Kathleen Ryan
Unit Plan
Title: Reading – and writing from -- Short Fiction
Audience: 10th grade untracked English/90 minute blocks
This unit makes some assumptions about available technology: that each student has
access to a computer in the classroom and at home, that each student has a USB stick, that the
classroom is equipped with a Smartboard or some computer connected overhead capability.
Rationale:
Philosophically, close, critical reading of short fiction represents a contextual playground
in which to explore and experience the vibrant dimensions of the human condition. Short fiction,
much like movies, exercises the heart – we cry, we laugh, we grieve, we anticipate, we startle,
we fear, we defend, we empathize – with real emotion but without the personal expense of living
the experience ourselves in that exact moment. Reading short fiction doesn’t so much break
down our defenses as remind us why we build defenses in the first place. When we volunteer to
take our hearts out for a fiction spin, we are keeping the essence of our humanity supple and
strong.
Pedagogically, close reading of short fiction introduces and practices the skills necessary
to think critically, not only about the page but about ourselves, the world around us, and our own
writing. When the reading of short fiction is paired with writing prompts that require students to
draw upon their insights about the short story and its characters, students discover layers of
critical and personal understanding that might have otherwise gone unnoticed or unarticulated.
By using short fiction relevant to adolescents, background knowledge is accessed and response
to the reading is strong and authentic, allowing for writing that benefits from the personal
investment of students. Because 10th grade students tend to blur the discussion lines between the
reading and their interpretation of the reading in the context of their personal experience, short
fiction as the spring board for writing prompts gives the students a canvas upon which to express
and develop their personal reactions to life.
Enduring Questions:
Unique yet Universal: How can we and our lives be unique yet universal at the same
time? What is rewarding about sharing and perceiving and acknowledging such universal color
in the human experience? Why does it feel so good to express and assert our individuality, yet at
the same time it feels so good to affirm our interconnectedness? In what we read and what we
write, how can certain aspects of the writing -- such as detail and character and conflict -- be
both unique and universal at the same time?
Exercising the Heart: In response to fiction, why do we volunteer to feel that which
might be less than pleasurable when experienced in response to real life? Why do we volunteer
to be scared, to grieve, to be made angry when most of us try to avoid these emotions in real life?
Does the human heart long to feel? There’s a saying that friendship occurs at the intersection of
“I thought I was the only one who felt that way!” Why are we often scared or shaky when we
think we are the only one, and why do we feel not just comfort, but also joy when we realize
others share our response?
Truth: Does writing need to be true to be about Truth? What are the essential or
universal Truths of the human experience? What part of being human binds us? Is it DNA,
evolution, culture, gender, age, place, generation? Writers have the choice to make their Truths
explicit or implicit. How is that decision made? As or after we read short stories that are
expressing Truth, how do we unveil to ourselves the knowledge and insight we have absorbed
about the characters? Why does it take talk and discussion and sharing and writing to realize
what we “know?” What makes a story? Robert Penn Warren says a story must be about a
conflict, because “conflict is at the center of life.” What is conflict, and is it always bad? Is
conflict at the center of life? Stories offer us escape, but what is the nature of that escape if it
brings us to a deeper awareness of what it means to be human?
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Readings
“On Reading Fiction” by Robert Penn Warren from The Chronicle of Higher Education.
October 4, 1989.
“Ride” by Thomas Barbash from Story.
“If It’s Love, It’s Not that Easy” by Peter Christopher from Story.
Peter Christopher letter dated
“First Snow” by Daniel Lyons from Story. 1991.
Daniel Lyons letter dated April 7, 1998.
“Any Minute Mom Should Come Blasting Through the Door” by David Ordan from Sudden
Fiction
“Silver Water” by Amy Bloom from Story Autumn 1991.
“Bluestown” by Geoffrey Becker from North American Review. December 1989.
Undated letter from Geoffrey Becker.
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Goals:
1. Students will demonstrate the ability to identify (and distinguish between) conflict and
plot in each of the short stories. Students will attempt to identify and express the basic
human truth (theme) explored by the writer in each short story.
2. Students will engage in discussion about the specific conflicts and characters for the
purpose of gaining deeper understanding of the writer’s intentions and to concretely
demonstrate the students’ natural ability to read closely and to think critically about
conflict and character response.
3. Students will engage in writing prompts that require them to excavate information and
personal insight from each of the short stories and to incorporate this material into their
product, again demonstrating students’ natural ability to respond to short fiction.
4. Writing prompts will demonstrate personal insight into the short stories; awareness of
audience; experience working in a variety of writing formats; and the use of literary
devices such as voice, point of view, persuasion, research, detail, and imagination.
5. Students will employ discussion, peer response, drafting, reference, imagination, editing,
and revision to generate multiple drafts from each writing prompt in an effort to develop
a final portfolio of clear, coherent, purpose-driven prose.
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Standards (drawn from the Common Core Standards for English, Grades 9-10):
As students read, they will analyze each story for textural evidence of conflict, plot, and truth
(or theme), completing and assigned worksheet (the CPT handout) with the exact text they feel
determines the introduction of conflict and the expression of truth. Students will identify the
vocabulary which needs definition and note the unfamiliar words for later study or
incorporation into the students’ own writing. Their CPT handout will summarize plot and
attempt to summarize the main truth (or theme) of the story. They will consider character
response to conflict and the effects of that response on plot and character development. When
exposed to unfamiliar terms or references, as well as with writer’s deliberate choice of
vocabulary, they will consider what the specific word choices bring to the story and our
understanding of the characters. (CCR Reading Standards 1, 2, 3, 4; CCR Writing Standards 9;
CCR Language Standards 4a, 4b, 4c, and 4d.)
As students discuss each story in class, they will draw references from the text to support their
impressions of character, conflict, and truth. Discussion will include citing the exact character
responses and specific word choices that develop conflict and truth, as well as the literary
devises deliberately employed by the writer. (CCR Reading Standards 1, 2, 3, 4; CCR Speaking
and Listening Standards 1a, 1c and 1d)
As students work on specific writing prompts they will draw on information gleaned from the
text and further explore, from their own perspective, the short story writer’s truth or theme. In
the writing assignments, students will assume the point of view of characters or imaginary
narrators, and they will sustain this point of view with specific detail logical to the character or
narrator. As students play with the different forms or genres of the writing prompts, they will
personally experience the practical effect of each specific structure, the power of point of view,
the influence of tone, and practical application of other literary devices that were employed by
the short story writers. The writing prompts draw not only from the stories, but also from the
student’s real and imagined experiences, and they challenge the student to strengthen his or
her writing by using well-chosen details, strong voice and tone, inferences from the stories, an
awareness of audience, and the creation of a concrete experience for that audience. The
drafting and revision from writing prompt assignments will build toward the development of a
clear, coherent product rendered with the control necessary to accommodate the audience and
purpose of the narrative. At various points in drafting from the writing prompts, students will
need to refer back to the original short story, they will need to work collaboratively with a
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co-author, and they will need to conduct interviews and research from a variety of sources in
order to gather adequate and appropriate content material. The varied nature of and audience
for the writing prompts allows for short, in-class drafting, as well as for the development of
product crafted over a period of time. During the original drafting, the revision, and in the final
product students will be expected to demonstrate attention to conventions in grammar, word
choice, and spelling for the purpose of delivering a clear and coherent product. (CCR Reading
Standards 1, 2, 5; CCR Writing Standards 3a, 3b, 3d, and 3e, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10; CCR Speaking and
Listening Standards 1a, 1c, and 1d; CCR Language Standards 1a, and 1b, 2a, 2b, and 2c, and 4b
and 4c.
Assessments:
Pre-assessments:
Overview of vocabulary from Master List
Class discussion of concepts: fiction, conflict, plot, basic human truth
In class completion of Conflict/Plot/Truth worksheet for “Ride”
Police report
On-going assessments: Completion of CPT handouts
Notated vocabulary sheets
Completion of first drafts
Class discussion participation
Final assessments
3 CPT handouts
Portfolio:
(15%)
Police Report
Parenting Questionnaire
Rose portrait
Living portrait
Monologue
Artifact conversation
Self-assessment report
( 5%)
(10%)
( 5%)
( 5%)
(10%)
(20%)
(10%)
Vocabulary assignments (including final test)
(10%)
X-factor: participation, risk-taking, growth
(10%)
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Overview:
The “Reading – and writing from – Short Fiction” unit will cover primary literary elements
of short fiction: conflict, plot, and Truth (or theme), using Robert Penn Warren’s essay “On
Reading Fiction” as a springboard for the definition of concepts and a discussion about the
nature of fiction.
Students will be responsible for the adoption of new vocabulary, and structured guides
will be provided as study and usage tools.
Together as a class we will read a very short piece of fiction (“Ride”) out loud with three
student volunteers reading the dialogue from the three characters. As we discuss the story,
students will be walked through the completion of a CPT worksheet which asks them to identify
the conflict, the plot, and the Truth in the story. The worksheet is designed as a tool to give
students some structure as they gain experience in reading critically and closely and as they learn
to distinguish between conflict, plot, and Truth (or theme). The worksheet is also designed as an
assignment that requires a complete reading of the story, and thus motivating compliance with
the homework. Additionally, the worksheet will be used as an assessment tool that allows the
teacher to gauge the depth of the student’s reading comprehension and understanding of the three
elements: conflict, plot, and Truth.
Having read through a story together and been guided through the CPT worksheet in
class, the remainder of the unit consists of reading short stories as homework, completing a CPT
worksheet for each story, discussing the stories in class, and drafting from a variety of writing
prompts that allows students to work with different forms of prose while practicing such
elements as point of view, audience awareness, control of purpose, tone, and narration. The
writing prompts require students to access and articulate their understanding of each assigned
short story; most students actually know more than they might think they do about their reading,
and when this inner knowledge is revealed to them, the students develop confidence in their
natural ability to read short fiction.
Throughout the unit, students will become familiar with vocabulary pulled from the short
stories.
Class time and homework time will be devoted to the development, revision,
workshopping, and editing of each writing prompt, and at the end of the unit the students will
compile a portfolio of their work (along with a self-assessment report) for a final unit grade.
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Day One
Materials:
Unit vocabulary assignment sheet
Unit Vocabulary Master List
Day One vocabulary sheet
“Ride” by Thomas Barbash
Three copies of “Ride” with individual dialogue highlighted: rapist, victim, deputy
Teacher copy of “Ride” with all dialogue highlighted
Robert Penn Warren “On Reading Fiction”
“Ride” Conflict/Plot/Truth worksheet (CPT)
Police Report form
Police Report assignment and assessment sheet
Concept Terms:
Fiction, conflict, plot, Truth, point-of-view, voice, tone
Vocabulary:
fiction, conflict, drowse, ambivalent, resolution, escape, poignant, grotesque
Objectives:
1. Students will familiarize themselves with the vocabulary responsibilities and
expectations.
2. Students will discuss aspects of character and plot, prompted by key questions.
3. Students will discuss the concepts of fiction and conflict and their relationship to life.
4. Students will identify and articulate the conflict, plot, and Truth in “Ride” on the CPT
sheet.
5. Students will adopt the fictional point-of-view of the deputy and complete the Police
Report by incorporating information gleaned from the story, from their understanding of
the characters, from class discussion, and from their background knowledge.
Procedure:
1. Introduce unit.
- 1.1-
2. Introduce vocabulary responsibilities.
 distribute and read through assignment sheet
 distribute master list
 distribute and read through “Day One” vocabulary list, asking students to complete the
sheet as we read through it
3. “Ride”
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
ask for three volunteers to read character dialogue
distribute story/highlighted copies go to the volunteers
explain midway hawker and transistor radio
read story out loud, deferring dialogue to the volunteers
open discussion with key questions
Key Questions:
In “Ride,” when do we first realize that something is very wrong, that there is a conflict?
What exact words tip us off?
Does the nature of the conflict – or our awareness of it – seem to change as the story
progresses? Where does it change?
Why do you think the rapist wants her to like him?
When she says “Are you going to kill me?” what tone do we imagine she would use?
What do we think of the sheriff’s deputy? What do we imagine he is thinking?
What is her attitude, her tone, toward the deputy?
Why would she say she doesn’t know what the rapist looks like?
Why a hundred faces?
Do you know this girl? Have you seen her in your own life?
4. “On Reading Fiction”
 Distribute essay
 Read through essay as a class, going around the room paragraph by paragraph
 Open discussion with key questions
Key Questions:
In “On Reading Fiction,” do we agree? Is conflict at the center of life?
Does conflict make us feel more alive?
What does he mean by “drowse?”
Do we in fact yearn for peace and at the same time yearn for tension or problem?
We know the girl in “Ride” yearns for peace, because she says she is sorry for the
opportunities she has missed, sorry that she can’t live somewhere nice? But does she
yearn for tension or conflict as well? What makes us think so?
Can we escape to life?
-1.2-
5. CPT Worksheet
 Distribute worksheet
 Complete worksheet as a class, prompting with key questions.
 If students are restless from too much full class discussion, break into pairs to
complete worksheet, returning to key questions as a full class
Key Questions:
On the CPT worksheets, how are we going to describe the conflict?
How can we briefly summarize the plot?
What “Truth” is Barbash exploring here with us? Is there one line that expresses that
Truth?
6. Police Report
 Distribute report worksheet and assignment sheet
 Explain assignment and put it up on Smartboard:
Using your imagination and what you know about the deputy, put
yourself in his shoes and fill out this report as if you have just finished
your interview with the victim. What information did she give you?
What observations did you make about her? How does your attitude
toward her influence your observations? Your report? Do your
personal feelings for her come through in the report? Are you
judgmental toward her?
7. Collect CPT and vocab sheets completed in class
Homework:

