Lesson Two - The Mending Wall
| Site: | MoodleHUB.ca 🍁 |
| Course: | ELA 20-1 |
| Book: | Lesson Two - The Mending Wall |
| Printed by: | Guest user |
| Date: | Tuesday, 11 November 2025, 4:57 AM |
Introduction
Lesson Two - The Mending Wall
Duration - 3 blocks (3 x 80 min + homework)
"We just can’t get enough of walls, can we? People love a good boundary. We love them when we’re little, protecting our precious toys from our nosy, destructive siblings. As we get older, we begin to throw around the gentle term 'personal space,' as in GET OUT OF MY ROOM!' In college, we REALLY learn how the 'mi casa es tu casa' philosophy doesn’t always result in happy roommate relationships. After we become adults with steady jobs and a lot of cool things in our garage, we often put up fences, gates, walls, or doors to protect our stuff and keep the peace. Walls help us protect ourselves, but their dratted downside is that they often keep people from communicating with each other.
"'Mending Wall' makes us take a look at how we use our walls and boundaries, and why we use them the way we do. This poem sends a wake-up call to the universe. Think of it like a spring-cleaning project in which Frost, with broom and dust pan in hand, hopes to reevaluate the habits that humans can’t seem to shake. Boundaries aren’t necessarily a bad thing, this poem seems to tell us, as long as we occasionally question the purpose of our walls, or maybe just as long as we question." - Shmoop.com
Lesson
Read the document Mending Wall and the analysis that follows.
View the Mending Wall video on the Resources page.
Browse the websites linked on the Resources page.
Assignment
(100 marks)
Open a new Word document. Label it E201U3L2surname
In this document, complete the assignment outlined below.
Submit this assignment using the Dropbox for U3L2 photo essay
- Peruse the document Photo Essay.
- Read through the poem and study the photo essay which follows it.
- Your task is to create a similar photo essay, based on "MENDING WALL".
- Your photo essay will serve as a summary of the main theme of the poem.
- You must create your photo essay in Word and use only ONE page.
- You are limited to FIVE photos, and TEN lines or sentences of TEXT.
- Be sure to search for PHOTOS for this assignment, as a mixture of photos and clip art tends to destroy the unit of a presentation.
Once you have created your photo essay, you will write four detailed paragraphs which total at least 500 words, on page two of your document, explaining the choices you made:
- Why did you choose each one of the photos that you did?
- Why did you choose each piece of text that you did?
- What were you attempting to achieve through the use of font style, size, and colour?
- What was achieved by the layout of your essay?
- What idea does your photo essay develop regarding what is revealed through an individual's responses to hardships?
Conclusion
- What role might walls play in creating - or diffusing - hardships?
- How quickly do neighbours turn on each other?
Think about your answers to these questions as you move on to "The Lottery".