Creative Non-Fiction

Unit Descriptions: Students will read an anthology of selected essays about nature by Muir, Teddy Roosevelt and Mark Twain. They will learn to describe nature the way they have seen it though the use of sensory details and capturing fleeting but  moments. In the essay, students will use descriptive language to appeal to the reader and convey a point to them about his or her attitude toward nature. They will also use these essays as models for their own writing.

Enduring Understanding- Students will understand that

• Nature is part of our life.
• Nature needs us as much we need Nature.
• Writing about nature is a way to help preserve nature.
• Human’s involvement in nature can bring the awareness our mistreatment of nature.
• Preserving Nature makes us more humane.

Essential Questions:

• Why is nature vital to our existence?
• Why is writing about nature equally important?
• How does language reveal deeper emotions one may have toward the subject?
• How is language itself will suffice in expressing one’s love for nature?

Students will be able to( skills)-

• use sensory details and descriptive language in writing
• use language to create emotional appeal to the reader
• make closer observations about nature
• articulate his/her attitude toward nature through word choices

Students will be able to understand (meaning)-

• Seeing and writing what we have see is a long and difficult journey.
• One must use all our senses as well as observational skills to observe nature before writing
• Being able to recreate one’s experience in words takes precise diction and the appropriate sentences.

Assessment

Formative Assessment: Journal responses -reflective and dialectical, observational journals

Summative Assessment: Write a well-developed and well-versed essay about nature by using a personal experience

EBC Essay Assignment on “The Calypso Borealis” by John Muir

 

EBC Essay Assignment on “The Calypso Borealis” by John Muir     Read the essay on nature by Muir and create a claim based on your understanding of the writing. Claim is the point you believe the author has made through his/her work; it can also be a controlling idea to which the rest of the work contributes. Write an essay in which you state a claim (controlling idea) and use specific evidence to support and illustrate your claim. Be sure to- Cite your evidence accurately and relevantly Analyze how the author use one specific literary technique or element to advance his idea (point) Provide a brief context for the evidence Analyze the evidence you provide Make a connection between your evidence and claim Follow proper conventions- grammar, usage, punctuation, and spelling

Lesson 1

Objectives: Students will read John Muir’s essay ” Alaska Trip” and examine the style of  his writing about nature. Students will pay special attention to the sensory details Muir uses to draw his readers into the beauty of nature.

Aim: How does Muir use sensory details and his descriptive language in the essay about nature to convey the idea that nature needs to be loved, appreciated and preserved?

Text:

• “The Alaska Trip” from Wilderness Essays by John Muir; “Calypso Borealis”
• Selected Writings by John Muir

Do Now: Who is Muir? What do you about him?

Read briefly about John Muir and make notes of any detail that is of interest to you.