Draft Police Report. We will finalize this assignment the next time we meet, so bring
drafts to the next class.
Evaluation/Follow-up:



Read through CPT worksheets to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of students’
understanding of the three concepts.
Read through vocab sheets to evaluate the students’ understanding of the vocabulary
process.
Input vocab to spreadsheets.
-1.3-
Appendices:
Unit Vocabulary Explanation
Unit Vocabulary Master List
Day One vocabulary sheet
“Ride” by Thomas Barbash (not online)
“On Reading Fiction” by Robert Penn Warren
“Ride” CPT worksheet
“Cortland Police Investigative Report” worksheet
Police Report assignment and assessment sheet
-1.4-
Unit Vocabulary Assignment
Most of us will not adopt vocabulary words into our everyday use if we are merely assigned
words to memorize for a quiz.
The short stories we will be reading in this unit are full of interesting words. Some words you
will know, some you will be able to figure out in the context of the sentence and the story, and
some will be completely unfamiliar to you.
Attached is the master list of words I have identified as interesting from within the stories.
For each story I will give you a specific vocabulary list, but for your convenience I have also
underlined the words in each story, as they appear.
This vocabulary is YOUR responsibility. As you read through each story, keep that story’s
vocabulary list nearby and as you come to an underlined word, make a check on your vocabulary
list.



