Objectives:
Students will be able to Interpret the connotative meaning of a text.
Common Core State Standards:
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.8.3: Analyze how particular lines of dialogue or incidents in a story or drama propel the action, reveal aspects of a character, or provoke a decision.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.8.4: Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone.
Activities:
Have a discussion to review the meanings of connotation and denotation. These vocabulary words will have been analyzed previously.
With these words in mind, students read along as they listen to a reading of “Jorge the Church Janitor Finally Quits.” They were to read it as homework the night before.
Small group discussion: Ask students to share if they thought the character, Jorge, was a sympathetic(thumbs up), unsympathetic(thumbs down) character or somewhere in between(one thumb up, one thumb down). Once all students have indicated a stance, have students get into small groups to discuss their answers. In order to chunk the work, groups will be assigned one stanza to work on. Remind students to think about how connotation plays a role in how we interpret texts. The teacher will walk around to facilitate when needed.
Students will then pick a group member to share out. If students are getting stuck, the teacher will provide “sentence stems,” posting them in the front of class for all to see.
Class discussion: teacher will facilitate a discussion on the final action of Jorge. Guiding questions:
Using thumbs, “Was Jorge quitting positive, negative, or somewhere in between?”
Connecting the first discussion to this discussion, “How does the connotation in the text reflect these answers?”
Assessment:
Formative: Students will be assessed when they share out to the larger group. The teacher will also be looking for students’ interpretations of connotative meaning while walking around the small group discussions.
Rational:
In this lesson, students will be interpreting the connotative meaning in “Jorge the Church Janitor Finally Quits.” I will be using the UDBW method because literary interpretation has much to do with how the reader and the author feel. When we allow students to express how they feel about a character or text, we are giving them the opportunity to draw from their own experiences. I start out by asking my students if they sympathize with the main character or if they do not. Feelings are immediate, and you cannot be wrong about how you feel. This gives students the confidence to participate and gives them autonomy in their learning. From there, I ask students to look for the use of connotative words and phrases that help to validate what they are feeling. These activities will help students connect to the text and go beyond surface level reading.
Nice work, Sarah. I really appreciate how you use this method to help students move into a closer examination of the relationship between emotion and connotation.
ReplyDeleteHi Sarah,
ReplyDeleteI think your lesson is really good! But I have a suggestion. I feel that it is redundant to have students read the poem for homework the night before. The poem should not take any longer than 3 minutes to read, and you will read them the poem again in class anyway the next day. If students already read the poem, why not have them immediately go to small group discussion? That way, they would have more time to discuss and you can spend more time on other areas in the lesson. Or, you could keep the reading as homework, but begin class with a quiz to see if students actually did their homework.
Hi Sarah,
ReplyDeleteI like this lesson that you’ve put together! I like that you have students read along with a recording, as it may be beneficial for students to not only read what’s in front of them, but to hear it, too. I could see this fitting into a larger poetry unit, perhaps, where students are digging into figurative language and learning how to read poems intentionally and deeply. The up-down-both-why method could be present throughout the unit and act as a kind of scaffolding as students get used to reading and analyzing poetry.