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Elements of Literature with Mr. Taylor (Part 2)

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Elements of Literature with Mr. Taylor (Part 1)

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PIE paragraph recipe :)

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Paragraph structure when using quotes from a story

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See how to find and use the three rhetorical appeals in arguments and advertising.

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Similes and metaphors

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An active reading strategy for articles or textbooks is annotation. Think for a moment about what that word means. It means to add notes (an-NOTE-tate) to text that you are reading, to offer explanation, comments or opinions to the author's words. Annotation takes practice, and the better you are at it, the better you will be at reading complicated articles.

Where to Make Notes

First, determine how you will annotate the text you are about to read.

If it is a printed article, you may be able to just write in the margins. A colored pen might make it easier to see than black or even blue.

If it is an article posted on the web, you could also you , which is a highlighting and annotating tool that you can use on the website and even share your notes with your instructor. Other note-taking plug-ins for web browsers might serve a similar function.

If it is a textbook that you do not own (or wish to sell back), use post it notes to annotate in the margins.

You can also use a notebook to keep written commentary as you read in any platform, digital or print. If you do this, be sure to leave enough information about the specific text you're responding to that you can find it later if you need to. (Make notes about page number, which paragraph it is, or even short quotes to help you locate the passage again.)

What Notes to Make

Now you will annotate the document by adding your own words, phrases, and summaries to the written text. For the following examples, the article " Guinea Worm Facts " was used.

1. Scan the document you are annotating. Some obvious clues will be apparent before you read it, such as titles or headers for sections. Read the first paragraph. Somewhere in the first (or possibly the second) paragraph should be a BIG IDEA about what the article is going to be about. In the margins, near the top, write down the big idea of the article in your own words. This shouldn't be more than a phrase or a sentence. This big idea is likely the article's thesis.

2. Underline topic sentences or phrases that express the main idea for that paragraph or section. You should never underline more than 5 words, though for large paragraphs or blocks of text, you can use brackets. (Underlining long stretches gets messy, and makes it hard to review the text later.) Write in the margin next to what you've underlined a summary of the paragraph or the idea being expressed.

3. Connect related ideas by drawing arrows from one idea to another. Annotate those arrows with a phrase about how they are connected.

4. If you encounter an idea, word, or phrase you don't understand, circle it and put a question mark in the margin that indicates an area of confusion. Write your question in the margin.
"Depending on the outcome of the assessment, the commission recommends to WHO which formerly endemic countries should be declared free of transmission, i.e., certified as free of the disease." -> ?? What does this mean? Who is WHO?

5. Anytime the author makes a statement that you can connect with on a personal level, annotate in the margins a summary of how this connects to you. Write any comments or observations you feel appropriate to the text. You can also add your personal opinion.
"Guinea worm disease incapacitates victims for extended periods of time making them unable to work or grow enough food to feed their families or attend school." -> My dad was sick for a while and couldn't work. This was hard on our family.

6. Place a box around any term or phrase that emphasizes scientific language. These could be words you are not familiar with or will need to review later. Define those words in the margins.
"Guinea worm disease is set to become the second human disease in history, after smallpox, to be eradicated." -> Eradicated = to put an end to, destroy

To summarize how you will annotate text:

1. Identify the BIG IDEA
2. Underline topic sentences or main ideas
3. Connect ideas with arrows
4. Ask questions
5. Add personal notes
6. Define technical words

Like many skills, annotating takes practice. Remember that the main goal for doing this is to give you a strategy for reading text that may be more complicated and technical than what you are used to.

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An active reading strategy for articles or textbooks is annotation. Think for a moment about what that word means. It means to add notes (an-NOTE-tate) to text that you are reading, to offer explanation, comments or opinions to the author's words.

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Purposeful Annotation: A “Close Reading” Strategy that Makes Sense to My StudentsBy Dave Stuart Jr.