Do you know the word and could you use it easily and correctly in your own writing?
Is the word unfamiliar or hazy to you, but you can figure it out in the context of the
sentence or story?
Is it a word that you do not know?
Fill in the definition, whether from your own understanding of the word, the context, or the
dictionary.
Use the word in an original sentence.
Bring this notated list to class with your copy of the story and the story’s CPT sheet.
I will keep track of the words you do not know or cannot yet use correctly and there will be a
customized vocabulary test at the end of the unit.
Your individual test will consist of the words you did not know when you first encountered them
in the story. You can knock a word off your test if you can demonstrate its proper use in your
writing at some point during the unit. Simply underline the word as you use it to bring it to my
attention.
MASTER VOCABULARY LIST
fiction
conflict
ambivalent
resolution
escape
poignant
drowse
grotesque
arraign
oblivious
dignity
paunch
cardigan
indelible
menace
seizure
cast
sinister
pariahs
furtive
endure
putter
scenario
reveille
winch
wake
bank
recoil
spent
mingle
report
crystalline
belle
defender
psychotic
briar
sapling
eccentric
divine
crest
colleague
ethereal
croon
salvo
intervention
collegiality
resident
christen
beau
proposition
neurotics
wistful
umber
billow
garnet
pitch
convene
sympathetic
paranoia
emphatically
reticence
brusque
listless
overwhelm
eddying
alternately
commiserate
banish
obscure
intensity
emaciated
solemn
transformation
coverage
grounded
bodice
squinch
blatant
hostility
legendary
damping
mime
silhouette
contour
extravagant
quaint
simplicity
crest
Day One Vocabulary Sheet
In
Know Context ?
fiction
conflict
drowse
ambivalent
resolution
escape
poignant
grotesque
The definition I knew or
needed to look up
Word used in an original
sentence
Why Do We Read Fiction? By Robert Penn Warren
Why do we read fiction? The answer is simple. We read it because we like it. And we like it
because fiction, as an image of life, stimulates and gratifies our interest in life. But whatever
interests may be appealed to by fiction, the special and immediate interest that takes us to fiction
is always our interest in a story.
A story is not merely an image of life, but of life in motion--specifically, the presentation of
individual characters moving through their particular experiences to some end that we may accept
as meaningful. And the experience that is characteristically presented in a story is that of facing a
problem, a conflict. To put it bluntly: no conflict, no story.
It is no wonder that conflict should be at the center of fiction, for conflict is at the center of life.
But why should we, who have the constant and often painful experience of conflict in life and who
yearn for inner peace and harmonious relation with the outer world, turn to fiction, which is the
image of conflict? The fact is that our attitude toward conflict is ambivalent. If we do find a totally
satisfactory adjustment in life, we tend to sink into the drowse of the accustomed. Only when our
surroundings--or we ourselves--become problematic again do we wake up and feel that surge of
energy which is life. And life more abundantly lived is what we seek.
So we, at the same time that we yearn for peace, yearn for the problematic. The adventurer, the
sportsman, the gambler, the child playing hide-and-seek, the teen-age boys choosing up sides
for a game of sandlot baseball, the old grad cheering in the stadium--we all, in fact, seek out or
create problematic situations of greater or lesser intensity. Such situations give us a sense of
heightened energy, of life. And fiction, too, gives us that heightened awareness of life, with all the
fresh, uninhibited opportunity to vent the rich emotional charge--tears, laughter, tenderness,
sympathy, hate, love, and irony--that is stored up in us and short-circuited in the drowse of the
accustomed. Furthermore, this heightened awareness can be more fully relished now, because
what in actuality would be the threat of the problematic is here tamed to mere imagination, and
because some kind of resolution of the problem is, owing to the very nature of fiction, promised.
The story promises us a resolution, and we wait in suspense to learn how things will come out. We
are in suspense, not only about what will happen, but even more about what the event will mean.
We are in suspense about the story in fiction because we are in suspense about another story far
closer and more important to us--the story of our own life as we live it. We do not know how that
story of our own life is going to come out. We do not know what it will mean. so, in that deepest
suspense of life, which will be shadowed in the suspense we feel about the story in fiction, we turn
to fiction for some slight hint about the story in the life we live. The relation of our life to the
fictional life is what, in a fundamental sense, takes us to fiction.
Even when we read, as we say, to "escape," we seek to escape not from life but to life, to a life
more satisfying than our own drab version. Fiction gives us an image of life--sometimes of a life
we actually have and like to dwell on, but often and poignantly of one we have had but do not have
now, or one we have never had and can never have.
From The Chronicle of Higher Education. October 4, 1989
CONFLICT/PLOT/TRUTH (C/P/T) HANDOUT
SHORT STORY TITLE:__”Ride”_____________________________________
IDENTIFY THE CONFLICT (THE PROBLEM FACED BY THE MAIN
CHARACTER OR PERSON TELLING THE STORY):__________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
QUOTE THE FIRST SENTENCE THAT INTRODUCES THE CONFLICT:
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
GIVE A BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE PLOT (WHAT HAPPENS IN
THE STORY?):____________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
WHAT TRUTH ABOUT THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE DO YOU THINK
THE WRITER IS EXPLORING?_____________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
QUOTE THE ONE SENTENCE THAT BEST EXPLAINS THAT TRUTH:
__________________________________________________________________
CORTLAND POLICE INVESTIGATION REPORT
Assignment and Assessment Sheet
Using your imagination and what you know about the deputy, put yourself in his shoes
and fill out this report as if you have just finished your interview with the victim.
The initial information – the case number, date, crime, name – can be made up, but the
description of her injuries should come from information you gleaned from the story.
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What tone will you use in the report? Impersonal, professional, detached,
personal, arrogant or know-it-all?
What factual information did she give you?
What information did you gather through observation?
How does your attitude toward her influence your observations? Your report?
Do your personal feelings for her come through in the report?
Are you judgmental toward her?
After your first draft of the report, read back through it and highlight any information that
was unveiled as you wrote. In other words, what insights or information did you put in
the report that you might not have realized you knew before you started writing?
We will assess drafts in class. We will be looking at:
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Your use of tone or voice
The number of facts you were able to pull from the story
The believability of your observations about the victim
Any hints of the deputy’s attitude, judgment, or personal feelings that might have
“slipped” out in the report as you played with the character
Evidence of unveiled insight and understanding into the characters
CORTLAND POLICE INVESTIGATION REPORT
Date________________________
Case Number _____________________
Type of criminal incident__________________________________________
Victim ________________________________
M/F_______Age___________
Description of
injuries_____________________________________________
Description of suspect(s) _________________________________________
Investigating Officer Victim Interview Notes:
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
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Day Two
Materials:
Peer Review Checklist for Police Reports
Self-Assessment note for Police Report
“If It’s Love It’s Not That Easy” copies for all
CPT worksheet for “If It’s Love It’s Not That Easy”
“Artifact Conversation” assignment sheet
Pre-write worksheet for collaborative planning
“Artifact Conversation” assessment rubric
Pairing plan, if necessary
Concept Terms:
Artifact, social-networking, collaboration
Vocabulary: none today
Objectives:
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Students will have adopted the fictional point-of-view of the deputy in “Ride” and
completed the Police Report by incorporating information gleaned from the story, from
their understanding of the characters, from class discussion, and from their background
knowledge.
Students will gain experience critiquing their peers’ work, as well as having their work
assessed by peers.
Students will acknowledge any personal understanding of or insights into the story
unveiled in the Police Report.
Students will gain experience in self-assessment.
Students will sift through each artifact in “If It’s Love” and in discussion consider the
information that can be extracted from each piece. This discussion will require them to
think critically, extracting evidence from the text and drawing conclusions based on that
evidence.
Students will identify and articulate the conflict in “If It’s Love.”
Students will discuss aspects of character, plot, and Truth in “If It’s Love,” prompted by
key questions, in relation to the text, to “Ride,” Penn Warren, and to their own experiences.
Students will work collaboratively to develop a conflict, plot, character, point-of-view and
voice for their own version of a fictional “artifact conversation,” borrowing from the form
used in “If It’s Love.”
-2.1-

Students will work collaboratively to choose the communicative artifacts that will support
their fictional conversation and contribute to the development of voice, conflict, character,
plot, and Truth.
Students will write an interactive story with their partner, using communicative artifacts
and social-networking materials to develop voice, character, conflict, plot, and Truth.

