The Road Not Taken Copywork
Frost's fork-in-the-road poem, formatted for careful handwriting practice
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About this printable
Four five-line stanzas of plain, walkable language make this a copywork favorite for middle and upper grades. Students get practice with commas, semicolons, and a dash while working through a poem worth discussing afterward. Pair it with a short journal prompt about a choice the writer remembers making. 14 pages, 1/4-inch letters in manuscript print on dashed manuscript lines. Sheets included: Copywork (Step 1), First Letter Hints (Step 2), Memory Lines (Step 3), Source Text, First Letters Only, Randomized Redacting. Robert Frost, 1916. Public domain text.
ON THIS SHEET: Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, · And sorry I could not travel both · And be one traveler, long I stood · And looked down one as far as I could · To where it bent in the undergrowth; — Then took the other, as just as fair, · And having perhaps the better claim, · Because it was grassy and wanted wear; · Though as for that the passing there · Had worn them really about the same, — And both that morning equally lay · In leaves no step had trodden black. · Oh, I kept the first for another day! · Yet knowing how way leads on to way, · I doubted if I should ever come back. — I shall be telling this with a sigh · Somewhere ages hence: · Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— · I took the one less traveled by, · And took the one less traveled by, · And that has made all the difference. — Robert Frost, 1916. LETTER SIZE: 1/4-inch. HANDWRITING: manuscript print. SHEETS: Copywork (Step 1), First Letter Hints (Step 2), Memory Lines (Step 3), Source Text, First Letters Only, Randomized Redacting.
- Category Poetry
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Inside the PDF
3 pages from the 14-page PDF, as they print.
A plan for this set
A longer text: give Steps 1, 2 and 3 about two weeks, one sheet a day.
- Days 1–4 Copywork (Step 1). Read the whole text, then copy it exactly.
- Days 5–8 First Letter Hints (Step 2). Write it again with only the first letter of each word as a prompt.
- Days 9–10 Memory Lines (Step 3). Write it from memory on lines sized to each word.
Paste any poem and print it stanza by stanza as copywork, first-letter hints and memory lines, line breaks kept. Free for 20 pages a month, no card.
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