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Purposeful Annotation: A “Close Reading” Strategy that Makes Sense to My StudentsBy Dave Stuart Jr.

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If you look at my original close reading post, you'll see I was basically using the phrase "close reading" to refer to annotation.

It took me a year or more to realize that I was saying one buzzwordy thing to mean a lot of explicit, less confusing things that readers do when grappling with a text. I blame my error on allowing myself to get sucked into the unfortunate vortex that was the buzzwordification of close reading.

If you're new to the blog, though, keep in mind that while I do try not to take the educational establishment too terribly seriously (instead opting to occasionally poke fun at us), when it comes to helping students flourish in the long-term, I'm dead serious.

So when I call close reading a buzzword or write the term's obituary, I don't want to give you the impression that we should let ourselves cynically dismiss the idea that reading is often hard, analytical - and yes, even "close" - work, especially when we're dealing with complex, college- or career-level texts assigned by a teacher. We still need to teach kids, across the disciplines, how to wrestle with assigned texts, seeking, like Jacob, to get whatever blessing they have to bestow.

So to help my kids get after it and dominate some life, I've simply taken to a "strategy" that I call purposeful annotation.

The big idea is this: what we do when reading should align with

When my students have a text they can write on, the idea, then, is to annotate in a way that supports our purpose for reading and the parameters of our post-reading task (keep in mind that the purpose and the task should line up). Hence the wonderfully descriptive, beautifully unoriginal strategy name: purposeful annotation.

As an example, let's say I'm helping my students think through the task of purposefully annotating a Kelly Gallagher-esque article of the week. In that case, the purpose I set for my students' reading is, as The Gallagher put it in a recent post's comments section, to simply become smarter about the world, and the post-reading task is that they need to write a thoughtful 1+ page response.

In that example, knowing that I want to dominate that post-reading task and that I simply need to get myself engaged with the probably unfamiliar and certainly unchosen content, I, as a student, ought to make annotations that begin to respond to the text. Of course, I can't respond to something I don't understand, and so sometimes, especially when faced with a particularly befuddling sentence, paragraph, or section in the article, I ought to slow down, reread, and then annotate a brief summary or paraphrase of the challenging section in the margin.

So, two things we can annotate, naturally, are 1) our responses to a text, and 2) our paraphrases/summaries of bits of the text we had to wrestle with. These logically line up with what I'm going to do with the text after reading, as well as my purpose for reading it in the first place.

The idea here is that I'm writing these things in the margins - these purposeful annotations - not simply for a grade or because the teacher said, " Do a close reading. " I'm doing it to help me dominate:

1. the task of understanding and learning from the text while reading (this is one of my ultimate goals for my students - that they'll read the texts I assign with self-kindled, habituated, cultivated curiosity, engaging with it for learning's sake), and

2. the task of doing a thing with that text after reading (if my head is on straight as a teacher, there's going to be a piece of writing or a piece of speaking that every student will do with any given text).

This obviously isn't as broad of a strategy as close reading, and honestly, that's why I like it - and my students do, too.

The core idea is that annotation should help the reader during and after reading. It should serve, as my friend and work-sister Erica Beaton has well put it, as the leaving of cyanide-laced breadcrumbs (okay, the cyanide bit is mine - but seriously, that's the right way to put it, because breadcrumbs alone get eaten by birds, while cyanide-laced breadcrumbs leave a nicely traceable, bird-covered trail).

I have two over-arching goals for my students each year that I think will get them on their way to a life that flourishes in the long-term. I want to help as many kids as possible to figure out

1. why school matters to them and their lives, and then

2. how to dominate the challenges of school and, more broadly, life.

So much of my thinking is still shaped by one of the central ideas of Jerry Graff's Clueless in Academe - far too many students simply don't understand school, and frustratingly, that simply need not be so. A big part of helping kids "get" academia is showing them how argument is the essence of thought and then teaching them arguespeak across the school day - They Say, I Say remains the best text in the world for helping with that. (Please note that I support my reading habit through Amazon affiliate commissions - if I link to a book anywhere in this blog article, it means I'll get a small gift card to Amazon if you make a purchase through that link. This costs you nothing extra but keeps me hooked up with new books to read. Thank you!)

