Samples of Guided Passages
Background Building with Non-fiction (and guided in-text annotation)
“A Taste for Chocolate”
(From Odyssey’s “Growing Chocolate” by Jessica Hankinson)
The Olmecs (1500-400 B.C.) were almost certainly the first humans to consume chocolate,
originally in the form of a drink. They crushed the cacao (sometimes called cocoa) beans, mixed
them with water, and added spices, chilies, and herbs. They began cultivating cacao in equatorial
Mexico. Over time, the Maya (600 B.C.) and Aztecs (A.D. 400) developed methods for cultivating
cacao as well.
The Aztecs revered chocolate as a sacred drink and reserved it for religious ceremonies. They
believed that each sip of chocolate brought wisdom and knowledge. The cacao beans were so
valuable to the Aztecs that they were used as money. A rabbit was worth 10 cacao beans, a mule
cost 50 beans. With just four cacao beans, you could buy a wild turkey for dinner.
When the Spanish explorer Hernando Cortes and his soldiers came to the Aztec civilization in
1519, they observed a strange ceremony. The Aztec emperor Montezuma was seated on a high,
golden throne and was being worshipped by his subjects as he drank chocolate from a golden cup.
Later, the Aztec people honored the Spanish explorers and offered them the bitter chocolate drink.
Mini Assessment Check 1: Summarize your new learning about chocolate in 2-3 sentences.
“Languages” by Carl Sandburg
THERE are no handles upon a language
Whereby men take hold of it
And mark it with signs for its remembrance.
It is a river, this language,
Once in a thousand years
Breaking a new course
Changing its way to the ocean.
It is mountain effluvia
Moving to valleys
And from nation to nation
Crossing borders and mixing.
Languages die like rivers.
Words wrapped round your tongue today
And broken to shape of thought
Between your teeth and lips speaking
Now and today
Shall be faded hieroglyphics
Ten thousand years from now.
Sing—and singing—remember
Your song dies and changes
And is not here to-morrow
Any more than the wind
Blowing ten thousand years ago.
“Between the Lines”
Taken from Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger by Lee Smith
My column would not be but a paragraph if the news was all I told. But it isn’t. What I tell is
what’s important, like the bulbs coming up, the way the redbud comes out first on the hills in the
spring and how pretty it looks, the way the cattails shoot up by the creek, how the mist winds down
low on the ridge in the mornings, how my wash all hung out on the line of a Tuesday looks like a
regular square dance with those pants legs just flapping and flapping in the wind! I tell how all the
things you ever dreamed of, all changed and ghostly, will come crowding into your head on a
winter night when you sit up late in front of your fire. I even made up these little characters to talk
for me, Mr. and Mrs. Cardinal and Princess Pussycat, and often I have them voice my thoughts.
Each week I give a little chapter in their lives. Or I might tell what was the message brought in
church, or relate an inspirational word from a magazine, book, or TV. I look on the bright side of
life.
I’ve had God’s gift of writing from the time I was a child. That’s what the B. stands for in
Mrs. Joline B. Newhouse—Barker, my maiden name. My father was a patient strong God-fearing
man despite his problems and it is in his honor that I maintain the B. There was a lot of us children
around all the time—it was right up the road here where I grew up—and it would take me a day
to tell you what all we got into! But after I learned how to write, that was that. My fingers just
naturally curved to a pencil and I sat down to writing like a ball of fire. They skipped me up one,
two grades in school. When I was not but eight, I wrote a poem named “God’s Garden,” which
was published in the church bulletin of the little Methodist church we went to then on Hunter’s
Ridge. Oh, Daddy was so proud! He gave me a quarter that Sunday, and then I turned around and
gave it straight to God. Put it in the collection plate. Daddy almost cried he was so proud. I wrote
another poem in school the next year, telling how life is like a maple tree, and it won a statewide
prize.
“The Happy Memories Club”
Taken from Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger by Lee Smith
I may be old, but I’m not dead.
Perhaps you are surprised to hear this. You may be surprised to learn that people such as
myself are still capable of original ideas, intelligent insights, and intense feelings. Passionate love
affairs, for example, are not uncommon here. Pacemakers cannot regulate the strange unbridled
yearnings of the heart. You do not wish to know this, I imagine. This knowledge is probably
upsetting to you, as it is upsetting to my sons, who do not want to hear, for instance, about my
relationship with Dr. Solomon Marx, the historian. “Please, Mom,” my son Alex said, rolling his
eyes. “Come on, Mama,” my son Robert said. “Can’t you maintain a little dignity here?” Dignity,
said Robert, who runs a chain of miniature golf courses! “I have had enough dignity to last me for
the rest of my life, thank you,” I told Robert.
I’ve always done exactly what I was supposed to do — now I intend to do what I want.
“Besides, Dr. Solomon Marx is the joy of my life,” I told them all. This remained true even
when my second surgery was less than successful, obliging me to take to this chair. It remained
true until Solomon’s most recent stroke five weeks ago, which has paralyzed him below the waist
and caused his thoughts to become disordered, so that he cannot always remember things, and he
cannot always remember the words for things. A survivor himself, Solomon is an expert on the
Holocaust. He has numbers tattooed on his arm. He used to travel the world, speaking about the
Holocaust. Now he can’t remember the name of it.
“Well, I think it’s a blessing,” said one of the nurses — that young Miss Rogers. “The
Holocaust was just awful.”
“It is not a blessing, you ignorant b****,” I told her. “It is the end. Our memories are all
we’ve got.” I put myself in reverse and sped off before she could reply. I could feel her staring at
me as I motored down the hall. I am sure she wrote something in her ever-present notebook.
Inappropriate and unmanageable are some of the words they use, unpleasant and inaccurate
adjectives all.