 Objective:
In the last lesson you evaluated the author's ideas and themes,
made generalizations and drew conclusions about those ideas
and themes. In this lesson you just add some stretch to those
skills, and apply generalizations or conclusions to situations
outside the story itself. Here is where you draw on other
things you know and make connections between what you read
and life. It is where you see the threads connecting what
you read to your great big world. It is where you respond
to the themes and ideas in the story and apply them to yourself
and to life!
This lesson requires your own understanding, analysis, evaluation
of what the author is saying to you, and also asks for your
own input, ideas and response to what the author is saying.
Your ideas are important and the connections you make with
the author's ideas are what make reading relevant, meaningful
and rich!
-
Review the meaning of evaluating
ideas, drawing conclusions, and making generalizations.
- Identify strategies to help you extend ideas and
themes beyond the story or poem or passage.
-
Practice making connections
of ideas, themes, conclusions, generalizations from the
text to your life.
- Practice responding to ideas, themes, conclusions,
and generalizations from the story, poem, or passage.
- Score and evaluate
your answers.
Vocabulary:
These words will be used in this lesson. They might be quite
familiar to you, or you might want some review. For review,
just click the Helpful Tools button and open Vocabulary.
| Theme or idea |
Evaluate (decide, judge) |
Generalization |
Conclusion |
Tips and Tools:
If you have completed
Lesson 9, you will be familiar with the concepts of
theme, evaluating, making generalizations, and drawing
conclusions. There is just one addition to make:
Extending ideas from the story to a bigger arena:
Life!
Questions
to think about to make connections between a literary
passage and your life:
-
Is a character just like me (or NOT like
me?) in some way? Do I know anyone who is like the character?
Who and how are they alike?
-
Have I ever been in a similar
situation, or faced a similar conflict? What
was it? How did I resolve it? Did I act/think
like the character or not?
- What would I do if I were in the same situation?
How would I act? What would I say? How would I
solve the problem the character faces?
- Do I know people who have faced a similar situation; how
did they solve the problem?
- What lesson did the character learn? Have I
learned a similar lesson at sometime, but maybe
from a different situation?
- What made the character act in a certain way or feel a
certain way? Have I ever acted like that; what was the situation?
Have I ever felt like that; what was the situation?
Basically, you are saying, "I recognize
that action, thought, lesson, situation, feeling!"
and actively making a connection between the
ideas in a passage and what has happened to you
or someone you know or something you know about.
You are extending the author's ideas from the story
to a bigger picture - human behavior and life.
|
Responding to a story:
|
Questions to ask to figure
out your response to an idea or theme presented by
an author:
- How does the character's actions, thoughts, words, decision,
make me feel?
- What are words that describe my feelings when I read about
a character's experience?
- How would I feel in a similar situation?
- Can I understand what the author is describing about how
a character reacts or feels in an event in the story?
- Can I identify with the character facing a problem?
|
In the next section, you'll see some examples of how the Tips
and Tools will help you extend ideas from narrative
passages to real life.
Example
1 >>
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