Using Blooms Taxonomy to Teach Poetry

T. R. Cornwell

Remembering: Can the student recall or remember the information?
define, duplicate, list, memorize, recall, repeat, reproduce state

Understanding: Can the student explain ideas or concepts?
classify, describe, discuss, explain, identify, locate, recognize, report, select, translate, paraphrase

Applying:
Can the student use the information in a new way?
choose, demonstrate, dramatize, employ, illustrate,
interpret, operate, schedule, sketch, solve, use, write.

Analyzing:
Can the student distinguish between the different parts?
appraise, compare, contrast, criticize, differentiate,
discriminate, distinguish, examine, experiment, question, test.

Evaluating:
Can the student justify a stand or decision?
appraise, argue, defend, judge, select, support, value, evaluate

Creating: Can the student create new product or point of view?
assemble, construct, create, design, develop, formulate write.

When planning lessons, teachers can use Bloom's Taxonomy to create activities that enhance
students performance. Start at the beginning of the taxonomy and work to the end; having
students work through the levels of the taxonomy helps them to familiarize themselves with
the materials they are presented in the instructional units, going from basic activities to more
advanced ones.
For example, the base of Bloom's Taxonomy is the knowledge level, where students learn
basic information and are able to memorize and remember it. At this level of instruction, plan
activities in which students try to memorize facts and recall them, possibly using flash cards
or other memory devices. At the center of the taxonomy is the application level, where
students employ problem-solving and the use of facts. At this level, students might explore
the significance behind the information they have learned so far in their unit. At the end of
the taxonomy (or the top) is the evaluation level, where students resolve conflicts and
develop opinions. For this level, students might write a position paper using the information
they have learned in the unit.
Bloom's Taxonomy can be used across several lessons in a unit, but it can also be useful
within one single lesson or class period. When reviewing information with the students, use
Bloom's Taxonomy to employ direct questioning. Start with knowledge-level questions and
move to evaluation-level questions, or mix them up as you go along. Asking students
questions on a variety of levels helps you to understand how well they know the material. It
may also help you differentiate your instruction, if you determine that one group of students
seems capable of evaluating while another group is still on the understanding level of the
taxonomy with this information.
Using Blooms Taxonomy to Teach the Poem Directive by Robert Frost
Robert Frost 1874 - 1963
Robert Lee Frost , born on March 26, 1874, was the only son of his
father, William Prescott Frost Jr., and his mother, Isabelle Moodie
After the death of his father from tuberculosis when Frost was eleven
years old, he became interested in reading and writing poetry during his
high school years in Lawrence, Massachusetts enrolled at Dartmouth
College in Hanover, New Hampshire, in 1892, and later at Harvard
University in Boston, though he never earned a formal college degree.
Frost drifted through a string of occupations after leaving school, working as a cobbler a
teacher and editor of the Lawrence Sentinel. His first published poem, My Butterfly,"
appeared on November 8, 1894, in the New York newspaper The Independent.
In 1895, Frost married Elinor Miriam White, who was a major inspiration for his poetry until
her death in 1938. The couple moved to England in 1912 where Frost was influenced by such
contemporary British poets as Edward Thomas, Rupert Brooke, and Robert Graves. While in
England, Frost also established a friendship with the poet Ezra Pound, who helped to
promote and publish his work.
By the time Frost returned to the United States in 1915, he had published two full-length
collections, A Boys Will (Henry Holt and Company, 1913) and North of Boston (Henry Holt
and Company, 1914), and his reputation was highly regarded for his realistic depictions of
rural life and his command of American colloquial speech.
By the 1920s, he was the most celebrated poet in America, and with each new book
including New Hampshire (Henry Holt and Company, 1923), A Further Range (Henry Holt
and Company, 1936), Steeple Bush (Henry Holt and Company, 1947), and In the Clearing
(Holt Rinehart & Winston, 1962)his fame and honors (including four Pulitzer Prizes)
increased.
Though his work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England in the early
twentieth century, and though he was a poet of traditional verse forms and metrics, Frost was
anything but merely a regional poet. His writing examined complex social and philosophical
themes. The psychological complexity of his portraits, and in the degree to which his work is
infused with layers of ambiguity and irony has made him a quintessential modern poet.
In a 1970 review of The Poetry of Robert Frost, the poet Daniel Hoffman describes Frosts
early work as the Puritan ethic turned astonishingly lyrical and enabled to say out loud the
sources of its own delight in the world," and comments on Frosts career as the American
Bard: He became a national celebrity, our nearly official poet laureate, and a great
performer in the tradition of that earlier master of the literary vernacular, Mark Twain.
Robert Frost lived and taught for many years in Massachusetts and Vermont, and died in
Boston on January 29, 1963.
Like many of his best poems, Robert Frost's "Directive" is typical of Frost's colloquial style.
It describes a walk in an unnamed wood to an ancient brook, which he calls our destination
and destiny. The poem takes readers into the pastthe personal past of childhood, as well as
our cultural pastand evokes a "time made simple by the loss of detail.