The Calypso Borealis by John Muir Introduction: In 1864, John Muir was wandering through the swamps of Canada, looking for flowers and trees (“botanizing”) and working at various odd jobs. During this time, Muir long sought a rare orchid, the Calypso borealis. The story of his discovery of Calypso was his first published writing, having been sent on to a newspaper by his former College professor, J.D. Butler, to whom he had written of the discovery in a letter. Years later, Muir expanded on the story in the autobiographical fragment below. This version is that contained in The Life and Letters of John Muir edited by William Frederic Badè and published in 1924 after Muir’s death. (1)After earning a few dollars working on my brother-in law’s farm near Portage [Wisconsin], I set off on the first of my long lonely excursions, botanising in glorious freedom around the Great Lakes and wandering through innumerable tamarac and arbor-vitae swamps, and forests of maple, basswood, ash, elm, balsam, fir, pine, spruce, hemlock, rejoicing in their bound wealth and strength and beauty, climbing the trees, revelling in their flowers and fruit like bees in beds of goldenrods, glorying in the fresh cool beauty and charm of the bog and meadow heathworts, grasses, carices, ferns, mosses, liverworts displayed in boundless profusion. (2)The rarest and most beautiful of the flowering plants I discovered on this first grand excursion was Calypso borealis (the HIder of the North). I had been fording streams more and more difficult to cross and wading bogs and swamps that seemed more and more extensive and more difficult to force one’s way through. Entering one of these great tamarac and arbor-vitae swamps one morning,holding a general though very crooked course by compass, struggling through tangled drooping branches and over and under broad heaps of fallen trees, I began to fear that I would not be able to reach dry ground before dark, and therefore would have to pass the night in the swamp and began, faint and hungry, to plan a nest of branches on one of the largest trees or windfalls like a monkey’s nest, or eagle’s, or Indian’s in the flooded forests of the Orinoco described by Humboldt. (3)But when the sun was getting low and everything seemed most bewildering and discouraging, I found beautiful Calypso on the mossy bank of a stream, growing not in the ground but on a bed of yellow mosses in which its small white bulb had found a soft nest and from which its one leaf and one flower sprung. The flower was white and made the impression of the utmost simple purity like a snowflower. No other bloom was near it, for the bog a short distance below the surface was still frozen, and the water was ice cold. It seemed the most spiritual of all the flower people I had ever met. I sat down beside it and fairly cried for joy. (4)It seems wonderful that so frail and lovely a plant has such power over human hearts. This Calypso meeting happened some forty-five years ago, and it was more memorable and impressive than any of my meetings with human beings excepting, perhaps, Emerson and one or two others. When I was leaving the University, Professor J.D. Butler said, “John, I would like to know what becomes o you, and I wish you would write me, say once a year, so I may keep you in sight. ” I wrote to the Professor, telling him about this meeting with Calypso, and he sent the letter to an Eastern newspaper [The Boston Recorder] with some comments of his own. These, as far as I know, were the first of my words that appeared in print. (5)How long I sat beside Calypso I don’t know. Hunger and weariness vanished, and only after the sun was low in the west I plashed on through the swamp, strong and exhilarated as if never more to feel any mortal care. At length I saw maple woods on a hill and found a log house. I was gladly received. “Where ha ye come fra? The swamp, that awfu’ swamp. What were ye doin’ there?” etc. “Mony a puir body has been lost in that muckle, cauld, dreary bog and never been found.” When I told her I had entered it in search of plants and had been in it all day, she wondered how plants could draw me to these awful places, and said, “It’s god’s mercy ye ever got out.” (6)Oftentimes I had to sleep without blankets, and sometimes without supper, but usually I had no great difficulty in finding a loaf of bread here and there at the houses of the farmer settlers in the widely scattered clearings. With one of these large backwoods loaves I was able to wander many a long wild fertile mile in the forests and bogs, free as the winds, gathering plants, and glorying in God’s abounding inexhaustible spiritual beauty bread. Storms, thunderclouds, winds in the woods – were welcomed as friends. Source: The Life and Letters of John Muir edited by William Frederic Badè (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1924). Note from the Canadian Friends of John Muir: “Calypso no longer grows in the Holland marsh… Modern demands have turned the area into one of Ontario’s largest vegetable production areas for onions and celery. Drainage ditches lace the region, the black soil is cultivated within an inch of its life. However. There are still some secrets that we naturalists know. In a few corners of the Bruce Peninsula there are dozens of calypso orchids.” – Scott Cameron, Canadian Friends of John Muir, July, 1998.

Mini Lesson

Generating a claim based on each paragraph-

• Focus on key words and phrases to help you determine the purpose of each paragraph
• A claim may not contain details from the text
• We’ll read the 1st two paragraphs together to generate a smaller claim -A. Nature itself is glorious canopied in its most ordinary form. B. Nature can be treacherous and unexpected menacing and one must be prepared for it in order to venture.

Independent Practice

• Read paragraphs 3- 6, and write a claim based on each paragraph by paying special attention to the  author’s word choices as well as the major literary techniques he has used to convey or advance his idea.

Exit Slip: Do you agree or disagree with what Muir has said about nature? Why?

Homework: Make a general claim based on the entire essay and analyze the evidence you  have used to derive at such a conclusion. First draft due tomorrow.

Lesson 2 The structure of the essay

Objectives: Students will be able to see how the the paragraphs are connected together by a structure.

Aim: How does structure contribute to the shape and meaning of the essay?

Do Now: Write down one feature you have noticed about the essay “Calypso Borealis”‘s structure?