For me, Graff pointed out both the problem - academia does a great job obscuring itself to students - and a large part of the solution. Arguespeak is the language of power not just in school, but in the world at large - we're foolish not to teach kids that.

Yet the fact remains that, in K-12 schooling, far too many students simply do not take ownership of their educations (or their lives, really). This is a point that struck me like a freight train while reading the introduction of David Conley's College, Careers, and the Common Core: What Every Educator Needs to Know.

From Conley's book:

The [students] who had the greatest success were those who were willing to take some modicum of ownership of their learning and responsibility for their behavior. Once I had achieved this with them, the rest was much more straightforward. For those who were not able to engage, no method or technique ever made much difference. This lesson about the importance of ownership of learning never completely left me. Interestingly and unexpectedly, I had reached the conclusion that the social contract was a two-way street: society has a responsibility to create a level playing field, and individuals have a responsibility to take advantage of it.

I'm sure I'll write more on ownership of learning this year as it's a central burning question for my colleagues and me, but for the sake of this post suffice it to say that I believe the clearer we can be about what we ask kids to do and why we ask them to do it, the more academia becomes unobscured and the more likely it is that our students will come to a place where they can say, "Yes - schooling matters for me because _______________."

In short, I've found that the phrase purposeful annotation makes sense to my freshmen and explicitly shows them how to "work smarter not harder" when reading and doing something with a text.

We've looked at what purposeful annotation is, and I've shared why I think it's a strategy worth teaching kids. Now let's examine how to actually do the thing.

First, start with the end in mind

Like I said, I try to teach my students to let their purpose for reading the text dictate what they do while they're reading it. For my "what does this look like in a gradebook" readers (I feel you), I do consistently assign a grade to whether my students, at minimum, write 1-2 thoughtful, purpose-driven annotations in the margins of each page of a shorter complex text. ( I explain how I grade articles of the week in this post.)

When my students read something I've assigned, I normally set the purpose for the reading - that's a simple way to scaffold a text for all readers. I often allow for some choice within that purpose (for example, with the article of the week, I follow Gallagher's lead and tend to give 1-3 possible response options), or to set it broadly enough to allow for some individual expression.

With that said, here are the kinds of annotations I recommend kids try (remember, 1-2 thoughtful interactions per page) based on their purpose for reading.

If your purpose for reading is to learn the content:

Summarize a sentence or paragraph

Paraphrase a sentence or paragraph

Circle and define key words

If your purpose for reading is to end by responding to a specific prompt:

Annotate toward that prompt. If you're being asked to evaluate, make evaluative annotations. If you're being asked to analyze, make analytical annotations. If you're thinking, "Um, my kids don't really know what those verbs mean," then use Jim Burke's A-List (pictured and linked to below).

Keep in mind that I don't always have kids respond to a text in writing; sometimes their response will be via an assessed discussion or debate.

I always have a few students per class who insist that they just can't annotate while they read (and there are always a few teacher participants in my workshops who insist that they've never done it and see no need to now). Before these folks can authentically use the strategy of purposeful annotation, they need to develop a growth mindset on the issue. Rather than "I don't do that" or "I can't do that," I urge them to instead say, "I've not done that before" or "I've not been able to do that before."

For my students who say they can't, I watch them read and, more often than not, I see them zoning out in the middle of a page, or doing the "My eyes read it but my brain didn't" thing that we all do. Annotation, I've found, can help my students focus on a text, especially when that annotation is purposeful rather than "fill in the margins as much as you can."

