Sandra K. Friday
Objective: Using a landscape-format graphic organizer, students will practice making observations and finding evidence showing how a character changes or grows in understanding, in a story. Because the focus of this unit is how children
grow up
through the experience of anxiety, students will specifically home in on how the main character is experiencing this emotion.
Once we have read the story and discussed the students' written responses to it, including our theme of anxiety, on a graphic organizer that is divided into six parts (three on the left and three on the right) they will enter on the top, left side their observations about Anpu's anxiety beginning with the prompt "At first," and on the right side, they will
copy
sentences or passages from the story that support their observations. I always ask them to include the page number where they found the support. The left, middle section has the prompt, "And then," and they will make observations about how Anpu's level and focus of anxiety changes in the middle of the story, or changes from how he is "At first." They also will back up these observations with sentences or passages copied from the story. On the left side of the graphic organizer, at the bottom, they will write their observations about Anpu's level of anxiety at the end of the story, using the prompt, But finally," and on the right side they will copy sentences or passages to back them up.
Ultimately, they will make a judgment, using their observations and evidence on the graphic organizer as to whether and how Anpu learned and grew in understanding about himself and the world as the result of the anxiety he experienced. This exercise could lead to observations on the lesson in the story that could be used to answer the
essential question
, "Is this an
effective
story?"