Procedure:
1. Return “Ride” CPTs and Day One Vocab sheet.
2. Follow-up on Police Report
 Students will break into groups of four and read their Police Report out loud.
 Peers will listen to the Police Report and assess it from the Peer Review Checklist. This
exercise is primarily intended to give students an opportunity to participate and gain
experience in peer assessment.
 The class will come together and students will read from their reports (or the teacher
will read for them if they are shy). The teacher will note the observations that are unique or
surprising and that reveal some depth of understanding of the characters. This read-aloud is
intended to illustrate the skills that come naturally to students, and to boost their confidence
for future reading assignments.
 Address this key question to the entire class: In writing up the Police Report, what did
we discover we knew about the deputy? About the girl?
 Using feedback from the read-aloud and the peer assessment, students will draft a brief
self-assessment of their performance in the Police Report assignment. This self-assessment
will be turned in, stapled to the Police Report.
3. “If It’s Love It’s Not That Easy”
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Distribute CPT sheets and copies of the story.
Introduce the story and its form.
Students will read through the story by themselves, working with the CPT as they read.
As a class, read through the story, artifact by artifact, prompted by key questions
Key Questions:
When do we first get a sense of the conflict?
What do we know from the first email?
What do the three items in the police blotter tell us about the neighborhood?
Why would the writer use his real name if this is fiction?
What does it mean: “killing a dream with X-rated poetry as real as the repo man….”
What do we know from the second email? From the credit card bill?
What sort of shopping binge did Marisa enjoy? Can we retrace her steps that day?
-2.2-
What is Peter really trying to accomplish with the third email?
What do we know from the overdue library notice?
What motivates Peter to send the fourth email? Why does he need to follow up with her?
What do we already know about Tony’s Market?
If we walk through the receipt, what exactly is going through the character’s mind?
What does the title mean?
Have you lived this story? Why do we do this sort of back and forth?
Where do you think this story goes from here?
4. CPT sheet for “If It’s Love”
 How would we define the conflict?
 How would we briefly describe the plot?
 How would we articulate the Truth that the writer is exploring in the story?
5. Creating the Conversation
 Distribute the assignment sheets
 Describe the assignment, putting assignment sheet up on Smartboard
 Discuss the nature of artifacts, particularly in the context of social-networking and
technology (email, text, camera phones, online bill statements, facebook messages, status
reports, etc.). List the suggested artifacts on the board for the students to record on the
back of their artifact assignment sheets
 Pair the students and distribute the Artifact Conversation pre-write sheet.
The method of pairing will be determined by the dynamics of the class. A
cooperative, mature class might choose partners. Some class dynamics might
require the teacher to have pre-paired the students according to personality, ability,
or learning style.
 Emphasize that students will need to establish a means of communication outside the
classroom.
 Allow class time for collaborative planning. The goal for this planning period should be
to decide the character and role each student is playing, to establish the relationship
between the two characters, to decide on a conflict, to plan the general direction of the
conversation, and to discuss which artifacts the characters would most likely use,
working off the Assignment sheet.
 As students are planning, collect “If It’s Love” CPTs, distribute the Artifact Assessment
rubric and gather a general sense of their collaborative progress and chemistry.
-2.3-
Homework:
 Continue the prewrite and collaborative planning.
 For those pairs ready to start drafting their conversation: students can be creative and
use actual modes of social networking or technology, but they must record or replicate
the communications and bring them to class.
 Emphasize that this is a fictional assignment but they should take care not to make their
fictional, conflict-based conversation seem so real that it offends or upsets people
outside of class.
 The teacher will be available tonight and tomorrow night from 7-10 to offer feedback
via email.
Evaluation/Follow-up:




Gauge the level of engagement or difficulty with the artifact assignment via the evening
email feedback participation.
Read through the “If It’s Love” CPTs for a sense of students’ understanding of and
ability to distinguish between conflict, plot, and Truth.
Score the Police Reports according to the assignment assessment standards
Read through and respond to the Police Report self-assessments
Appendices:
Peer Review Checklist for Police Reports
Self-Assessment note for Police Report
“If It’s Love It’s Not That Easy” (not online)
CPT worksheet for “If It’s Love It’s Not That Easy”
“Artifact Conversation” assignment sheet
CPT pre-write worksheet for collaborative planning
“Artifact Conversation” assessment rubric
-2.4-
Peer Review Guide for Police Report
Writer_______________________ Reviewer_______________________
Each student in the group of four will read his/her Police Report out loud. As the writer
reads, please listen carefully for the writer’s use of tone, accuracy, fact, observation,
fresh insight, and the deputy’s personal attitude. This checklist will help the writer gage
the strengths and weakness of the actual report. It will also help the writer to see
his/her successes with the assignment.
CATEGORY
Strong,
professional
tone
Injuries
accurate
Relies on facts
from story
Observations
are believable
Unveils new
info about
victim
Unveils new
info about
deputy
Attitude slips
out
Yes!
Somewhat
Needs work
Missing
Comments
Self-Assessment Note for Police Report
Take a moment to reflect upon your experience drafting the Police Report. What did you
discover about yourself as a writer? What happened when you tried to become the deputy? Did
pulling information from the story and thinking about the victim from the deputy’s point of
view allow you to understand the story more deeply? Did any aspect of the reading, drafting, or
final product surprise you? What were your difficulties with the assignment? Which part of the
peer review was more helpful? Being reviewed or reviewing others? It is not necessary to
answer each of these questions in your note; they are offered as prompts to help your reflection.
What do you feel is important to note about your performance on this assignment?
_____________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
When you are finished with the note and ready to hand in the Police Report assignment, please
include and attach this note and the 3 Peer Review Checklists you received back from your
group.
CONFLICT/PLOT/TRUTH (C/P/T) HANDOUT
SHORT STORY TITLE:___”If It’s Love It’s Not That Easy”______________
IDENTIFY THE CONFLICT (THE PROBLEM FACED BY THE MAIN
CHARACTER OR PERSON TELLING THE STORY):__________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
QUOTE THE FIRST SENTENCE THAT INTRODUCES THE CONFLICT:
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
GIVE A BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE PLOT (WHAT HAPPENS IN
THE STORY?):__________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
WHAT TRUTH ABOUT THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE DO YOU THINK
THE WRITER IS EXPLORING?_____________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
QUOTE THE ONE SENTENCE THAT BEST EXPLAINS THAT TRUTH:
__________________________________________________________________
Artifact Conversation Assignment Sheet
We are going to borrow heavily from Peter Christopher in this assignment, copying his
form, and creating a fictional short story of our own through a fiction-based conversation
conducted through the real or imagined use of technology or social networking modes and
recorded in print as individual artifacts. (You should copy the list of possible modes and
artifacts on the back of this assignment sheet as we put a list on the board as a class.)
Peter Christopher was the sole author of his conversation; ours will be interactive and more
“real” because your character and your writing partner’s character will actually conduct an
unscripted conversation that will create a story with conflict, plot, character development,
and some exploration of basic human truths.
There will be aspects of this assignment that you can work on independently (like the
creation of your character’s biography, your side of the conversation, or your true feelings
for the other character), but you will need to work collaboratively to reach some agreement
on other aspects of the assignment, particularly conflict and the nature of the relationship
between the characters.
To be successful, this assignment will require lots of pre-writing and imagined background
material. I’ve provided a pre-write worksheet to help you get started but here are the
specific areas you will need to develop before you begin the conversation:
1. Create your character:



