask deep questions like Percy Shelley’s poem did. Hopefully this lesson will help
students look more closely at symbols in their world and think about what they mean and
whether they will test the ravages of time. Maybe when they look at things like monuments in
the future they will think about the power of the power of Nature, Time and the Transience of
life. I want them to be able to see the irony in hording physical possessions for the sake of
finding lasting happiness and to be able to see hyperbole in their world, by some of their leaders,
and think about how it can sometimes be used in the real world to make false promises. I hope
they internalize the simple parable in this poem, which is life is short so make the most of it; and
I hope our deep class discussion of the implications of the passage of time move students to think
deeply about what truly is important in life.
Assessment and Evaluation of Student Learning:
Hopefully there will be oral evidence in class and small group discussion of progress in
the areas of comprehension, analysis, evolution and creatively. The instructor will formatively
monitor Group Participation with a formative assessment sheet he will use while students are
working in groups—sheet attached. The journal entry will serve as formative component to a
poem that will be revised for the last class. The instructor will assist, guide and lead students,
individually, to the development of a complete poem by the end of this unit.
Poem:
OZYMANDIAS
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.[