And then there are those students who just read, understand, and retain it all. I try coaching them into the mindset that purposeful annotation is meant to make their post-reading work both stronger and more efficient. By choosing to annotate only portions of the text that they want to address further in the writing or speaking we'll be doing after reading, they're allowing their brain to leave those breadcrumbs on the page rather than keeping those notes in their brains (for an awesome article on how not writing things down keeps information in your brain's rehearsal loops, check this out.)

Time out: what about teachers who see no value in annotation?

I know some readers are coaches, administrators, PLC leaders, department chairs, and so on, and if you've been trying to push close reading or annotation at your school, you've probably run into resistant folks. Here are a few things to think about:

1. Are you referring to annotation as close reading? See the video below (or click here to view at Youtube).

2. Instead of requiring all teachers to use a complicated coding system when teaching their kids to annotate, empower them with the idea of purposeful annotation. The means need to fit the ends.

3. Think deeply about the why. Use my "Why teach..." section above to help.

4. Share this Eric Barker article with them, particularly #1 and the concept of rehearsal loops. Annotation allows us to get our 1-2 "I could expand on these in the post-reading writing or speaking task" thoughts on paper and out of our brains' rehearsal loops. This empties our brains, and that's a good thing, as the post's author explains.

Fight relentlessly against this becoming busywork

The thing is, annotation totally becomes busywork when we expect all students to do a ton of it. Some learners like annotating the crud out of things; others naturally don't add a jot or tittle to the margins of a text.

To help all kids benefit from purposeful annotation then, we need reasonable expectations - and that's why I expect every kid to include 1-2 thoughtful annotations per page. "Thoughtful," you say. "Wow. That's so incredibly descriptive, Dave. Thank you. For nothing." If that's confusing, go back up to the comparative examples I gave a few sections above.

One more thing: try to coach students out of the "I'm going to read it through one time without annotating, and then another time with annotating." If they're doing this because they're confused on the first read-through, show them how to break down difficult sections of a text and paraphrase or summarize the gist - this kind of annotating aids comprehension. On the other hand, if they're doing this because they just don't feel like it or they don't like it, we want to help them get the hang of annotating as they read, keeping their purpose for reading in the front of their mind.

The point of having kids do this is helping them efficiently internalize a purpose for reading, read toward that purpose, and then write or speak in line with that purpose.

Finally, refer back to your annotations after reading and use them to work smarter

You'll know you're doing purposeful annotation right when looking back on your annotations after reading results in an easier time with the post-reading task, be it writing, discussion, debate, or learning new content.

Unlike back in the day when I would tell my kids to close read an article, I feel good and clear when I teach them and expect them to purposefully annotate instead. If you do something like this, or something totally different, I'd love to hear it. And, as always, your critiques are welcome, too. So much of what I share on DaveStuartJr.com is the epitome of "rough draft thinking," down to the smallest, most annoying typos 🙂 (Sorry about those.)

Also, if you're wanting to dig deeper into dominating assigned texts, check out Harvard's six reading habits for "thinking-intensive" reading.

Love you guys,

Dave

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Purposeful Annotation: A "Close Reading" Strategy that Makes Sense to My Students - Dave Stuart Jr.

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If you look at my original close reading post, you'll see I was basically using the phrase "close reading" to refer to annotation. It took me a year or more to realize that I was saying one buzzwordy thing to mean a lot of explicit, less confusing things that readers do when grappling with a ...

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To compare is to examine how things are similar, while to contrast is to see how they differ. A compare and contrast essay therefore looks at the similarities of two or more objects, and the differences.

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Many students tell us that they don't know what to check for once they have finished their essay. They usually know to check for grammar, punctuation, and spelling, but other details are often seen as less important because of the high emphasis placed on these problems in their early education.

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Some instructors prefer that you only write about the differences between two things, while others want you to focus on explaining the similarities as well. Either way, you'll need to make sure that your thesis statement reflects your instructor's expectations.

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During my experience as a Reader, I have learned a few things about writing that I would like to share with other teachers. I hope you'll find my observations helpful as you think about encouraging your students to do their best on the writing section of the AP English Literature Exam.

