The Living Fire

This unit plan from The Living Fire: Contemporary Catholic Writers for the Classroom series provides educators the needed resources to teach ten poems by Dana Gioia, a living Catholic poet who writes with a sacramental view of our world. The poems themselves are collected in the companion text, Selected Works of Dana Gioia and Sarah Cortez.

This instructional unit plan includes: suggested activities; writing prompts; vocabulary for scaffolding reading comprehension; challenges for advanced and ESL students; activities that appeal to different learning styles; and critical thinking discussion questions with suggested responses and considerations. The five lessons in this unit offer students and teachers a chance to discover-or rediscover-the enchanting, incarnational joy of poetry.