In the Language Arts section of the CAPT exam, students are asked to respond to a quote from the story. Many students only tell what they think the quote means -- they paraphrase the quote. This exercise will help students think about the importance of a quote to the story and the characters.
OBJECTIVES:
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To enhance critical thinking skills
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To guide students to higher order thinking
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To encourage students to elaborate on their thoughts and express them in writing
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To understand the difference between the meaning of something and its importance
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To facilitate cooperative learning
PROCEDURE:
1. Students will copy the following quote from the board. This quote comes from
MAUS II.
“High up I saw a few hooks to chain up maybe the animals. I had still the thin blanket they gave me. I climbed to somebody’s shoulder and hooked it strong. In this way I can rest and breathe a little. This saved me” (85).
2. Students will answer the following questions in pairs and write down notes from their answers.
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What does this quote mean?
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What does this quote show about the speaker’s personality?
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What makes you say that?
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Why would the writer want us to think this about the speaker’s personality? What is the writer trying to get us to understand?
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What does this quote show about the message or theme of the text?
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Does this quote show the conflict of the story? If it does, how?
3. Students will then use their notes and write their own individual responses. Responses must be at least 2 pages.
4. I will then have students cut their response in half to a page. They must take out all unnecessary words, so they learn how to write concisely. They only get a page to answer on the CAPT test.