Make a plan.

Students should not begin writing until they fully comprehend the prompt and/or the passage. Mere parroting of the prompt often leads to floundering around instead of developing a clear direction. I recommend that you advise your students to write directly on the passage and make quick notes and outlines in the margins. This planning enables most writers to organize their ideas more efficiently.

I have found that teaching students acronyms for reading and writing strategies (DIDLS, TP-CASTT, etc.) can work wonders. (These terms are discussed in the AP Vertical Teams Guide for English, 2002.) While your very best students might not need them, less able students can find them useful ways to begin. I often suggest that my own students not only mark up the passage, but also use the margins to fill in some of the acronym steps. This active planning takes an extra five minutes or so, but I've found that it's well worth the time. Students who fail to read closely frequently wind up paraphrasing rather than analyzing the passages. Planning helps them stay focused.

Begin quickly and directly.

Although AP Readers are instructed to read the entire essay and not to be prejudiced by a weak introduction, a strong opening paragraph can be a real asset to a student's paper. When answering the free-response part of the AP English Exams, writers should answer the question quickly and avoid beginning with ideas that do not relate directly to the prompt. The following hypothetical introduction for Question 1 on the 2002 AP English Literature Exam provides an example of what not to do:

"All people at some point in time have encountered a great deal of trouble in their lives. I know of so many people who have been embarrassed by parents that will wave at you from across a room. I have a friend who told me that her parents did this very same thing."

Such generalities often signal a writer's inability to respond in a thoughtful manner, suggesting that the rest of the paper also may be incoherent or rambling. The Reader might begin to suspect that the student is just trying to bluff his or her way through the question. One-sentence perfunctory introductions-especially ones that repeat the wording of the prompt-also work poorly, suggesting to the Reader that the student isn't particularly interested or doesn't care.

I recommend that teachers tell students to create an introduction strong enough to earn a grade of 3 all by itself. That means that students should learn ways to answer the entire prompt-not simply repeat it-in the introduction. This indicates to the Reader that the paper could be heading into the upper-half zone. One way to help students improve their beginning is by providing them with several introductory paragraphs from papers that have earned a wide range of scores and asking them to identify stronger and weaker openings. (Sample papers are available on the Exam homepage for the course.) Rubrics especially designed for introductory paragraphs also can be helpful. After having students collect examples of several strong openings, you may want to ask them to develop their own rubric for introductory paragraphs.

Use paragraphs and topic sentences.

Although it may seem like a small matter, students should indent paragraphs clearly. A paper without indentation or with unclear indentation often confuses a Reader. Paragraphs create the fundamental structure of the essay, and without them good ideas can get muddled. Most essays I've seen that do not use paragraphs tend to be full of confused and rambling thoughts.

Many writers find topic sentences a useful tool both for organizing paragraphs and also for helping Readers navigate through the essay.

Use quotations and explain them.

To score at least a 3, students would be wise to make use of pertinent references from the text. Encourage them to use specific quotations to back up their assertions. However, remind them that they must explain their quotes clearly and demonstrate how they are relevant to the question. It is important for young writers to realize that offering long quotes without explanation bogs down the essay and can give the undesirable impression that the student is trying to fill up space rather than answer the prompt!

Create variety.

Short, choppy sentences without variety indicate a student who has little background in grammar and style, perhaps someone who has read and written minimally. Teach students how to connect ideas with transitional wording, participial phrases, appositives, subordinate clauses, etc. I ask my students to imagine children making the same tower or castle each time they played with blocks. They soon would become bored. Likewise, both writers and readers get bored when everything is formulaic, lacking some individual pizzazz! I suggest asking them to experiment with different sorts of syntactical devices to help them develop a sense of style.

Find the right word.

An arsenal of appropriate vocabulary and analytical wording reveals a brilliant mind at work, but writers should make certain that the words fit. Some students stick in big words just to sound scholarly. Ironically, some of their papers score only a 2 because they lack clarity and sometimes say nothing of relevance to the prompt.

