Miss Catherine’s

ClassFebruary 9-13, 2015

Today’s Objectives

• Daily Meeting…play a game…bring your homework!

• I-Pads…Audiobook section of the Collage.

• Reading Workshop…

I-Pads

• Open Audiobook app of the i-pad and use it to record your explanation for your collage.

• Publish it to my Audioboom account.

Pic Collage Audioboom

Reading Workshop

Please confirm that you have your Red Notebooks on your desks.

Readers of fiction…

• …need to understand plot structure in order to comprehend the text.

• Last week we learned about the different types of conflict in fiction stories.

• Today, we are going to learn about how a story’s plot is built around conflict and use a plot diagram to understand the structure of a story.

• Fiction texts typically have a conflict and a resolution as part of the plot.

• Stories also tend to have smaller problems that build the tension of the story and lead to the bigger problem or conflict.

Readers of fiction…• Let’s look at how

the plot can be represented visually.

• Who can read for me each point on this diagram?

• We will return to The Can Man, examine the plot, and fill in the diagram to represent the structure.

Readers of fiction…• As we start at

the beginning, what information are we given early on about the characters?

• How are the characters introduced?

• When do we notice the program?

Readers of fiction…• While there is

usually one major problem in fiction stories, there are often several other smaller problems that build tension.

• Let’s think about some of the smaller problems.

Readers of fiction…• We’ve used

this plot diagram to help us tease out the plot and find the arc of the story—rising action, climax, and falling action.

• Now it is your turn to give it a try with “Seeking a Hidden Hive.”

Readers of fiction…

• Revisit the story, “Seeking a Hidden Hive” to complete the plot diagram.

• Then we’ll come back together to share.

• When you have this structure in mind, it helps you have a better overall understanding of the flow of the story.

Readers of fiction…• As readers of

fiction we need to have an understanding of the arc of fiction—background information with a problem, rising action, a climax, falling action and a resolution.

• We will encounter this structure again and again in our lives as readers.

5-Minute Break

Reading Workshop

Please confirm that you have your Red Notebooks on your desks.

Readers…• …uncover the theme of the story to build

deeper understanding of the story and the world.

• Earlier in this unit, we discussed a possible theme for The Can Man.

• Today, we are going to return to the conversation about theme and grow our thinking about some of our other mentor texts and their themes.

• We we discussed, a theme is a larger idea about the world that a piece of literature addresses. We name themes with single words, such as friendship, loneliness and identity.

Readers…• We know that

many texts share similar themes.

• Therefore, once we name a theme of a story, we then ask ourselves: What does this particular story saw about this theme?

Readers…• Let’s return to

Journey.• When we

consider the themes addressed in a story, we ask ourselves some questions.

• Let’s use these questions to guide us in examining the themes we notice in Journey.

Readers…• The 1st question I

ask is: What is the conflict?

• The central conflict seems to be that Journey is struggling with the fact that his mother left him (and his sister, too).

• The conflict really is one within himself, or person vs. self.

Readers…

• I then ask the 2nd question: What themes do the conflicts reveal?

• I can see a few possible themes in this text: adandonment, family and indentity.

Readers…• I think this

because the conflict stems from Journey’s abandonment and how this abandonment impacts his identify and his family.

• The next question is: What does the text say about these themes?

Readers…• The character’s

name, Journey and the title of the text symbolize the journey that he goes through in the story to find out what it means to be in a family, discover individual identity within that family, and deal with being abandoned by his mother.

Readers…• I think the text

really says that part of our identity, or who we are, comes from the experiences we go through with our families.

• Now you and your partner are going to have an opportunity to do the same work with uncovering theme.

Readers…• Let’s examine the

themes in The Raft.

• With your partners, discuss The Raft and fill in the next row on our chart for this text.

• Discuss and jot down the conflict of the text, the themes the conflict reveals, and what the text says about those themes.

Readers…• Identifying the

theme is only one layer to thinking about theme.

• When we push ourselves to uncover themes and then dig deeper to uncover what those themes mean within the context of the text and the world, we enhance our understanding of the theme and the text itself.

5-Minute Break

Writing Workshop

Before we begin, please make sure that you have your white binders on

your desks.