Unit Title: Transcendentalism
Brief Description of the Class: A ninth grade classroom of roughly 25 students. Students are a
heterogeneous mix of various reading levels and abilities.
NYS ELA Standards Addressed: Students will be able to read, write, listen, and speak for:
Information and Understanding
Social Interaction
Benchmarks:
Lesson Title: Contextual Research on Transcendentalism
Duration: One 72 minute class period
Objectives:
Declarative: Students will be able to define transcendentalism, list its key authors and
texts, and describe the historical context in which the movement took place
Procedural: Students will be able to synthesize their research onto a poster for the
benefit of the rest of the class
Dispositional: Students will be able to express appreciation for this unique movement in
American literature by presenting their research in a unique and enthusiastic manner
Materials/Resources:
-Several internet resources related to transcendentalism, authors, key works, and historical
context
-Four poster boards
-Markers
Strategies: group work; discussion; group presentation
Teacher Activities: Teacher begins lesson with a brief introduction to the unit on
Transcendentalism. The introduction will be brief because the students will be responsible for
gathering and displaying contextual and background knowledge.
“Today we are beginning a unit on a period of American Literature known as
Transcendentalism. Today in class you are going to define what Transcendentalism was or
is, where and when it began, who were its principle authors and the major works of literature
that emerged from the movement. I have supplied you all with various handouts that will help
you answer these questions. So for today, you are going to teach each other about this
literary movement. To get you started I will give you a dictionary definition.
Transcendentalism in the US is defined as “A literary and philosophical movement asserting
the existence of an ideal spiritual reality that transcends the empirical and scientific and is
knowable through intuition.” Would anyone like to explain what that means? Essentially, the
transcendentalists preferred spirituality to scientific proof. They believed that intuition was a
legitimate way of knowing things at a time when scientific inquiry was valued above all
else.”
The teacher then breaks the class into four groups and assigns each member a specific
role. Individual roles are explained in the next section. Each group will be responsible for
reviewing and synthesizing research on a particular topic. Group one will report on the basic
tenets of Transcendentalism; group two will focus on the historical and social context; group
three will study the movement’s principle authors; and group four will study its major works.
“Group one will be responsible for reading the research on Transcendentalism itself and
summarizing their findings for the benefit of the class. I would like group two to focus on the
historical and social context surrounding the movement. You guys will give us information
regarding where and when the movement took place as well as what was happening in the
US at the time. Group three will study three major authors of the period and give us a very
brief biographical sketch of each author. Finally, group four will present information on the
major literary works of the period including when they were published and some themes
present in the works.”
As students are working on their posters, the teacher will intervene when necessary to
clear any confusion and keep groups on task. The introduction should last no than five
minutes. The groups will be given forty minutes to work leaving twenty minutes for
presentations and questions from other classmates.
Student Activities: This lesson is student led. There will be three groups of six and one group of
seven. During the course of the lesson, students will be expected to participate in group work as
they work together to generate information and display it on their poster. Each student will
participate in group work. For each group, one student will have role of reader, another will be
the recorder, another will be word master (responsible for defining difficult words, and the
remaining two will be presenters.
Assignment: The in class assignment for this lesson will be group work in which each group
reads various resources and synthesizes their findings with a poster to be presented to the class.
Assessment: The declarative objective for this lesson will be assessed based on the accuracy of
student generated information as well as the group presentation. The procedural objective will be
assessed on the accuracy of their posters and the quality of information presented. The
dispositional objective will be assessed on the students’ willingness to participate as well as the
originality of their posters.
Social Justice: This particular lesson does not include a heavy element of social justice. Later in
the unit as we discuss salient themes of Transcendentalism, I plan to focus on materialism. Many
transcendentalists, Thoreau especially, were opposed to materialism and the shallow lives that
result. In a discussion on materialism I will introduce students to the fact that there are those in
society for whom there is no choice between being materialistic or transcendent. For those
unfortunate people, isn’t it plausible that materialism would be a very good thing? For the
purposes of this lesson, I suppose the social justice aspect would come from the fact that the
primary activity is collaborative and urges students to work cooperatively to solve a problem.
Reflection: I am happy with the basic design of this lesson. As an introduction to a larger unit
the activity not only provides the necessary contextual and background knowledge, but it is also
done in a manner that shifts responsibility to the students. I did not want to design a lesson where
the teacher lectures for an hour about the things that the students will present to each other. In
this fashion, the students are involved heavily in finding their own relevance and displaying it for
the benefit of the whole class. Furthermore, the students are involved in producing a text that is
visual in nature and that can be displayed as reference material throughout the unit. Given the
socioeconomic status of the school and its budget problems, I thought it best to provide the
students with pre-gathered research. Other ways to conduct this lesson would be to have each
group find material on their own. However, as I hope to actually teach this lesson I thought it
would be more efficient to do it the way it is currently designed.
I anticipate that this lesson will go smoothly. It is designed in such a way that allows
students the opportunity to teach each other and avoids the boredom inherent in extended
“teacher-talk.”