Mini Lesson:

Meaning of forms  such as structure of essays and syntax of sentences

1. Forms carry meanings.
2. An appropriate  structure of a writing lends shapes and contents to its readers.
3. For the “Calypso Borealis” essay, here is the structure in which the idea of natural beauty connects a human to God or helps one feel complete or in harmony with the world –

4. The Structure of an Essay about Nature A. (1)Introduction :  Introduce the setting ( background of nature in which you will tell the story). Provide a catchy and detailed description what you readers should see in nature) B. Body (2) Write about an unforgettable experience ( most likely a challenging one where you may feel discouraged or even intimidated ) that describes your encounter with nature (3). Zoom in to a specific detail that will change you or rescue your or inspire you ( describe the detail- must be something from nature, a plant or animal) (4). Add an anecdote that enhances the experience you have had in nature ( a dialogue, a film or photograph, a news article , etc) C (5)  Conclusion: How has the experiences in nature transformed your perception? Any transcendental thought?

Independent Practice-

1. How does Muir use the structure to advance his idea?
2. What’s the major literary technique Muir uses to convey his idea about nature?

Exit Slip: What’s your new understanding of structure? How does it relate to meaning?

Homework: Revise your claim essay. Due tomorrow.

 Lesson 4: Independent Studies Pair Presentation

Objectives: Students will be assigned into a group to start preparing for their individual presentation of a chapter selected from the book  The Yosemite by John Muir.

Aim: How can we effectively present our understanding of the assigned chapter to the class?

Do Now: Write a short paragraph describing a mental imagery you have about Yosemite after reading the 1st chapter of the book.

Mini Lesson

1. Assign  the chapter to each group

2. How to present your understanding of the chapter ?

Guidelines for the Pair Presentation of the Assigned Chapter from the book The Yosemite by John Muir   Provide a critical summary of the chapter. What are the most outstanding examples of literary techniques? Provide quotations ( 5 at least). What stands out for you in the chapter? They could be anything that interests you. List of important vocabulary that one will need to understand the chapter. Post images of the scenes described in the chapter. What is the structure of the chapter? How does Muir advance his ideas? What is the central idea of the chapter? Does Muir convey his idea clearly and effectively? Provide three pieces of textual evidence. Demonstrate all the points on Power Point slides ( you can insert  a film clip of no more than two minutes into the project).

Independent Practice

Read the assigned chapter together in a pair and start the necessary annotations for your presentation.

Exit Slip: What questions do you still have about the project?

Homework: Start the preparatory work for your presentation. Fist draft of slides is due on Monday( 3/24). Presentation  will be held on Tuesday and Wednesday(3/25-3/26).

Lesson 5  The American Wilderness

Objectives: Students will analyze the tone implied in the beginning of the essay by Theodore Roosevelt toward the American wilderness.

Aim: How is the American Wilderness described by T.  Roosevelt and what is his attitude toward the American landscape?

Do Now: Describe your understanding of the American Wilderness. Where did you get the images?

Mini Lesson:

We’ll read the three pages of The Wilderness Hunter and discuss the following questions-

1. How does Roosevelt describe the American wilderness? Make a list of key verbs, nuns and adjectives he has used to portrait its landscape.
2. How does it map out on the map of the United States?
3. What kind of geological features of the landscape Roosevelt describes in the introductory part of the essay? What impression does it leave on its readers? Why?
4. What kind of tone is revealed through the detailed descriptions of the American landscape? Why?

Independent Practice:

Use the tone statement as your claim. Support your claim with three details. Analyze the details.

Exist Slip: How can a person’s attitude revealed through his words?

Homework: Complete the claim paragraph.

Lesson 6

Objectives: Students will  infer Roosevelt’s attitude toward animal life in the American Wilderness.

Aim: How does Roosevelt describe the animals in the American Wilderness and what attitude is revealed through the descriptions?

Do Now: When you visit a zoo, how does seeing other animals make you feel as a human and your responsibility for nature?

Mini Lesson

Read pages 3-6, and how does Roosevelt make his readers agree with him that ” The differences in plant life and animal life, no less than in the physical features of he land, are sufficiently marked to give the American wilderness a character distinctly its own”?

1. Mark important words or phrases while reading. Put questions marks next to texts that you don’t understand.
2. Underline the use of language that is extraordinary for you in his writing.
3. Look for words that support his notion described in the quotation.
4. What animals does Roosevelt describe in this essay?
5. How does he distinguish the Old World from the new one in the aspect of animals?

Independence practice

Write a paragraph using the evidence you have collected to support Roosevelt’s notion about the importance of plant and animal life on the land”.

Homework: Complete the paragraph.

Lesson 7 Objectives: Students will infer how Roosevelt makes connection between hunting and leadership.

