WEEK SIX: Days Four and Five (away at Senior Retreat)
Literary Unit Theme:
Stages of Life
Essential Question:
What turning points determine our individual paths to adulthood?
Unit Skills and Concepts:
Students will site lessons/concepts they learn about humankind and themselves by studying the lives of others in literature.Students will identify thematic elements of the "stages of life" in short stories, drama, and poetry.
Students will demonstrate the ability to understand and analyze significant details of plot development.
Students will demonstrate understanding of the climax in plot structure.
Students will analyze characters in fiction and drama - their words, actions, motivations, strengths, and weaknesses.
Students will identify and explain how tone, figurative language, and sensory devices in poetry effect a thematic look at a stage in life.
Today's Skills or Concepts:
After a review of the discussion of Erik Erikson's "Developmental Stage - Youth, Adolescence, Adulthood, and Old Age," the student will be able to record the stage's crisis, positive possible outcome, or negative possible outcome in Eudora Welty's "A Worn Path."
Students will be able to record and discuss developmental stage(s) - crisis, positive possible outcomes, or negative possible outcomes - in Truman Capote's "A Christmas Memory."
Mini-Lesson Outline:
A. Students will read Eudora Welty's "A Worn Path," pages 456 - 462 in the text. As they read, students will complete the "Stages of Life" reading log(s) appropriate to the story.
B. For their reading file, students will answer the following questions:
1. Where and when does the story take place?
2. What does Phoenix consider “the trial” in her journey?
3. What does she mistake for a man?
4. What is Phoenix’s purpose in going to the city?
5. Why doesn’t she answer the nurse’s questions?
C. Students will read Eudora Welty's "The Point of the Story" and discuss the assigned questions.
D. Students will read Truman Capote's "A Christmas Memory," pages 259 - 268 in the text. As they read, students will complete the "Stages of Life" reading log (s) appropriate to the story. Students will answer questions 1 - 5, listed on page 268 in the text.
E. Homework: Students will spend four to five hours in research during this time period of several days.
