“The Cask of Amontillado”districtartifacts.dadeschools.net/Standard 3/3.03/Sample... · 2014-03-25 · Reading Task Students will silently read “The Cask of Amontillado,”

99thth Grade GradeELA Exemplar LessonELA Exemplar Lesson

“The Cask of Amontillado”By Edgar Allan Poe

McDougal Littell Literature, pp. 342 – 351Genre/Text Structure: Short Story

Reading Task

Students will silently read “The Cask of Amontillado,” by Edgar Allan Poe—first independently and then following along with the text, audio, or as the teacher/ skillful students read aloud.

Depending on the difficulties of a given text and the teacher ’s knowledge of the fluency abilities of students, the order of the student silent read and the teacher reading aloud with students following might be reversed.

It is particularly important for students to recognize the importance of comprehending what an author is saying in the text before they proceed to analysis of the text. Therefore allow all students the opportunity to interact with challenging text on their own as frequently and independently as possible.

Students will then reread specific passages in response to a set of concise, text-dependent questions that compel them to discover the author’s use of descriptive language which creates the mood as well as the verbal irony which creates the mood of the text.

Vocabulary Task

Most of the meanings of words in the exemplar text can be discovered by students from careful reading of the context in which they appear. Additional support is needed for the formal and antiquated language within the text.

Discussions will be used to model and reinforce how to learn vocabulary from contextual clues. Students will be accountable for engaging in this practice.

Underlined words are defined briefly for students to the right of the text in a separate column whenever the original text is reproduced. At times, this is all the support these defined words need. At other times, with more abstract words, the teacher will spend more time explaining and discussing them.

In subsequent close readings of passages of the text, high value academic ( ‘Tier Two’) words have been bolded to draw attention to them. Given how crucial vocabulary knowledge is for academic and career success, it is essential that these high value words be discussed and lingered over during the instructional sequence.

Writing Task

For Less-Proficient Writers to assist students in creating a monologue from Fortunato’s point of view. Encourage students to imagine themselves in Fortunato’s situation (buried alive), and have pairs or small groups of students share their thoughts and feelings orally before committing them to paper.

Writing Situation What do you think goes through Fortunato’s mind after he realizes what has happened to him? Why doesn’t he try to reason with Montresor?

Writing Directions Use what you know about Fortunato to write a three-to-five-paragraph monologue, retelling the last part of the story from his point of view.

Discussion Task

Students will discuss and write about the initial meaning they have made from reading “The Cask of Amontillado”. Scaffold the discussion with the question, “Why is Montresor successful in first luring Fortunato into the valults, and then keeping Fortunato in pursuit of the cask? Use details, examples, and information from the text to support your discussion.

Close Analytic Read of Exemplar Text

1. Think about what you think is the most important learning to be drawn from the text. Note this raw material for the culminating assignment and the focus point for other activities to build toward.

2. Determine the key ideas of the text. Create a series of questions structured to bring the reader to an understanding of these.

3. Locate the most powerful academic words in the text and integrate questions and discussions that explore their role into the set of questions above.

4. Take stock of what standards are being addressed in the series of questions above. Then decide if any other standards are suited to being focus for this text.

What Is The Teacher ’s

Role?

Close Analytic Read of Exemplar Text

5. Consider if there are any other academic words that students would profit from focusing on. Build discussion planning or additional questions to focus attention on them.

6. Find the sections of the text that will present the greatest difficulty and craft questions that support students in mastering these sections. These could be sections with difficult syntax, particularly dense information, and tricky transitions or places that offer a variety of possible inferences.

7. Develop a culminating activity around the idea or learning identified in #1. A good task should reflect mastery of one or more of the standards, involve writing, and be structured to be done by students independently.

What is the teacher ’s

role? Close Analytic Read of Exemplar Text

•The goal of this exemplar lesson is to provide students an opportunity to explore targeted passages of complex text.

•Through teacher Read Alouds, student independent reading and rereading, and scaffolded discussion of text-dependent questions, students will learn how an author ’s use of descriptive language creates mood in a short story.