Aim: How does Roosevelt view hunters in the The American Wilderness?

Do Now: What’s your view on hunters? We all acknowledge that  hunting is a cruel act but throughout history, hunting has been regarded as a manly and courageous act, which is an integral part of many royal stories.

Mini Lesson

What  does  Roosevelt mean in his statement that ” Their (Hunter) untamable souls ever found something congenial and beyond measure attractive in the lawless freedom of the lives of the very savages against whom they warred so bitterly”?

1. How does he associate hunting with the ability to lead? Why? What examples does he provide?
2. What does Roosevelt imply about hunting as part of the nations as well as a person’s character?
3. Who were some of the hunters Roosevelt describes in this passage that are known to us as great leaders?
4. How does he describe the Native Americans?

Independent Practice:

Find evidence to support Roosevelt’s claim that ” He was not only a mighty hunter, a daring fighter, a finder of trails, and maker of roads through the unknown, untrodden wilderness, but also a real leader of men.”

Homework: Write a paragraph illustrating Roosevelt’s claim.

Lesson 8

Objectives: Students will identify historical events that are mentioned or described in Roosevelt’s essay; they will understand how providing a social or historical context is a necessary component of non-fictional writing.

Aim; Why is contextualization essential in non-fiction?

Do Now: Describe one example in which context helps you understand the writing.

Mini Lesson

How did hunters , as a distinctive class, who once played a peculiar and important position in American life, vanish ?(page 14)

1. Read pages 12-17 and identify historical events that are mentioned in the background of Roosevelt’s writing

2. According to Roosevelt, what was the main business of the hunters? What kind of animals did they trap?

3. After the Civil War, what changes did the transcontinental railroad bring about in America?

4. How does Roosevelt feel about the diminishing population of hunters? Provide specific examples to illustrate his attitude.( page 15)

4. How did buffalo herd become destroyed? what happened to the frontier? How does it effect the wilderness hunters?

5. How does Roosevelt describe bison bull? What tone is implied? Explain.

6. How does Roosevelt describe the moose?( page 17)

Independent: Gather descriptions about wild animals in this passage and discuss-

Why does Roosevelt describe the look and characters of each animal in details? How may his writing contribute to the Americans attitude toward wild animals?

Homework: Create a postcard of one of the animals described by Roosevelt. Provide a catchy line on your postcard to promote the conservation of these animals.

Lesson 9

Objectives: Students will analyze a claim Roosevelt makes about wilderness hunters and infer the tone of the overall essay.

Aim: Why does Roosevelt assert that the wilderness hunter must show the qualities of hardihood, self reliance and resolution?

Text: Pages 17-22 of The American Wilderness by T. Roosevelt

Do Now: Share our postcards about a nearly extinct animal.

Mini Lesson

1. The use of indefinite pronoun:  …much larger than those of the wapiti ( page 18)
2. Complex sentence structure:  “Among the hunts which I have most enjoyed were those made when I was engaged in getting in the winter’s stock of meat for my ranch, or was keeping some party of cowboys supplied with game from day to day “( page 23).
3. “The free ranchman lives in a wild, lonely country, and exactly as he breaks and tames his own horses, and guards and tends his own branded herds, so he takes the keenest enjoyment in the chase, which is to him not merely the pleasantest of sports, but also a means of adding materially to his comforts, and often his only method of providing himself with fresh meat”( page 22).

Independent  PRACTICE

1. How does Roosevelt  describe wapiti, white deer, antelope, prong-buck, white goat, respectively ( hint: consider the regions they are found, the tracks, etc)?
2. How does he consider free ranchman to be the new “wild hunters”?
3. In the entire chapter of “The American Hunters”, how does Roosevelt illustrate his assertion that ” the wilderness hunter must not only show skill in the use of rifle and address in finding and approaching game, but he must also show qualities of hardihood, self-reliance, and resolution needed for effectively grappling with his wild surroundings”?

Exit Slip: How does the essay affected you about the wilderness?

Homework: Create a poster of the American Wilderness that include: a found poem ( use key words or phrases from the essay, images of animals, map and landscape, one line or two statement of your response that shows your understanding of the chapter and its impact on you as a reader). Draw or cut out images from magazines ( in colors for better visuals or color in).

Lesson 10  Writing a nature essay

Objectives: Students will apply various techniques they have learned for writing a nature essay

Aim: In addition to structure, what other techniques can we use to write an interesting essay about nature?

