Unit #2: Reader & Writer
Guiding Conceptual Questions:
1. Why and how do we study language and literature?
2. How are we affected by texts in various ways?
3. In what ways is meaning constructed, negotiated, expressed and interpreted?
4. How does language use vary amongst text types and amongst literary forms?
5. How does the structure or style of a text affect meaning?
6. How do texts offer insights and challenges?
2. How are we affected by texts in various ways?
3. In what ways is meaning constructed, negotiated, expressed and interpreted?
4. How does language use vary amongst text types and amongst literary forms?
5. How does the structure or style of a text affect meaning?
6. How do texts offer insights and challenges?
Week #1: Intro to Oryx and Crake
Day #1: Introduction Videos + Station Rotation
Instructions | |
File Size: | 1302 kb |
File Type: | pptx |
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Directions- Analyze the text using the stations below. Please be sure to provide SPECIFIC evidence from the text for each the stations below.
Station #1: Point of view
1. What is the point of view?
2. How does the point of view affect the story? Explain using SPECIFIC examples from the text?
Station #2: Title
1. Note any references to the title in the story. How are they significant?
2. How does the title relate to the rest of the piece?
Station #3: Important Quotes
1. Record quotations that you believe to be significant. Explain why.
2 Of the quotations you recorded, which is the most important from the story? Why?
Station #4: Plot
1. Create a plot diagram for the story.
2. At what point in the story is the tension the highest? Why do you think this is the highest point?
Station #5: Understanding Character
1. List the main traits of the protagonist. Include support from the story.
2. How does the main character grow and change throughout the story?
3. List the main character traits of the antagonist. Include support from the story.
4. How does the antagonist change and grow throughout the story?
5. How do minor characters contribute to the story?
6. What is the author's primary method of characterization? Description? Dialogue? Action? A combination? Explain with examples.
Station #6: Resolving Conflict
1. What conflicts exist in the story? What is the main conflict?
2. How is the conflict resolved? How could the resolution of the conflict contribute to the overall message?
Station #7: Elements
1. Note any recurring ideas, images, and/or words in the story. How might they be important?
2. Are any of the recurring elements used symbolically? If so, how?
3. Complete the "Understanding the Author's Message" page #1 & page #2.
Station #8: Importance of Setting
1. Explain the setting of the story.
2. How does the setting affect the story overall?
Station #1: Point of view
1. What is the point of view?
2. How does the point of view affect the story? Explain using SPECIFIC examples from the text?
Station #2: Title
1. Note any references to the title in the story. How are they significant?
2. How does the title relate to the rest of the piece?
Station #3: Important Quotes
1. Record quotations that you believe to be significant. Explain why.
2 Of the quotations you recorded, which is the most important from the story? Why?
Station #4: Plot
1. Create a plot diagram for the story.
2. At what point in the story is the tension the highest? Why do you think this is the highest point?
Station #5: Understanding Character
1. List the main traits of the protagonist. Include support from the story.
2. How does the main character grow and change throughout the story?
3. List the main character traits of the antagonist. Include support from the story.
4. How does the antagonist change and grow throughout the story?
5. How do minor characters contribute to the story?
6. What is the author's primary method of characterization? Description? Dialogue? Action? A combination? Explain with examples.
Station #6: Resolving Conflict
1. What conflicts exist in the story? What is the main conflict?
2. How is the conflict resolved? How could the resolution of the conflict contribute to the overall message?
Station #7: Elements
1. Note any recurring ideas, images, and/or words in the story. How might they be important?
2. Are any of the recurring elements used symbolically? If so, how?
3. Complete the "Understanding the Author's Message" page #1 & page #2.
Station #8: Importance of Setting
1. Explain the setting of the story.
2. How does the setting affect the story overall?
Day #2: Table Twitter Talk
Directions- Each group will be assigned TWO QUOTES from below. Be sure to follow all of the rules below! :)
- Your twitter handle must be in this format LASTNAME_PERIOD
- You can add pictures/GIFS to your tweet as long as they are school appropriate.
- You must discuss specifics in the text. Make sure everything you discuss relates to the text.
- You must use the text to further your analysis [page #s].
- You must directly respond to members of your group using the @ and their twitter handle.
- Like Socratic Seminar, simply responding with “I agree” or “I disagree” or “Good point!” will NOT suffice. I want to see thoughtful and meaningful responses to what your group members are saying about the text.
