Sylvia Plath – ‘A Comparison’ Lesson 1 (Standard English)

Topic: Craft of Writing Time: 60min

Class: Year 12 (HSC course)

Standard English Stage 6

Teacher: Objectives, Aim/ Objectives

 Introduce ‘ A comparison’ by Sylvia Plath
 Facilitate a creative and in-depth discussion and dissection of the test
 Create discussion and knowledge on the affect of Imagery
 Briefly introduce students to the concepts of audience and purpose

Outcomes

Outcome 3

A student: Analyses and uses language forms, features and structures of texts and justifies
their appropriateness for purpose, audience and context and explains effects on meaning
EN12-3

Related Life Skills outcomes: ENLS6-7

Outcome 1

A student: Independently responds to and composes complex texts for understanding,

interpretation, critical analysis, imaginative expression and pleasure EN12-1

Related Life Skills outcomes: ENLS6-1, ENLS6-2, ENLS6-3

Objectives

Objectives A, B and C within the syllabus to be utilised though the sequence of the this
lesson and the following lesson

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 Time Teaching and learning actions Organisation Centred
T/S
 Handing out of the
 Teacher will explain the Tasks print outs of: ‘A
and outline of the lesson to the Comparison’
10 min class  The text will also
be projected on
smart board and
 Begin reading “A Comparison’ as highlighted for
a class- Teacher will stop at key students to model if
points to discuss the key feature needed.
of imagery and the overall
meaning of the work to ensure all
students understand this piece of
writing

 Students are expected to follow

along and highlight/note take as
the class reads

 Teacher will lead a class  PowerPoint

facilitate a class discussion on resource: this
discuss and speculate (as a class) resource will
25min the importance of Imagery (Key include photos of
feature) and the emotion Plath
connected to this feature. Their  Will also include
discussion should touch upon the Definitions of
power and precision used by a audience, purpose
writer in order to convey ideas and imagery
and emotions. The understanding  Resource will be
of audience and purpose will also projected on smart
be touched upon and will be board and be
further built upon in the next available on
lessons. Google classroom

 Teacher to briefly discuss Sylvia

Plath
- Her Writing style
- Subjects of writing or themes
- Life (suicide and her education)
 PowerPoint
 Discussion and deconstruction resource (as
15min questions for teacher to further previously stated)
facilitate:

- What does poem portray or give

to an audience/ the world in

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 comparison to a novel.

- What emotions do we associate

with a poem?

- What emotions do we associate

with a novel?

- Where can we see Plath use

imagery? (Examples written on
board and in books)

- What is the texts effect on you?

(Emotions and meaning)

- Who is the audience?

- What is purpose? Why do writers

write certain pieces or have
certain styles?

Notes on audience and purpose as well as

Plath’s imagery will be written on the
board for students to copy as discussion
progresses.

5 min  Students to write definitions into  PowerPoint

their books and copy or create resource (as
any notes previously stated)

Conclusion  Notify the students on the outline

of next lesson
5min - They will start creating a piece of
writing on ‘A Comparison’
- The following lesson will focus
on draft and perfecting their
craft.

Reflection on lesson: A reflection on practice, actives and any other events needed to be
mention will be written in this section after the lesson

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 Sylvia Plath – ‘A Comparison’ Lesson 2 (Standard English)

Topic: Craft of Writing Time: 60min

Class: Year 12 (HSC course)

Standard English Stage 6

Teacher: Objectives, Aim/ Objectives

 Help students in their drafting and writing stage
 Explicitly explain the importance of the writing stages and drafting
 Help students understand how the audience and purpose influences the writers
meaning
 Teach students the concepts of audience, purpose and meaning AND allow student to
portray this new learning
 Portray to student the strength and effectiveness of Imagery as a language feature

Outcomes

Outcome 4
A student: Adapts and applies knowledge, skills and understanding of language concepts and
literary devices into new and different contexts EN12-4

Related Life Skills outcomes: ENLS6-8

Outcome 5
A student: Thinks imaginatively, creatively, interpretively, analytically and discerningly to
respond to and compose texts that include considered and detailed information, ideas and
arguments EN12-5

Related Life Skills outcomes: ENLS6-9

Objectives

Objectives A, B and C within the syllabus to be utilised though the sequence of the previous
lesson and this lesson.

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 Time Teaching and learning actions Organisation

5min  Students will be advised to use this

pre writing or drafting stage to plan
and think about ideas of how
audience and purpose influences
their writing and shape meaning.

 Scaffold or planning
 The teacher will notify the class that sheet for students to
he/she will be in the back of the use to help organise
class for conferencing and ideas
workshopping with any student who
5min may need assistance. ALL students  Optional for students
are encouraged to come to the back to use however this
at lest once within the lesson to sheet is aimed at
conference with the teacher students needing
extra assistance
Teacher will explain the task to the entire  Hand out of scaffold
class  Pervious lessons
PowerPoint
 Entire class work (Modelling)-  Teacher will write
10min Together creates a short piece of the short piece on the
writing describing a bus ride with board as discussion
the main focus being on imagery. carries on

 Quick recap of audience and

purpose will be integrated within
this task

- .
.
 Task: Use vivid imagery to describe  Drafting scaffold
a mundane task you do every day. sheet
35 min Students are expected in this pre  Students laptops
writing stage to speculate and plan
their ideas. This task will be
continued within the next lessons.
(40 min)

 Walking to school/ walking home

 Reading
 Doing homework
 Any other act of your choice
 Students will be working on the plan
or start drafting
 They may use their laptops for
research
 They can plan on their laptops or

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 their workbooks (this will up to the
digression of the student on what
they prefer

