Use of Irony

Use of Irony

The "At-Home" Episode

Opening

Share your response from the question during the previous lesson’s Closing with a partner.

  • What is the impression Mrs. Higgins and the other guests have of Liza?

Issues of Social Class

Work Time

A primary focus of today’s lesson is to broaden the issues of social class by looking at two very different short poems: “The Golf Links” by Sarah Norcliffe Cleghorn and “For a Lady I Know” by Countee Cullen.

  • Listen as the poems are read aloud. Note any words you don’t know and figure out the definitions.
  • Reread the two poems with a partner, and discuss how the authors use irony.

Where the Author's Sympathy Lies

Work Time

Work with a partner to reread your assigned poem and answer these questions.

  • What injustice underlies the situation in your poem?
  • Where does your author’s sympathy lie, and how do you know?

Share your paragraph, explaining how irony contributes to the author’s meaning in your assigned poem with your partner.

Protest Against Injustice

Work Time

Get together with another partner group that read the other poem and share your findings with that group.

Read each poem aloud and share each partner’s paragraph on irony.

Discuss the following questions.

  • What is the context (setting, background, circumstance) for each of the poems?
  • What injustice underlies each situation?
  • Where do the authors’ sympathies lie, and how do you know?
  • How might these poems be considered forms of protest against injustice?
  • How do either of these poems relate to anything you have read so far this unit?

Relationship to Other Readings

Work Time

Complete a Quick Write.

  • How do either of these poems relate to anything you have read so far in this unit?

Open Notebook

Share your responses to the Quick Write with the whole class.

Then engage in a Whole Group Discussion about how social class is determined in the pieces you have read so far.

Act 3 of Pygmalion

Work Time

Finish reading and annotating act 3 with your triad group starting with “Pickering gasps and sits down.” Focus on places of confusion, references to social class, and vocabulary.

Use these questions to focus your reading and answer them in writing.

  • Why is Mrs. Higgins so annoyed with her son and Pickering?
  • What warning does she give them?
  • How did people at the garden party respond to Liza?

Open Notebook

Poem Comparison

Closing

Participate in a discussion with your classmates in which some of you share key points that you learned from meeting with the partner group that read the other poem.

  • Discuss how the two poems compared to each other and to the larger themes of the unit.​

Independent Reading

Homework

Finish reading act 3 of Pygmalion if you have not done so already.

Continue your on-going homework assignment.

  • Read your Independent Reading Group Novel.
  • Remember to submit two journal entries a week to your teacher and publish some of your journal entries so others can read your work.