Directive
Back out of all this now too much for us,
Back in a time made simple by the loss
Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off
Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather,
There is a house that is no more a house
Upon a farm that is no more a farm
And in a town that is no more a town.
The road there, if you'll let a guide direct you
Who only has at heart your getting lost,
May seem as if it should have been a quarry
Great monolithic knees the former town
Long since gave up pretense of keeping covered.
And there's a poem in a book about it:
Besides the wear of iron wagon wheels
The ledges show lines ruled southeast- northwest,
The chisel work of an enormous Glacier
That braced his feet against the Arctic Pole.
You must not mind a certain coolness from him
Still said to haunt this side of Panther Mountain.
Nor need you mind the serial ordeal
Of being watched from forty cellar holes
As if by eye pairs out of forty firkins.
As for the woods' excitement over you
That sends light rustle rushes to their leaves,
Charge that to upstart inexperience.
Where were they all not twenty years ago?
They think too much of having shaded out
A few old pecker-fretted apple trees.
Make yourself up a cheering song of how
Someone's road home from work this once was,
Who may be just ahead of you on foot
Or creaking with a buggy load of grain.
The height of the adventure is the height
Of country where two village cultures faded
Into each other. Both of them are lost.
And if you're lost enough to find yourself
By now, pull in your ladder road behind you
And put a sign up CLOSED to all but me.
Then make yourself at home. The only field
Now left's no bigger than a harness gall.
First there's the children's house of make-believe,
Some shattered dishes underneath a pine,
The playthings in the playhouse of the children.
Weep for what little things could make them glad.
Then for the house that is no more a house,
But only a belilaced cellar hole,
Now slowly closing like a dent in dough.
This was no playhouse but a house in earnest.
Your destination and your destiny's
A brook that was the water of the house,
Cold as a spring as yet so near its source,
Too lofty and original to rage.
(We know the valley streams that when aroused
Will leave their tatters hung on barb and thorn.)
I have kept hidden in the instep arch
Of an old cedar at the waterside
A broken drinking goblet like the Grail
Under a spell so the wrong ones can't find it,
So can't get saved, as Saint Mark says they mustn't.
(I stole the goblet from the children's playhouse.)
Here are your waters and your watering place.
Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.

Remembering:
The imagery in this poem is really what tells the poem. Because he is telling about something he
has seen it is imperative that he gives us something to picture. "That sends light rustle rushes
to their leaves" is a great example of this imagery; as you read it, it is easy to picture the wind
gently rustling the leaves as if they are saying hello or maybe goodbye.
What places were described in the poem?
Where did the poem take place?
Write six facts from the poem.
What time in history did the poem take place?

Understanding:
Frost used the simile "Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather," to describe how this place
where someone once lived now looks. Old gravestones are always there, they keep their shape
and don't move, but they fade after time and have a look of abandonment about them. This must
be how this house looked. You can tell what it is, you can see its shape. But at the same time it
has also been left and forgotten.
Tell another thing that could have happened in the poem that would make sense.
Tell in your own words what the poem is about.
How did the author feel at the beginning of the poem?
How did the author feel at the end of the poem?

Applying:
Frost also used repetition in his poem to give it a little character and fluidity.
"A house that is no longer a house
upon a farm that is no longer a farm
in a town that is no longer a town."
This section is very powerful. It sets up a great mood for the rest of the poem. Repetition like this
helps our brain remember and then we think about it later, making the poem stand out.
* If you were in this poem, what would you do?
* Tell about a time when something similar happened to someone you know.
* Think of a situation that occurred to the writer of the poem and decide whether you
would have done the same thing or something different.
* What would you do if you were in the poem?

Analyzing:
In "Directive," the speaker asks you escape from the crazy hubbub of daily life and all its
demands and noise and to travel "back in a time made simple by the loss of detail.
Name the different parts of the poem (opening, tone, rhyming pattern, etc.).
What parts of the poem are necessary? What parts are not?
What part of the poem was the saddest?
Tell what things happened in the poem that couldnt happen in real life.

Evaluating:
This work examines a complex social and philosophical theme. Life may be a rat race, but
there's a way out of the maze; it's possible to make an escape into the pastthe personal past of
childhood, as well as our cultural past.
Did you like this poem? Why or why not?
Why do you think the author wanted to write this poem? Would you?
Does this poem seem interesting to you? Why or why not?
Was this the best ending for this poem? Why or why not?
.
Creating:
Little Words, Big Ideas. "Directive" tells of how a place where a house once was is now taken
over by nature and is just a cellar hole, with a few shattered dishes. Frost does this by using
similes, repetition, and imagery to paint a picture and tell a poem.
Make up what would happen if the poem continued.
Make a different problem for the narrator to solve.
Use your imagination to draw a picture about the poem. Then add one new thing of
your own that fits but was not in the original poem.
Write another ending to the poem that is different from the authors ending.