StarterMake a group list of words today

E I C

E N M

O O S

HINTS FOR SOLVINGLook for common beginnings, such as UN- or SUB-, and endings, such as -ER or -ISM.Look for pairs of letters that go well together, such as ST, PR or ND.Write out the letters in a different order, in case you spot something different.Don't forget to look for words that begin with a vowel.When you find a word, try reading it backwards, to see if it suggests another word.When you find a word, try to find all the rearrangements of its letters that also form words.When you find a word, try substituting the remaining letters into it.

Chocolate for group with most words

Intentions

I’ve given you a chance to investigate some of the different techniques used by the poet in ‘In the Waiting Room’. I have a feeling though, that it might still be a bit of a mystery what this poem is actually about.

Today, I’d like you to leave at the end of the class feeling as though you have a greater knowledge of what the overall ideas/meanings of the poem are.

Choices...How we actually go about doing this is entirely down to you and the way in which you cope with a last period session. The learning could take place in two different ways:

a) we could do some group discussions about the different themes and develop some debate around which ideas are most important in this poem (proven to be more educationally sound if done properly)

b) we could spend the period copying notes about all of the different ideas that are present in this poem (less beneficial in terms of learning, but means that I can ensure everyone is on task)

What, exactly, does it mean to be a woman? How does one's sense of self become inextricable from that definition? In one of her later poems, "In the Waiting Room", Elizabeth Bishop explores these questions by examining her own life, from her pre-women's suffrage childhood to half a century later, during the peak of the Women's Rights Movement when this poem was penned. She undertakes her analysis not by writing chronologically, but rather by collapsing her life's experiences into a single memory from when she was a young girl. This technique allows her to draw a parallel between the moment she first discovered the implications of being a woman to the 1970's, an era when the definition of "womanhood" was once again being rewritten. However, despite the advances for women championed by feminists in the 70's, Bishop questions whether any true and fundamental shift in women's societal role has actually occurred. Throughout "In the Waiting Room", she endeavors to find her own definition of gender, rejecting society's indoctrinated beliefs and questioning their validity. She enables the reader to slip easily into this dense subject matter of her poem by employing several deceptively simple poetic techniques.Perhaps the most immediately striking feature of Bishop's work is its child narrator describing the seemingly innocuous event of waiting at the dentist's office while her aunt is in the patient's room. It is the winter of the year 1918 in the town of Worcester, Massachusetts. In this setting, the memory revolves around the narrator reading a National Geographic magazine. Bishop writes in uncomplicated, declarative language like "It was winter. It got dark / early." (lines 6-7) that mirrors her age at the time this memory took place even though the narrator's juvenile observations are filtered through the lens of the adult poet's mature interpretation. This allows the reader to immediately connect with what is being said, without having to first decipher dense language, thus allowing the underlying theme of the poem to have more of a personal and emotional impact. Indeed, being unrestricted by overly wrought language allows the narrator's emotions to burst off of the page, catching the unsuspecting reader off-guard. The narrator's tone also boils down the enormous issue of gender identity to its essence, allowing us to explore Bishop's theme at its core, without becoming entangled in murky gender politics.

Aside from tone, Bishop also uses iambic trimeter, which successfully keeps the poem visually simple. However, despite the poem staying relatively uniform in width throughout, the lengths of the stanzas are varied. The poem's first stanza is composed of 35 lines, in contrast to the comparatively short lengths of subsequent stanzas. This purposefully mirrors the theme of the entire poem. The first stanza's length seems to reflect the long journey we all take towards understanding our identities; a child's wandering mind is also evoked in the lengthy stanza as Bishop's narrator notes that

[...] The waiting roomwas full of grown-up people,arctics and overcoats,lamps and magazines (7-10).