The basics -- name, age, gender, etc. Like Peter Christopher, you do have the
option of using yourself as the character, but make sure this choice makes sense for
the story.
A biography or history. Even though every fact about your character will not be
included in the conversation, you should know your character’s biography well
enough to understand what motivates him/her.
Voice, personality and attitude. All those qualities that make your character
uniquely individual.
2. Get to know your partner’s character.

You can both contribute to the development of both characters, or you can work on
this independently and then have a “meet the other character” session.
1
3. Define the nature of the relationship between the two characters.



4.
On this you must agree. The story won’t work if you insist the characters are siblings
and your partner insists they are married.
It might be helpful to sketch out a brief history of their relationship so that you both
know what motivates their interaction within the relationship.
Decide on their attitudes toward each other. These attitudes are not necessarily the
characters’ true feelings for the other.
With your writing partner, decide on and draft a basic statement of the conflict.

Conflict does not necessarily need to be between the characters, but they should be
responding to the same conflict.
 You and your partner do not need to agree on the exact nature of the conflict –
often conflict is conflict because people don’t agree, but you should at least be
working off the same basic statement of conflict. How you interpret that conflict
can be decided alone by you and your character.
5.
Determine your true feelings for the other character and think about how much you
are willing to reveal during the actual conversation
6.
Working with your partner, try to sketch out a very basic understanding of the plot or
story line. For example, are the characters siblings on the same flight -- headed to the
death bed of the father they have never met -- sitting in different parts of the plane,
forced to text back and forth because they couldn’t book seats together on such short
notice?
7. Discuss the modes of communication your characters will use during their
conversation. Text, email, facebook?
8. This conversation will be fictional, but you have some choices to make about your
artifacts.


As authors, you can write your part of the conversation by creating fictional
transcripts of say, text messages.
You can write your fictional part in the conversation by texting a real but fictionbased message to a real cell phone.
2

If you use real methods of communication in order to write your fictional
conversation, you will need to devise some method of printing, or duplicating in
print, an artifact for the final in-print story.
9. Come to some agreement about how and when to start the conversation.




Which character will start the conversation and by what mode?
How will you as writing partners actually exchange the fictional communications?
As writer, how and when and why will you revise, regroup, strategize?
As writers looking down at a draft, who will monitor the development of the
fictional elements such as conflict, character, plot, voice, and Truth as the
conversation progresses?
You are playing dual roles in this assignment. You are a co-writer, but you are also a
character. You’ll need to stay true to your responsibilities as a writer, but you will also
need to stay true to the personality and motivations of your character. Because this story
will emerge interactively as you and your partner develop the conversation from each
character’s point-of-view, you will find that your understanding of your character may
change. He or she may surprise you. Let that happen. Stay true to responsibilities as a
writer and as a character, but don’t be afraid to let your character loose on the page. Focus
on what your character would say rather than on what you the writer would like your
character to say.
The assignment requirements: Each character should contribute at least 5 five artifacts
to the story. Every exchange in the conversation will need to be included or duplicated as
an in-print artifact in the same way that Peter Christopher duplicated emails and receipts in
his story. Your final story will require a title; this title might echo the Truth you discovered
as you were conversing. You should be prepared to work on the assignment outside of
class and to bring your artifacts with you to class.
One very important note of caution
Please take care that your fictional conflict and your fictional conversation and your
fictional plot do not seem so real that people outside of the assignment will become upset
by your artifacts. In other words, do not post fiction-based status reports on Facebook or
send fiction-based text messages that will upset other people who are not involved in this
project.
BE RESPONSIBLE.
3
ARTIFACT CONVERSATION PRE-WRITE
You do not have to answer these questions in order or even completely, but do try to brainstorm
the details. When the actual conversation begins, many of these details will emerge naturally.
The questions below are meant to provoke thinking and collaboration. You don’t have to agree
on every detail. In fact, disagreement between you will bring an authentic tension to the
conversation.
BRIEF PROFILE OF YOUR CHARACTER___________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
WHAT YOU KNOW ABOUT YOUR PARTNER’S CHARACTER__________________
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
WHAT IS THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE TWO CHARACTERS_____________
_____________________________________________________________________
WHAT ARE YOUR TRUE FEELINGS FOR THE OTHER CHARACTER____________
_____________________________________________________________________
BASIC STATEMENT OF CONFLICT________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
GENERAL DIRECTION FOR THE PLOT:____________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
WHAT TRUTH ABOUT THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE DO YOU PREDICT MIGHT
EMERGE:_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
MOST IMPORTANTLY, HOW WILL YOU COMMUNICATE OUTSIDE CLASS______
_____________________________________________________________________
Artifact Conversation Assessment
Student Name:
__________________________ ________Partner:______________________________
Powerful Good -3
CATEGORY 4
Clear conflict
that interests
the characters
and helps
move the story
Conflict
engages at
least one
character, but
does not drive
the story
Conflict is not
No specific
well defined
conflict.
and/or the
characters are
not responding
to the conflict.
Characters
interact and at
energy. They least one
change or
changes or
learn about
learns
themselves. something.
Characters
become better
known to the
reader as the
story develops
Characters
established at
the beginning
are pretty much
the same at the
end.
energy of
plot
Story builds
around a
compelling
event or
situation of
interest to
reader or
characters
The characters
react to the
events or
situation. The
plot interests
the reader.
Plot
progresses
logically,
causing
characters to
communicate.
The characters Nothing happens
hint at or
in the story.
suggest events
and
circumstances.
Very little
happens in the
story.
Truth
(resolution)
The reader
comes away
from the story
considering
what it means
to be human.
The reader
can pull a
theme or Truth
from the story.
The story
comes very
close to some
Truth, but it is
difficult to
define.
The writers are
working with
clichés or very
standard
themes.
No Truth is
explored by or
revealed to the
characters or the
reader.
voice
Characters
have
personality
and attitude
that stay true
throughout
the story. The
characters
are uniquely
individual.
The characters
exhibit
personality
traits, some
interesting
characteristics
and some
specific use of
tone.
The
characters are
distinguished
by one
established
personality
trait or
attitude.
The characters'
personalities
are confusing
and
inconsistent.
We can't "hear"
the characters
when we think
of them.
The characters
sound like
everyone and no
one.
The artifacts
are varied and
used creatively
to propel the
story and
showcase the
characters and
conflict.
The artifacts
make sense
and are
believable.
They
themselves
don't tell us
anything, but
they allow the
characters to
talk.
The artifacts
are predictable
and unvaried.
They allow the
characters to
speak, but as a
form, they don't
add much to
the story.
The artifacts are
undefined. They
read as simple
paragraphs.
conflict
Clear, definite
conflict that
invests both
characters
and drives
the story.
UnderAdequate - developed - Not included 2
1
0
score
Characters
character
development interact with
creative use The artifacts
are varied,
of artifacts
believable,
and
surprising to
the reader.
The artifacts
themselves
have
significance
to the story.
The characters
are bland. They
don't seem like
real people.
Day Three
Materials:
Ledger short story, author unknown
Peer Review worksheet
Progress Plan for Artifact Conversation
Concept Terms: none today
Vocabulary: none today
Objectives:
1. Students will further develop background material and draft of the current assignment.
2. Students will consider the dual purpose of artifact in propelling the story.
3. Students will practice an objective assessment of their writing in terms of the
information it conveys and the role of that information in propelling the story.
4. Students will use both their role as writer and their role as character in the drafting and
revising of the assignment.
5. Students will gain experience in giving and receiving peer review.
6. Students will formulate a progress plan for future work on the project.
Key Questions:
When does the nature of an artifact tell us something?
For instance, what does a probation report tell use before we even read it?
What information can an objective reader glean from each artifact in your conversation?
How does this information contribute to the progression of the story?
To the development of the conflict? To the development of the characters?
At each step in this drafting and revision process, are you acting as the writer or as the
character?
Procedure:
1. Return CPTs, Police Reports and Self Assessments, and Day One vocab sheet.
-3.1-
2. Ledger Short Story Mini-lesson
 Ledger short story goes up on Smartboard
 Read through it together as a class, line by line, asking “What do we know?” What
information can be gleaned from reading the artifact?
 Where does attitude or personality come through in the artifact?
 Ask and discuss: why a ledger? What does the nature or manner of the artifact bring to
the story?
 What other artifacts can we think of give us information before we even read them?
3. Collaborative drafting time on Artifact Conversation