- It should be obvious that you both read and understand the text.
- You CAN relate the text to current events, other texts, AND yourself.
- You MUST discuss literary & rhetorical devices used in the quote.
- You MUST have a minimum of 10 tweets PER group member for BOTH ASSIGNED quotes. [This means that every member of the group will tweet 20 times [10 tweets for each of the quotes=20]
Table Twitter Talk Sample Responses | |
File Size: | 1068 kb |
File Type: | docx |
A2:
The women are carrying his weekly fish, grilled the way he's taught them and wrapped in leaves. He can smell it, he's starting to drool. They bring the fish forward, put it on the ground in front of him. It will be a shore fish, a species too paltry and tasteless to have been coveted and sold and exterminated, or else a bottom-feeder pimply with toxins, but Snowman couldn't careless, he'll eat anything.
Here is your fish, oh Snowman," says one of the men, the one called Abraham. Abraham as in Lincoln: it had amused Crake to name his Crakers after eminent historical figures. It had all seemed innocent enough at the time."
pg. 100
His mother was supposed to be able to speak her last words to him via the mike system, said Crake, but there was a digital failure; so though he could see her lips moving, he couldn't hear what she was saying. "Otherwise put, just like daily like," said Crake. He said anything he hadn't missed much, because by that stage she'd been incoherent.
Jimmy didn't understand how he could be so nil about it -- it was horrible, the thought of Crake watching his own mother dissolve like that. He himself wouldn't have been able to do it. But probably it was just an act. It was Crake preserving his dignity, because the alternative would have been losing it,"
pg. 177
Although she didn't' like it when he swore, she sometimes liked to say what she called bad words herself, because it shocked him. She had a large supply of bad words once she got working. "Don't worry so much, Jimmy" she added more gently. "It was a long time ago." More often than not she acted as if she wanted to protect him, from the image of herself -- herself in the past. She liked to keep only the bright side of herself turned towards him. She liked to shine."
The security going into Watson-Crick was very thorough, unlike the sloppy charade that took place at Martha Graham: the fear must have been that some fanatic would sneak in and blow up the best minds of the generation, thus dealing a crippling blow to something or other. There were dozens of CorpSeCorps men, complete with sprayguns and rubber clubs; they had Watson-Crick insignia, but you could tell who they really were. They took Jimmy's iris imprint and ran it through the system, and then two surly weightlifters pulled him aside for questioning. As soon as it happened he guessed why."
pg. 197
Crake grinned a lot while watching this site. For some reason he found it hilarious, whereas Jimmy did not. He couldn't imagine doing such a thing himself, unlike Carke, who said it showed flair to know when you'd had enough. But did Jimmy's reluctance mean he was a coward, or was it just that the organ music sucked? " |
"It is the strict adherence to daily routine that tends towards the maintenance of good morale and the preservation of sanity," he says out loud. He has the feeling he's quoting from a book, some obsolete, ponderous directive written in aid of European colonials running plantations of one kind or another. He can't recall ever having read such a thing, but that means nothing. There are a lot of blank spaces in his stub of a brain where memory used to be. Rubber plantations, coffee plantations, jute plantations. (What was jute?) They would have been todl to wear soalr topis, dress for dinner, refrain from raping the natives. It wouldn't have said raping. Refrain from fraternizing with the female inhabitants. Or, put some other way..." |
He feels the need to hear a human voice -- a fully human voice, like his own. Sometimes he laughs like a hyena or roars like a lion -- his idea of a hyena, his idea of a lion. He used to watch old DVDs of such creatures when he was a child: those animal-behaviour programs featuring copulation and growling and innards, and mothers licking their young. Why had he found them so reassuring?" |
People come here from all over the world—they shop around. Gender, sexual orientation, height, colour of skin and eyes—it’s all on order, it can all be done or redone.” |
Blood and Roses was a trading game, along the lines of Monopoly, The Blood side played with human atrocities for the counters, atrocities on a large scale: individual rapes and murder didn't count, there had to have been a large number of people wiped out. Massacres, genocides, that sort of thing. The Roses side played with human achievements. Artworks, scientific breakthroughs, stellar works of architecture, helpful inventions." |
"I am not my childhood," Snowman says out loud. He hates these replays. He can't turn them off, he can't change the subject, he can't leave the room. What he needs is more inner discipline, or a mystic syllable he could repeat over and over to tune himself out. What were those things called? Mantras. They'd had that in grade school. Religion of the Week." |