 A scaffold sheet will be provided

that will help students arrange ideas
and have the peel structure and tips
on good writing will be handed out
to all students.
 Students to save their work
5min  Teacher will notify students on the
direction of next lesson and the
continuance of their writing task

Reflection on lesson: A reflection on practice, actives and any other events needed to be
mention will be written in this section after the lesson

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Evaluation

Sylvia Plath is seen contemporarily as one the greatest feminist poets of the 20th
century. She writes many of her poems in the perspective of a feminist in the dilemma
of women’s rights, before women’s rights was a mainstream idea within society. Plath
additionally uses her life as a main source of inspiration for her work. Her works
personify a mastered use of metaphor and similes, allowing her to turn mundane tasks
or issues into exquisite works of vivid imagery, giving these task or issues more
meaning. Plath is known to be from the confessional school of poetry, or poetry of
the eye. This type of poetry captures and recreates the self, this is seen throughout
many of Plath’s poems where it seems she had died or lost part of herself, only to rise
again. Plath has received much merit and recognition for her works and was the first
person to win a Pulitzer Prize for her poetry work posthumously, meaning her works
have a high level of recognition and should be utilised in Stage 6 study of Standard
English (NSW).

Plath’s work “A Comparison” looks at the differences between poems and novels or
the novelist and the poet. She uses vivid imagery to explore the difference between
novels and poems and personifies them in order to juxtapose them. Her structure and
use of words is mastered within this short essay. Plath uses imagery to create a
foundation of her subject, and then builds upon it using her knowledge and skill to
create an unfiltered unapologetic and exquisite picture within the readers mind.
Taking the reader on a journey that is ever progressing and ever deepening in
meaning.

It is Plath’s power, precision and her overall mastered skill that make her works such
as ‘A Comparison’ suitable for study within the module of The Craft of Writing for
the NSW Standard English stage 6 course (English Standard Stage 6 Syllabus, 2017).
Her work evokes emotion and shapes her perspective (English Standard Stage 6
Syllabus, 2017); these ideas and emotions have a deep rawness to them as they are
directly related to Plath’s life and her experiences. She uses her craft to convey the
issues within her life that are relevant in so many others, from her struggles as a
woman in the fight for more rights and more opportunities, to her struggles with
depression and her suicide attempts. Her writing is able to convey these dark subjects
and in a fanciful yet disturbingly beautiful way. Plath writes her works with an
immense amount of “power and precision” (English Stage 6 Prescriptions, p. 21,
2017). Her use of words and imagery give the most humdrum subjects and novel
objects a new life and deeper more sophisticated and whimsical meaning. The overall
depth of this piece of writing needs explicit teaching and an in-depth discussion to
ensure all students understand the theme, and how the use of language features
produce meaning. This further relates to the need for differentiation and creating an
inclusive learning environment (English Standard Stage 6 Syllabus, 2017). If all
students including those EALD or those with learning difficulties are explicitly taught
and involved in discussion, they are able to build their foundations of critical thought
and writing processes.

Further looking into Plath and her contextualisation of her life is interesting for
students and can be a point of discussion and speculation in students’ pre-writing
stage and their exploration of ideas (English Stage 6 Prescriptions, 2017). Her life
became her subject in many of her writings and can be an interest for students to learn

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about. Within her life Plath has one suicide attempt, one divorce and one successful
suicide. Mirroring this, the women within her works were unfilled and in need of
more opportunities. Plath had an inquisitive relationship with death and this became a
theme in many of her writings. Through the study of not only ‘A Comparison’, but of
Plath as a literary figure it opens the classroom for discussions of serious issues such
as mental heath and feminism, making Plath and ‘A Comparison’ a multifaceted
prescribed reading for The Craft of Writing as a module.

‘A Comparison’ will challenge students and evolve their connection to literature

through Plath’s deep description of novels and poems. She turns what students may
think of as just merely simple pieces of writing that have no connection to them or
pose no meaning into something with so much depth and meaning. Her work will
engage students and be drawn in due to Plath’s mastered structure and use of imagery.
This skill of imagery can be modelled and dissected by the teacher and the class in
order for students to understand how imagery forms a new depth in ones writing. This
modelling can then be used by students to form their own piece of creative writing.
Students should take this knowledge into the drafting stages of writing and
meticulously plan their writing (English Stage 6 Prescriptions, 2017). Additionally,
the stages of ones writing is an important component of The Craft Of Writing and its
importance should be explicitly translated to students (English Standard Stage 6
Syllabus, 2017).

From Plath’s work and subjects in ‘A Comparison’ students will perceive novels and
poems in a new light. Broadening their perception of novels and poems, allowing
them to connect and understand the inner workings and deep emotional and
meaningful complexities that are attached to works of literature (English Stage 6
Prescriptions, 2017). Plath’s use of personification gives new life and meaning to
pieces of writing that students have already been introduced to. Students will
hopefully reflect on the complexity and levels of meaning attached to literature and
use this to reflect on their own writing and “further develop their self-expression and
apply their knowledge of textual forms and features in their own sustained and
cohesive compositions” (English Standard Stage 6 Syllabus, p. 74, 2017).

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References

NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA).(2017). English Standard Stage 6

Syllabus. NSW Syllabus for the Australian Curriculum. Retrieved from:
http://syllabus.nesa.nsw.edu.au/english-standard-stage6/

NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA). (2017). English Stage 6 Prescriptions.

NSW Syllabus for the Australian Curriculum. Retrieved from:
http://syllabus.nesa.nsw.edu.au/english-standard-stage6/

Plath, S. (2005). Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams. Faber and Faber.
ISBN: 9780571049899

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