I advise my students to use the active voice as much as possible as one remedy for repetition and other superfluous wording. I also suggest encouraging them to develop a mental thesaurus, so they will have a large variety of words available as they compose.

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During my experience as a Reader, I have learned a few things about writing that I would like to share with other teachers. I hope you'll find my observations helpful as you think about encouraging your students to do their best on the writing section of the AP English Literature Exam.

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Witch Attacks Bad Baby Puppy & Kitty Victoria Annabelle Freak Daddy

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Uploaded by LAUREN SHELLEY on 2015-03-26.

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9. Mirror Image (short story analysed in item 5)

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9. Mirror Image (short story analysed in item 5)

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" Cold Spots," one of three winners of the Pseudopod Flash Fiction Contest IV, 2016. Listen here!

-Second Prize, 2002 Sunday Star Short Story Contest

" Mirror Image," published in the anthology, Imprints, Gage Educational Publishers, Toronto, 2001

-Reprinted in Short Stories from Canada, Cornelsen (Germany), 2005 and others.

About "Mirror Image"

"Mirror Image" was very first short story I ever published and it is also the one that has been republished the most times and the one I get the most questions about. Basically, it's a meditation on identity and body image from the point of view of a teen girl who has had the first ever brain transplant. The story has been republished in Canada, the US and Germany and I've even received letters about it from as far away as Bhutan. Now it's been made into a short film by Ryerson student Fay Eagles called "Alice Was Here." I went to the first public screening in May 2010 and thought she did a great job!

Mirror Image FAQ
What inspired you to write this story?
It's a boring answer, but the idea for "Mirror Image" came from a university writing assignment called, "Write About Someone Who's Had a Brain Transplant." At first it was about a grown woman who'd had the operation, and most of the conversations were between her and her husband. The story explored some interesting ideas, but as a whole, it just didn't work. A few years later, when I started writing for young adults, I had the idea to lower the age of the main character, and suddenly the story came together. Suddenly, what Alice was going through became a metaphor for the identity issues most young adults face at that age, and all her questions-Am I beautiful now and what does that mean? Why is everyone treating me differently when I feel the same? Am I the same? Who am I?-began to resonate on two levels. Creating the foil of a twin sister was another change I made from the original and one I think really helped to highlight the themes.
Did you name her Alice because of Alice in Wonderland?

Yup.
What is the climax of the story? What is the point of view?
These are actual queries I got recently. The writer also asked me to answer by the next day. My answer? I'm very glad you are reading my story, but please do your own homework.

Other Short Stories

Other short stories I've written have been published in the Toronto Star, where I have twice won second prize in the Sunday Star Short Story competition, and in the White Pine Award nominated collection, Up All Night.

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" Cold Spots," one of three winners of the Pseudopod Flash Fiction Contest IV, 2016. Listen here! -Second Prize, 2002 Sunday Star Short Story Contest " Mirror Image," published in the anthology, Imprints, Gage Educational Publishers, Toronto, 2001 -Reprinted in Short Stories from Canada, Cornelsen (Germany), 2005 and others.

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6. The literary analysis lecture (video)

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6. The literary analysis lecture (video)

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How to write a Literary Essay Introduction and Thesis

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Adapted Power Point for English 11 relating to essay writing for the short story Mirror Image by Lena Coakley Credit to http://www.slideshare.net/Jennabates/ho...

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4. Writing an introduction to an analysis paper (video)

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4. Writing an introduction to an analysis paper (video)

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HACC Central Pennsylvania 's Community College

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How to write an Introduction to a Literary Analysis Paper

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This video discusses the steps to take when writing an introdcution to a literary analysis paper

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This handout provides examples and description about writing papers in literature. It discusses research topics, how to begin to research, how to use information, and formatting.

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I = illustration (quote)