Every time the women appear, Snowman is astonished all over again. They're every known colour from deepest black to whitest white, they're various heights, but each one of them is admirably proportioned. Each is sound of tooth, smooth of skin. No ripples of fat around their waists, no bulges, no dimpled orange-skin cellulite on their thighs. No body hair, no bushiness. They look like retouched fashion photos, or ads for a high-prices workout program." |
You rolled the virtual dice and either a Rose or a Blood item would pop up. If it was a Blood item, the Rose player had a chance to stop the atrocity from happening, but he had to put up a Rose item in exchange. The atrocity would then vanish from history, or at least the history recorded on the screen. The Blood player could acquire a Rose item, but only by handing over an atrocity, thus leaving himself with less ammunition and the Rose player with more." |
The children cried at night, no loudly. They cried to themselves. They were frightened: they didn't know where they were going, and they had been taking away from what they knew. Also, said Oryx, they had no more love, supposing they'd had some in the first place. But they had a money value: they represented a cash profit to others. They must have sensed that -- sensed they were worth something." |
Now he can feel Oryx floating towards him through the air, as if on soft feathery wings. She's landing now, settling; she's very close to him, stretched out on her side just a skin's distance away. Miraculously she can fit onto the platform beside him, although it isn't a large platform. If he had a candle or a flashlight he'd be able to see her, the slender outline of her, a pale glow against the darkness. If he put out his hand he could touch her; bu that would make her vanish." |
These men all had ideas about what should e in their movie. They wanted things in the background, chairs or trees, or they wanted ropes or screaming, or shoes. Sometimes they would say, Just do it, I'm paying for it, or things like that, because everything in the movies had a price. Every hair bow, every flower, every object, every gesture. If the men thought up something new, there would have to be a discussion about how much that new thing ought to cost. |
She herself would rather have had her mother's love -- the love she still continued to believe in, the love that had followed her through the jungle in the form of a bird so she would not be too frightened or lonely -- but love was undependable, it came and then it went, so it was good to have a money value, because at least those who wanted to make a profit from you would make sure you were fed enough and not damaged too much. Also there were many who had neither love nor a money value, and having one of those things was better than having nothing." |
Only Oryx had not been impressed by this dire, feathered mother of his. So Jimmy, your mother went somewhere else? Too bad. Maybe she had some good reasons. You thought of that? Oryx had neither pity for him nor self-pity. She was not unfeeling: on the contrary. But she refused to feel what he wanted her to feel. Was that the hook -- that he could never get from her what the other had given so freely? Was that her secret?" |
"Why do you want to talk about ugly things?" she said. Her voice was silvery, like a music box. She waved one hand in the air to dry the nails. "We should think only beautiful things, as much as we can. There is so much beautiful in the world if you look around. You are looking only at the dirt under your feet, Jimmy. It's not good for you." |
Jimmy found that his face got redder and his voice got squeakier the more outrageous Crake became. He hated that. "When any civilization is dust and ashes," he said, "art is all that's left over. Images, words, music. Imaginative structures. Meaning -- human meaning, that is -- defined by them. You have to admit that." |
"Nature is to zoos as God is to churches." |
Week #2: Speculative Fiction
Day #3: Socratic Seminar
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Socratic Seminar topic #1:
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Socratic Seminar topic #2:
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Socratic Seminar topic #3:
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Socratic Seminar topic #4:
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Socratic Seminar topic #5:
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Socratic Seminar topic #6:
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Day #4:
Day #5:
Week #3:
Day #6:
Day #7: ESSAY DUE
Discussion Questions | |
File Size: | 20 kb |
File Type: | docx |
Character Analysis Essay | |
File Size: | 152 kb |
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Day #8: MOCK IOC
Week #4:
Day #9: Socratic Seminar
Socratic Seminar Prep | |
File Size: | 1195 kb |
File Type: | pptx |
Socratic Seminar Self Assessment | |
File Size: | 30 kb |
File Type: | doc |
Day #10: Teach the Class
Spring Break Bonus Assignment:
Theme Poster Rubric | |
File Size: | 32 kb |
File Type: | doc |