Resources:

Example nature essays

Do Now: Reflect on John Muir’s essay

( The following notes are quoted from http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/3649/, an article written by Brian Doyle

Writing a Nature Essay

• Using sensory details and descriptive language
• Claim for an essay
•  Begin with an image so startling and lovely and wondrous that your reader would stop everything else s/he might be doing to read the description and marvel that s/he has indeed seen or smelled or heard exactly that, but never quite articulated it that way.
• The next two paragraphs would smoothly and gently move you into a story, seemingly a small story, a light tale, easily accessed, something personal but not self-indulgent or self-absorbed on the writer’s part, just sort of a cheerful nutty everyday story maybe starring an elk or a mink or a child, but then there would suddenly be a sharp sentence where the dagger enters your heart and the essay spins on a dime like a skater, and you are plunged into way deeper water, you didn’t see it coming at all, and you actually shiver, your whole body shimmers. My god, stories do have roaring power, stories are the most crucial and necessary food, how come we never hardly say that out loud?
• The next three paragraphs then walk inexorably toward a line of explosive Conclusions on the horizon like inky alps. Probably the sentences get shorter, more staccato. Terser. Blunter. Shards of sentences. But there’s no opinion or commentary, just one line fitting into another, each one making plain inarguable sense, a goat or even a senator could easily understand the sentences and their implications, and there’s no shouting, no persuasion, no eloquent pirouetting, no pronouncements and accusations, no sermons or homilies, just calm clean clear statements one after another, fitting together like people holding hands.
• Then an odd paragraph, this is a most unusual and peculiar essay, for right here where you would normally expect those alpine Conclusions, some Advice, some Stern Instructions & Directions, there’s only the quiet murmur of the writer tiptoeing back to the story he or she was telling you in the second and third paragraphs. The story slips back into view gently, a little shy, holding its hat, nothing melodramatic, in fact it offers a few gnomic questions without answers, and then it gently slides away off the page and off the stage, it almost evanesces or dissolves, and it’s only later after you have read the essay three times with mounting amazement that you see quite how the writer managed the stagecraft there, but that’s the stuff of another essay for another time.
• And finally the last paragraph. It turns out that the perfect nature essay is quite short, it’s a lean taut thing, an arrow and not a cannon, and here at the end there’s a flash of humor, and a hint or tone or subtext of sadness, a touch of rue, you can’t quite put your finger on it but it’s there, a dark thread in the fabric, and there’s also a shot of espresso hope, hope against all odds and sense, but rivetingly there’s no call to arms, no clarion brassy trumpet blast, no website to which you are directed, no hint that you, yes you, should be ashamed of how much water you use or the car you drive or the fact that you just turned the thermostat up to seventy, or that you actually have not voted in the past two elections despite what you told the kids and the goat. Nor is there a rimshot ending, a bang, a last twist of the dagger. Oddly, sweetly, the essay just ends with a feeling eerily like a warm hand brushed against your cheek, and you sit there, near tears, smiling, and then you stand up. Changed.

Independent Practice

Read the 1st two pages of Trip to Alaska ( pages 35-36)and make notes of 10 sensory details or examples of descriptive language that have stood out the most for you for any  reason. We will analyze the evidence to illustrate what emotional appeal the writing has to his readers and the central idea that connects all the details.

Exit Slip: Write a sentence or two to describe a spectacle in nature you have observed.

Homework: Describe a nature trip you have taken. Close your eyes and try to relive the moment. Visualize the natural surrounding your were in and describe it as detailed as possible.

Lesson 11

Objectives: Students will share their nature essay and use the rubric for peer reviews.

Aim: What elements do we see in a strong creative non-fiction piece?

Do Now: Debrief the spring break.

Mini Lesson:

Review of a creative non-fiction: nature essay

• structure
• language: detailed, descriptive, precise
• syntax ( sentence structure)
• subject
• making connections

Independent PRACTICE: Peer Review

Share your essay

Use the rubric and notes on creative non-fiction to comment on your peer’s essay. Make your comment visible and legible so your partner can use the comments for revision.

Switch the essay back and debrief: What did you learn from the activity? Review the peer comments. What is the one comment you will consider to incorporate into your writing?

Exist Slip: What have you learned from writing the essay?

Homework: Revise the essay using some of your peer’s comments. The final draft is due on Thursday.