Throughout life, small bits of data are constantly accumulated until at certain moments they combine into a moment of epiphany. Alone, these data can be seemingly innocuous, yet when they are finally synthesized into a new meaning the whole becomes much greater than its parts. The people and objects that the narrator notices in these lines are transformed from ordinary into tools for understanding gender, identity, and the trappings that go along with them. The second and third stanzas are much shorter than the first and roughly equal in length to each other, conveying the sense that after the narrator was taken "completely by surprise / [...] that it was me:" (45-6), new understanding about that "it" gender comes in waves as her mind begins to work faster and faster in the effort to analyze what this new realization means. The second to last stanza is the shortest of the poem at four lines, and it emulates the overwhelming close of Bishop's epiphany when the room starts "sliding / beneath a big black wave, / another, and another." (91-3) before she is jerked back to the present both within her memory and in the actual time of her writing.

Purpose OneTo explore the idea that human identity isn’t as stable/fixed/simple as we might think

The reason why this is one of the themes is because Bishop’s speaker has a crisis of identity. During the course of the poem she realises that her identity isn’t as stable as she originally thought. In the beginning of the poem she calmly takes in the sites around, this is indicated in the even rhythm and balance of the lines “artics and overcoats / lamps and magazine”. The balance of these two lines mirrors the balance of the speaker’s attitude - she is settled and relaxed.

However, this changes significantly as the poem progresses. The speaker makes a sudden realisation that her identity isn’t as stable as she once thought. This comes as a sudden surprise to the speaker as she suggests “Without thinking at all / I was my foolish aunt, / I - we - were falling, falling”. The speaker suggests that she has become her aunt, allowing the reader to understand that she her identity is fracturing into more than once piece. This crisis continues as the speaker asks “Why should I be my aunt, / or me, or anyone?”. She is unable to figure out how were identity was constructed in the first place. Bishop is suggesting here that our identities aren’t nearly as simple as we’d like to believe. They are influenced not only by our choices, but by things out of our control - such as the family we belong to and the gender we belong to.

Theme statements

I think there are a number of possible meaning for this poem. It could be about:

1) How identity isn’t as fixed/stable/simple as we might think

2) How unfair it is that we must be judged by standards that are outside of our control

3) The struggles that come with growing up

4) How new knowledge is both freeing and frightening

The taskAs a group, choose one of the statements from the previous slide (I’ll put them back up) and construct an argument as a group the explain why that statement best represents what the poem is about.

Your job is to make a case that will convince the rest of the class that your argument is the best.

Your case will need:

1) An explanation of why you chose the theme statement you went with

2) a piece of primary evidence from the poem - this should be a technique used by the poet with a specific example to back you up. You will need to be able to explain how this piece of evidence supports your argument.

3) a secondary piece of evidence that further supports your primary piece of evidence - again, this should be a language technique with a specific example.

I will choose which person from each group presents the information - so everyone needs to understand your argument.

After each group presents, their will be a brief window for other groups to challenge. Each challenge will need to be in the form of a question - the group’s ability to answer that question will be partly used to judge who is the most successful group.

At the end, each group will decide who they thought made the best overall arguments and why. The group with the most votes wins and will enjoy the spoils of a whole bag of chocolate.

The timing

This is how much time you’ll have:

Deciding on your theme statement: 5min

Creating your case: 10min

Delivery of your case + questions: 2min per group

Reflection and decisions on top group: 10min

Finally...

A good case will:

1) Make very clear links between the theme statement and a specific technique with an example. This means that you will be able to explain how the technique actually suggests that the theme you’ve chosen is the most important in the poem.

2) Will use both the language of analysis to explain your point, but also language that your audience will understand.

3) Will be able support itself under the weight of questioning and skepticism from the rest of the class by drawing on further evidence.

4) Be deliverable by any member of the group.

Theme statements

I think there are a number of possible meaning for this poem. It could be about:

1) How identity isn’t as fixed/stable/simple as we might think

2) How unfair it is that we must be judged by standards that are outside of our control

3) The struggles that come with growing up

4) How new knowledge is both freeing and frightening