The Monsters Are
Due on Maple Street
By Rod Sterling
Before Reading: Connect
to Your Life
• Label the next available page in your LNb,
“The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.”
• Describe what happens to you when you think
that danger is near. How do you react to fear?
Write 3-5 sentences to explain. You may
want to give a specific example, if you have
had one.
Before Reading:
Understanding Vocabulary
• Word analogies compare two pairs of words.
• The relationship in the first pair of words is always
the same as the relationship in the second pair of
words.
• SADNESS: SORROW :: antagonism: dislike
• This is read, “Sadness is to sorrow as antagonism is
to dislike.”
• Sadness and sorrow are synonyms. Therefore,
antagonism and dislike are also synonyms.
Before Reading:
Understanding Vocabulary
• FLUSTERED: CALM :: charming: rude
• Flustered is to calm as charming is to rude.
• Flustered and calm are antonyms, so charming
and rude must also be antonyms.
Before Reading:
Understanding Vocabulary
• Copy and complete the analogies below in your LNb. Use the
words in the word bank.
• Word bank: intense, optimistic, contorted, legitimate, defiant
• TWISTED: _____________:: solo: alone
• BOIL: FREEZE :: _____________: cooperative
• IMPROVEMENT: _____________ :: disappointment: hopeless
• SKYSCRAPER: TALL :: law: ______________
• ________________: MILD :: prisoner: captor
Reading 1: Understanding
Characteristics of Teleplays
• Teleplay: a play written for television
• Similar to drama scripts
• Contains stage directions
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•
•
•
Explain settings
Describe actions of characters
Give suggestions to director
Describe props, lighting, sound effects
• Different from a drama script because teleplays include
CAMERA directions as well.
• Use the the stage and camera directions to help you
visualize what a performance of the drama might look like.
Group Discussion
Questions
• What event startles the people on Maple Street?
• What problems do people notice as they try to go
about their business?
• How do different people try to explain the cause
of the problems they encounter?
• Why do people begin to panic?
• What are the neighbors afraid of? What should
they really fear?
Reading 2: Author’s
Purpose
• An active reader can recognize the author’s
purpose in literature by carefully evaluating the
language, tone, and the way information can be
presented.
• There are 4 basic purposes that an author may
intend for his or her readers:
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•
•
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To entertain
To inform
To express an opinion
To persuade
Author’s Purpose cont.
• To determine an author’s purpose:
• Look for direct or implied statements of
purpose.
• Analyze how the author presents the
information.
• Clarify the language and tone of the work.
• Monitor your own reaction to the piece.
• Evaluate how well the purpose is achieved.
Author’s Purpose cont.
• Read the excerpt from the story and determine
the author’s purpose.
• Narrator: The tools of conquest do not necessarily
come with bombs and explosions and fallout.
There are weapons that are simply thoughts,
attitudes, prejudices– to be found only in the minds
of men. For the record, prejudices can kill and
suspicion can destroy. A thoughtless, frightened
search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own for
the children… and the children yet unborn, (a
pause) and the pity of it is… that these things
cannot be confined to… The Twilight Zone!
Reading 3: Theme
• Theme is the moral or message in an author’s
work.
• Theme is often a thought about life or human
nature that the author wants to share.
• Clues to a story’s theme can be found in the
title, the setting, the plot, and the way
characters are shown and how they change.