•Vocabulary is learned from context and writing fosters deeper understanding of text.

•The lesson culminates in an evidentiary writing activity.

•Teachers may need to further scaffold the activities to address individual students’ needs depending on the intent of the lesson and specific learners’ needs.

Learning Objective

Rationale

• This lesson focuses on verbal irony and the creation of suspense.

• Particularly important is that students recognize the importance of comprehending what an author is saying in the text before they proceed to analysis of that text.

• The steps in this lesson help students build their reading skills in order to move from a summary level to an analytical and inferential understanding of the text.

Activate students' background knowledge judiciously.

Ask students how they would define conflicts.

Ask the following questions to engage students before reading: 1)Has anyone ever done anything to you that made you want to get revenge? What did they do? 2)Have you ever gotten revenge on someone for something they did to you? What did you do to them in return? Why did you feel a need to get revenge?

3) Explain how the revenge made you feel? Did you get caught? If you had gotten caught, would that have changed the feeling the revenge gave you? Explain. 4) Do acts of revenge ever resolve conflicts?

Background Knowledge

Students read selected text independently.

Paraphrase the text and identify examples of the verbal irony

Teacher / audio reads the text aloud as students follow along. (2nd Read)

Discuss and clarify the understanding of the text using the following text dependent question:

1. Why is Montresor successful in first luring Fortunato into the vaults, and then in keeping Fortunato in pursuit of the cask?

#1

The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could; but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge. You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that I gave utterance to a threat. At length I would be avenged; this was a point definitively settled—but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved, precluded the idea of risk. I must not only punish, but punish with impunity. A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong. A It must be understood, that neither by word nor deed had I given Fortunato cause to doubt my good-will. I continued, as was my wont, to smile in his face, and he did not perceive that my smile now was at the thought of his immolation.

Text-Dependent Questions for students to answer independently

Return to the text, and ask students a small set of guiding questions about the targeted section.

(Q1) Paraphrase the opening paragraph. Why does the narrator vow revenge? What does he consider a successful revenge?

If students need help…Encourage students to reread the paragraph. Then have them paraphrase it one or two sentences at a time.

Extend the Discussion What might the “thousand injuries” (line 1) refer to?

Students return to the text to read selected text independently.

Paraphrase and make inferences about the character to analyze the mood of the text.


Discuss and clarify the understanding of the text using the following text dependent question.

# 2

"A huge human foot d'or, in a field azure; the foot crushes a serpent rampant whose fangs are imbedded in the heel." "And the motto?" "Nemo me impune lacessit." "Good!" he said. The wine sparkled in his eyes and the bells jingled. My own fancy grew warm with the Medoc. We had passed through walls of piled bones, with casks and puncheons intermingling, into the inmost recesses of the catacombs. I paused again, and this time I made bold to seize Fortunato by an arm above the elbow. "The nitre!" I said: see it increases. It hangs like moss upon the vaults. We are below the river's bed. The drops of moisture trickle among the bones. Come, we will go back ere it is too late. Your cough" -- "It is nothing" he said; "let us go on. But first, another draught of the Medoc." I broke and reached him a flagon of De Grave. He emptied it at a breath. His eyes flashed with a fierce light. He laughed and threw the bottle upwards with a gesticulation I did not understand.



(Q2) In lines 108–114, note the sensory details and imagery that help you visualize the setting. What mood do they create?

Extend the Discussion What irony may there be in the narrator’s suggestion to Fortunato that the “go back ere it is too late” (line 114)?

Students read selected text independently.

