After finishing our novel unit over The Lord of the Flies, we will spend the next few weeks focused on short stories. As we read, students will continue to develop their ability to infer, particularly as they look toward context clues to help them make these successful inferences. It is important that students are able to read "between the lines" and use the information that they do know to help them make accurate predictions. We will also be looking at characterization in these short stories and examining how the character themselves use the details from the text to form inferences - both correct and incorrect.
We are also taking a closer look at conflict and working to identify the types of conflict that are present. Students have learned about the external conflict - Man vs. Man; Man vs. Nature; Man vs. Society - as well as internal conflict - Man vs. Self. The students have spent time developing 4 square conflict charts to illustrate these types of conflict while also learning that most stories will have multiple conflicts occurring and that those conflicts will change as the story progresses. In addition, we are continuing to develop our vocabulary and writing skills. Students will be working with specific vocabulary terms from the stories to help broaden their own language usage.
One of our primary writing goals this year is to help students find their voice as writers while also understanding the importance of supporting their own ideas with examples from the text (and later on, from their own research). Students are beginning a writing assignment this week based on "The Most Dangerous Game" where they will be expected to support their thoughts on the double meaning of the story's title with specific quotes from the story. This skill will continue to be developed throughout the year in a wide variety of writing assignments of varying lengths.
No comments:
Post a Comment