1. Puritan Literature

2. Bellwork Have you ever known anyone who lost all his/her worldly possessions in a house fire? If so, explain the circumstances and what the person did to “get through” the tragedy. If not, put yourself in that predicament and explore what would give you strength at a time like this? Write ½ page

3. Common Core:CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.11-12.2 Determine two or more central ideas of a text and analyze their development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one another to provide a complex analysis; provide an objective summary of the text.CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.11-12.2 Objective: Students will understand and identify Puritan values and beliefs in Puritan texts.

4. Group work Read Bradstreet poem

5. Group work As you read the poem, make a list of characteristics that seem dominant in Puritan literature Where does Bradstreet get her inner strength to face the loss of her house? How might someone today deal with the same situation? Bradstreet speaks of another “house” in an extended metaphor at the end of the poem. What is this house, who is the architect, and how is it better than the house she has lost?

6. Academic talk Using the expectations of academic talk, discuss the above questions.

7. Homework read Jonathan Edwards’ Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

8. Students will then find an image in the text that stands out to them and draw and color this image. - Students will then in 7-8 sentences explain why this image is significant to the poem and explain how it adds to Edwards’s overall message.