Paraphrase the text and identify examples of the verbal irony


Discuss and clarify the understanding of the text using the following text dependent question:

# 3

"Be it so," I said, replacing the tool beneath the cloak, and again offering him my arm. He leaned upon it heavily. We continued our route in search of the Amontillado. We passed through a range of low arches, descended, passed on, and descending again, arrived at a deep crypt, in which the foulness of the air caused our flambeaux rather to glow than flame. At the most remote end of the crypt there appeared another less spacious. Its walls had been lined with human remains piled to the vault overhead , in the fashion of the great catacombs of Paris. Three sides of this interior crypt were still ornamented in this manner. From the fourth the bones had been thrown down, and lay promiscuously upon the earth, forming at one point a mound of some size. Within the wall thus exposed by the displacing of the bones, we perceived a still interior recess, in depth about four feet, in width three, in height six or seven. It seemed to have been constructed for no especial use in itself, but formed merely the interval between two of the colossal supports of the roof of the catacombs, and was backed by one of their circumscribing walls of solid granite.



(Q3) Examine Poe’s use of formal language in this passage, including sentence structure (syntax) and sentence types.

Have students write a one-paragraph response to this question: If Montresor and Fortuunato were truly close friends, would formal language be as effective in the telling of the story? Why or Why not?

Use context clues to figure out the meaning of words used in an unfamiliar way. 1.resolved (“-but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved…”): Often used to mean a solution to a problem, here it refers to making a decision.

2.promiscuously (“…lay promiscuously upon the earth..): Usually refers to lacking selectivity, here it refers to laying loosely on the ground.

Key Academic Vocabulary


Help students understand the formal and antiquated language used in the story by explaining the following sentences:

1.“The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could; but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge.” (Montresor had endured Fortunato’s humiliations, but now that he had insulted him, he swore revenge.)

2.“You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that I gave utterance to a threat. At length, I would be avenged;” (Montresor never said a threat to Fortunato; however, he would finally get justice or revenge from him.)

3. “A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser.”(The wrong cannot be fixed if the person doing the revenge gets caught in the act.)

4. “It must be understood, that neither by word nor deed had I given Fortunato cause to doubt my good-will.” (Montresor had never given Fortunato any reason to be suspicious of him.)

5. “I paused again, and this time I made bold to seize Fortunato by an arm above the elbow.” (Montresor grabbed Fortunato by the arm after they stopped in the catacombs.

6. “Its walls had been lined with human remains piled to the vault overhead, in the fashion of the great catacombs of Paris.” (The catacombs were full of dead people [corpses and bones], that were placed into the walls, one on top of the other, just like in the catacombs in Paris.)


Summative Assessment / Culminating Independent Writing Task

Writing Situation What do you think goes through Fortunato’s mind after he realizes what has happened to him? Why doesn’t he try to reason with Montresor?

Writing Directions Use what you know about Fortunato to write a three-to-five-paragraph monologue, retelling the last part of the story from his point of vie

Let’s Write

References This presentation was compiled using resources

and information from Common Core State Standards http://www.corestandards.org/

Administrative TeamKaren Spigler

Director

Dr. Sharon Scruggs-Williams Instructional Supervisor

North & North Central

Dr. Erin Cuartas Instructional Supervisor

South Central

Laurie Kaplan Instructional Supervisor

Southhttp://languageartsreading.dadeschools.net/

Resources0 Office of Academics and Transformation

0 http://commoncore.dadeschoools.net 0 Department of Language Arts/Reading

0 http://languageartsreading.dadeschools.net/commoncore.asp0 Florida Department of Education

0 CPALMS0 www.cpalms.org

0 Professional Development Toolkit K-50 http://deveqtkr.fldoe.org/file/92be533a-7f6a-464f-92c4-

ffe9756d37d7/1/ccssUpdate.zip/ccss/index.htm0 The CCSS Standards

0 www.corestandards.org0 Resources for Implementation

0 www.achievethecore.org0 PARCC

0 www.parcconline.org0 http://www.fldoe.org/parcc/0 http://languageartsreading.dadeschools.net/pdf/commoncore/PARCC%20MCF%

20for%20ELA%20Literacy_Fall%20202011%20Release.pdf

DRAFT

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“The Cask of Amontillado”districtartifacts.dadeschools.net/Standard 3/3.03/Sample... · 2014-03-25 · Reading Task Students will silently read “The Cask of Amontillado,”