Students will work with their partner to finalize the pre-write or to draft.
Teacher will check in with each pair to gauge their progress and distribute Peer Review
and Progress Plan sheets.
Students – as writer rather than character – will evaluate each artifact. What information
does the artifact expose? How does that information contribute to the story? Does the
nature of the artifact bring an added value to the story?
4. Full class review of progress

Each pair shares a quick summary of the characters, their relationship, plot, and conflict.
5. Peer Review




Partnered teams are paired into groups of four students.
One team reads its conversation aloud while the other team reviews the conversation’s
progress so far, using the Peer Review checklist as a means of providing feedback.
Teams trade roles.
Partners use the Peer Review sheets and the Progress Plan sheet to take stock of
progress, strengths, weaknesses, steps to be revisited, and a plan moving forward with
the project.
6. Drafting
 Remaining class time will be devoted to drafting.
 Students who had not yet evaluated their artifacts (See #3 above) will be encouraged to
do so.
 After completion of all artifacts, students should move on to items on the Progress Plan.
-3.2-
Homework:
 Continue working on the conversation outside of class, particularly on the priorities
uncovered during the peer review and outlined on the Progress Plan.
 The teacher will be available tonight from 7-10 via email to offer feedback on the
conversations.
 Bring Artifact Conversation draft material and your revision plan to next class
Evaluation/Follow-up:
Gauge the level of engagement or difficulty with the artifact assignment via the evening
email feedback participation.
Appendices:
Ledger short story
Peer Review Checklist for Artifact Conversation
Progress plan for Artifact Conversation
-3.3-
“Ledger” Short Story
- Author unknown
While this story is out-of-date and a complete cliché, it’s an example of how just one
artifact can tell an entire story.
Oct 1
Oct 8
Oct 12
Oct 22
Oct 23
Oct 29
Nov 2
Nov 2
Nov 3
Nov 9
Nov 23
Nov 23
Nov 24
Dec 1
Dec 2
Dec 2
Ad for office assistant
Violets for new office assistant
Week’s salary for new office assistant
Roses for office assistant
Candy for wife
Lunch for office assistant
Week’s salary for office assistant
Movie tickets for wife and self
Theatre tickets for wife and her sister
Ice cream sundae for wife
Mary’s salary
Marriage counselor
Dinner for Mary and self
Doctor bill for office assistant
Mink coat for wife
Ad for male office assistant
Total petty cash expenses for quarter
8.00
11.50
200.00
25.00
11.50
27.00
360.00
8.00
30.00
1.95
400.00
60.00
82.00
375.00
1700.00
8.00
3307.90
Peer Review Checklist for Artifact Conversation
Writing Team________________________
Reviewing Team_______________________
Before you begin, fill in the names of each character under “Development of Character” and
“Voice.”
As and after the Writing Team reads their conversation, each reviewer should put a check in
appropriate column beside each category.
Enter any additional comments, suggestions, or insights in the space below.
CATEGORY
Conflict
Development of
Character
___________________
Development of
Character
___________________
Plot
Truth
Voice of
___________________
Voice of
___________________
Artifacts
Powerful
Good
Adequate
underdeveloped
Absent
Team: _____________________
PROGRESS PLAN FOR ARTIFACT CONVERSATION
Working from the Peer Review Sheet, you and your partner should take stock of your
progress thus far in the conversation, and make a plan for further drafting or revision.
This guide for a progress plan is offered as a tool to help you develop a concrete plan
for the work left to do. Use the back for issues not covered by this form.
Each character is required to contribute at least five artifacts to the conversation. How
many artifacts have you already completed?
Character #1___________________
Character # 2 _________________________
How many do you need to complete? Even though as a team you might have ten full
artifacts for your story, you might find that some aspect of the story, such as the character
development or plot, requires a few more artifacts.
Character #1___________________
Character #2_________________________
What progress have you made on each element of the story?
STRONG
OKAY
NEEDS WORK
Conflict
_____
_____
_____
Development of Character #1
_____
_____
_____
Development of Character #2
_____
_____
_____
Plot
_____
_____
_____
Voice of Character #1
_____
_____
_____
Voice of Character #2
_____
_____
_____
The artifacts make a story
_____
_____
_____
The story makes sense
_____
_____
_____
The story explores some
basic human Truth
_____
_____
_____
Artifacts are used creatively
_____
_____
_____
Day Four
Materials:
“Wasted Words” exercise
Author’s note and Final Product guidelines for Artifact Conversation
Peter Christopher letter
Daniel Lyons letter
Visual PowerPoint for unfamiliar references in “The First Snow”
Highlighted dialogue copies of “The First Snow” available
Concept Terms:
Genesis. Monologue. Authorial Intent
Vocabulary: none today
Objectives:






Students will practice editing for vague words.
Students will organize their artifacts into a coherent draft presentation.
Students will reflect upon their writing process and the experience of collaboration
Students will explore the genesis of story.
Students will become familiar with the literary devise of monologue.
Students will examine evidence of authorial intent.
Procedure:
1. “Wasted Words” exercise
 Put exercise up on Smartboard
 Distribute exercise sheets
 As a class, go through exercise handout, underlining every waste of a word – every vague
pronoun, subject, adjective, or adverb that should be made more specific.
 Students break into groups of four and rewrite the paragraph to eliminate every
underlined wasted word.
 As a class, one student from each exercise group reads the paragraph out loud
-4.1-
Key Questions
What was the biggest difference between the first draft and the rewrite?
How did multiple groups using the same paragraph come up with such different rewrites?
Where there any words that had you stuck?
What are some strategies you can use to eliminate wasted words in your own writing?
What are some strategies you might use to avoid using wasted words in your first draft?
2. Revision and finalization period
 Students return to their pairs and made a final edit of the artifact conversation,
considering word choice.
 Teacher distributes author’s note and final product guidelines as students are finishing up,
gauging a sense of each pair’s organizational abilities.
 Students pull artifacts together into a coherent presentation of a final product (meaning
they pull all artifacts or replication of artifacts together, organized into an in-print story)
 Students draft a confidential author’s note to complement their final draft of the artifact
conversation.
 The final Artifact Conversation story, any drafts, the Peer Review sheets, the Progress
Plan, and the author’s note are attached and handed in.
3. Peter Christopher monologue letter
 Introduce the concept/device of monologue
 Put Peter Christopher letter up on the Smartboard
 Ask a volunteer to begin reading. Shift to another volunteer if the first student tires.
Key Questions
What does the letter and its form tell us about Peter Christopher?
His writing process?
What seems to be the genesis of his stories?
What impact does monologue as a literary device embedded in the letter have on the reader?
When or why would a writer choose to use monologue?
4. Daniel Lyons’ letter
 Put letter up on the Smartboard
 Read through it together as a class
-4.2-
Key Questions
What does the letter tell us about Dan Lyons?
His writing process?
What seems to be the genesis of his stories?
What do you think about the writer using a “trick” to set up the ending?
Having read the letter before the story, how will this insight into Dan’s intentions and process
influence your reading of the story?
5. Distribute “The First Snow,” the CPT sheet, the Day Four vocabulary sheet
6. Cover the unfamiliar references in “The First Snow” (using visual PowerPoint; see note
under Appendices):
sycamore, snare drum, tortoiseshell, Cutlass, Norman Rockwell, Yankee,
shell-shocked, canned sardines, Gauguin
7. If there is time left in class, begin reading “The First Snow” together, referring to the CPT
sheet.
Homework:
 Read “The First Snow”
 Complete the CPT for “The First Snow”
 Complete the Day Four vocab sheet for “The First Snow”
Evaluation/Follow-up:
Read the “Artifact Conversation” stories and supporting material.
Respond to Author’s Notes
Assess projects according to the “Artifact Conversation” assessment sheet
-4.3-
Appendices:
“Wasted Words” exercise
Author’s note and Final Product guidelines
Peter Christopher letter (not online)
Daniel Lyons letter (not online)
“The First Snow” by Daniel Lyons (not online)
The CPT for “The First Snow”
The vocabulary sheet for “The First Snow”
Note: the visual PowerPoint for some of the unfamiliar references in “The First Snow” is not
included because it takes too much space to load and too much ink to print. The imagines are
just stock Google Images of a sycamore tree, sardines in a can with the cover peeled back, a
snare drum, etc.
-4.4-
Wasted Words Exercise
As we go over this on the board, underline every word that could be more specific.
Everybody was there except for the ones who were
busy doing something else.
It was a great time and everyone was having fun. It was
nice to go at it with stuff, but some of the people thought that
a lot of what was going on there was kind of bad and they
said that they would rather go back to the other place where
they had been before, doing what they had been doing
before they got here.
Artifact Conversation
Author’s Note and Final Product Guidelines
Your final Artifact Conversation should be pulled together with all supporting material.
1. The actual conversation should be in print, with the artifacts clearly separated or defined,
much like Peter Christopher organized his story.
2. The conversation should consist of at least 5 artifacts from each character.
3. The conversation should have a title
4. Enclosed with your actual in-print conversation, please include
 The pre-write worksheets for collaborative planning
 The Progress Plan
 The three Peer Review worksheets
 Your team’s self-assessment, using the Assignment Rubric
 An author’s note from each co-author.
NOTE: You can hand in one package per team, or two separate packages. Either way, you must
submit TWO author’s notes with your package. My response to your conversation will be
returned to on the author’s note. That will allow me to respond to each of you individually.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Please write up your thoughts and observations about your creative
process through this project. The author’s note can be written as if you are having a casual
conversation with your reader (which would be me). Here are a few specific prompts to get you
thinking:







What was the co-authoring, collaborative experience like for you? Did you find it helpful
or inhibiting?
What surprised you about your character? Did you enjoy the experience of letting your
character loose on the page or did you keep tight rein on the conversation?
How did you negotiate the dual roles of writer and character? Did one win out over
another?
Do you believe in these characters? Do you know feel as if you really know them?
Do you believe the characters’ conversation? Are you satisfied with the way they
addressed and resolved the conflict?
Where do you think the characters would go from here if the conversation continued?
What did you learn, if anything, about yourself as a writer? As an imagination?
CONFLICT/PLOT/TRUTH (C/P/T) HANDOUT
SHORT STORY TITLE: “The First Snow”__________________________
IDENTIFY THE CONFLICT (THE PROBLEM FACED BY THE MAIN
CHARACTER OR PERSON TELLING THE STORY):__________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
QUOTE THE FIRST SENTENCE THAT INTRODUCES THE CONFLICT:
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
GIVE A BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE PLOT (WHAT HAPPENS IN THE
STORY?):__________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
WHAT TRUTH ABOUT THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE DO YOU THINK
THE WRITER IS EXPLORING?_____________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
QUOTE THE ONE SENTENCE THAT BEST EXPLAINS THAT TRUTH:
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
Vocabulary sheet for “The First Snow”
word
arraign
oblivious
dignity
paunch
cardigan
indelible
menace
seizure
cast
sinister
pariah
furtive
endure
Know
in
context
?
Definition I know or needed to
look up
Original sentence
word
putter
reveille
winch
wake
bank
recoil
spent
mingle
report
scenario
know
in
context
?
Definition I know or needed to
look up
Original sentence
Day Five
Materials:
“The First Snow” by Daniel Lyons
Copies of “The First Snow” with highlighted dialogue
Monologue Assignment Sheet
Daniel Lyons letter (available as a reference)
Unfamiliar references visual PowerPoint (available as a reference)
Concept Terms:
None for today.
Vocabulary:
arraign, oblivious, dignity, paunch, cardigan, indelible, menace, seizure, cast, sinister,
pariahs, furtive, endure, putter, scenario, reveille, winch, wake, bank, recoil, spent, mingle,
report
Objectives:
 Students will look critically at the development of plot, character, and conflict in light of
the authorial intent.
 Students will work with monologue as a literary form.
 Students will work with monologue as a means of establishing and sustaining voice
 Students will work with monologue, in an oblique way, as a form of persuasion
 Students will work with monologue as a means of accessing and unveiling their
insight and understanding of the story
 Students will rely on facts and direct observations extracted from the story to support
their monologue.
Procedure:
1. Return Artifact Conversation assignments
2. Read through key scenes in “The First Snow,” using volunteers to run dialogue
-5.1-
3. Discuss the story in regards to conflict, character, truth, and authorial intent
Key Questions
How did reading Dan’s letter prior to reading the story influence your understanding of the
story? of the plot and characters?
What is our very first sense of conflict?
When are we sure about the conflict?
Is the conflict the same for the dad, the mom, and Bob?
With which character does Dan want us to invest our empathies? And what literary device does
he use to guide us to that character?
The first section of the story (before the first white space) gives us a lot of information. Is it
enough to make us trust Bob as an honest narrator? More honest than Peter Christopher?
Bob tells us, “Jenny is seven and Nelson is five ….I, however, am seventeen.” What purpose
does this “however” serve? Let’s read the letter without the word. What is it’s power?
Would you make the same choice as Bob?
Dan gives us a lot of information about his own reactions to these types of news article. Does his
attitude make it into the story?
What is the basic human Truth here?
Let’s look at that last paragraph. How do we feel about Dan’s manipulation of it? What about
the last line? Do we believe it?
Is there some law of the universe that says kids shouldn’t have to make this sort of choice about
their parents, bear this sort of responsibility?
4. Monologue Assignment
 Revisit the literary device of monologue
 Introduce monologue assignment and distribute assignment sheets
 As a class, brainstorm possible characters we could adopt for our monologue: Bob, the
mom, the principal, Mark, an anonymous classmate, etc.
 Brainstorm some possible attitudes our character could adopt: judgmental, sympathetic
 Allow class time for initial drafting of monologue
 If time allows, ask for volunteers to share from their drafts thus far
5. Collect “The First Snow” CPTs and vocab sheets
Homework:
Continue working on the monologue. Full draft due for next class. Teacher will be available
from 7-10 tonight to provide feedback via email
-Day 5.2-
Evaluation/Follow-up:
Read “The First Snow” CPTs
Read “The First Snow” vocab sheets and record unknown words on spreadsheet
Appendices:
Monologue Assignment Sheet
-Day 5.3-
Monologue Assignment
Monologues come in different shapes and sizes. There’s the monologue of your mother talking
and talking mono, more mono, monopolize, never stop talking and she can’t even see that you
are glazed over and because it’s only her talking and no one else, you could call that a
monologue because what else would you call it that would be so kind.
Late night talk show hosts do a monologue at the beginning of their shows, telling jokes, getting
the audience warmed up, bashing Britney Spears, going for the laughs.
Actors in plays on stage do monologues where the lights go all dark except for the spotlight on
the character who comes up front and everything and everyone else on stage seems to recede and
the character talks out at the audience, not really at the audience, more like at the imaginary
moon, but the playwright is giving you information, allowing the character to talk out loud to
everyone and no one yet not come across as crazy. It’s a device.
And then there is the interior monologue where you dig into a head: yours, the head you have or
the head you’d like to have or the head you hope you never have, or a character’s head. You dig
in deep and just let it rip. The thoughts that make sense and the ones that don’t like Bob
wondering if he should do homework because his father is gay and his mother is cuckoo or the
kid who wants his mother to come blasting through the door any minute or not because it’s all
his fault and he couldn’t save her or like Peter Christopher who made me cry when I got the
letter because I knew he put so much love of craft and voice and sentence into it and when I
called him to say thank you he was writing on the wall with a pencil because he’d run out of
paper and he was discouraged and upset and tired and scared because he couldn’t get a teaching
job anywhere and then finally he did; they hired him in Georgia and his students loved him and
he taught them to tell the truth and just when life turned wonderful -- teaching, students, wife,
writing, tons and tons and tons of blank paper so he could bring his pencil down off the walls –
Peter Christopher got cancer and died but we have his letter so let’s write a monologue and see
where it takes us, into the head of some character where there doesn’t have to be commas or
even full sentences but there is Truth and fear and sorrow and crazy insane humor and secrets
and neurons and no need to take a breath in between words.
Choose any character or potential character (such as an anonymous classmate or neighbor) from
“The First Snow” and burrow inside the character’s head. Poke around, imagine, pull from the
story, what is your chosen character thinking, feeling, observing, processing, figuring, musing,
pondering, considering about the events concerning Bob’s dad.
Your monologue should be at least a full two pages (because sometime it can take that long
before the good stuff starts to flow.) At the top of your monologue, please identify which
character from the story you are representing. If you’ve chosen a character who wasn’t actually
in the story but could have been, give just a brief description to anchor the reader to this raw
voice. Have some fun with this assignment!
Day Six
Materials:
Detail Exercise, excerpt from Nicholas Spark’s Message in a Bottle
Evocative images PowerPoint
Box of props for sensory detail exercise: bread dough (if they are mature enough not to eat it or
throw it; if not, clay or silky baby blanket edge swatches), rain stick, artificial salt and tootsie
pops, bubble wrap
Concept Terms:
Sensory detail, clichés, unique yet universal, palpable reality, evocative, tactile
Vocabulary:
None today
Objectives:
1. Students will practice developing and describing evocative, sensory detail that offers
the reader a sense of the unique yet universal.
2. Students will experientially grapple with the universality of basic human tactile urges.
3. Students will acquire another tool for revision and editing: the inclusion of evocative
detail and the elimination of clichéd or predictable detail.
4. Students will experience the criticism of published prose, opening up the possibility that
not all authors are “right” and that students should not be afraid to look at published
material with a critical eye.
Procedure:
1. Return “First Snow” CPTs and vocab sheets
2. Ask if there were any particular challenges with the monologue.
3. Detail Exercise
 Put Spark’s excerpt up on the board and read through it.
-6.1-
 Discuss the concepts of evocative detail and unique-yet-universal detail and
apply those concepts to the Spark excerpt.
Key Questions
What do we know about the woman in the excerpt?
How would we distinguish her personality, or her life, from any other person?
What about her son?
What are clichés? Can we come up with some examples?
How can a detail be unique yet universal at the same time?
What is the impact on the reader if a detail is both unique and universal?
How does a writer use detail to create a palpable reality for the reader?
 Put an evocative image up on the board. A really vibrant and immediate
photograph of a grilled cheese sandwich works well here.
 What does it mean when a photograph or a description is evocative?
 Quickly run through other evocative images in the PowerPoint
Key Questions
How can a writer use detail to create an evocative image?
What makes a detail sensory or tactile?
How does evocative detail invest the reader?
How do clichéd details dis-invest the reader?




Break students into groups of four.
Distribute squish prop (bread dough or odorless clay).
Each group brainstorms details, descriptions, memories evoked by the squish.
Distribute artificial salt and a chaser (tootsie pops work well) and repeat
brainstorm of details and descriptions.
 Shake rain stick and repeat the brainstorm of details and descriptions.
 Distribute bubble wrap and repeat brainstorm.
 Ask each group to share its best unique yet universal details
Key Questions
Which sense is easiest to work with? To describe?
Which sense is the most evocative?
As writers, where do we go to find our details?
Do we stay in the moment or do we cast back, or both?
The most important question: Why do we pop bubble wrap? Where does that impulse come
from and why or how is it so universally shared?
Why did so many of you pick up the squish and interact with it before we were given instructions
about how to engage with the substance?
-6.2-
Where does the universal impulse to squish come from?
How about the tootsie pops? How many people had cherry flavor and what does that flavor
evoke?
How many people smoothed out the wrapper?
How many looked for the Indian?
How many unspooled their stick?
 Distribute Spark excerpt. Ask each group to re-write the paragraph using
evocative, sensory detail that does distinguish this woman and her son from
everyone else in the world.
 Have each group share their re-write with the entire class.
4. Monologue Assignment
 Suggest students revisit and/or continue their monologue drafting and revision to include
the use of evocative detail that is both unique and universal.
 If class time permits, allow in-class drafting time.
Homework:
Final draft of Monologue Assignment due next class.
Teacher available 7-10 in the evening to offer feedback via email.
Evaluation/Follow-up:
Gauge progress of Monologue Assignment through evening feedback requests.
Appendices:
Detail Exercise: excerpt from Nicholas Spark’s Message in a Bottle
Evocative images PowerPoint is not included because of the difficulty in loading and printing.
The images are just stock photos from Google Images.
-6.3-
Detail Exercise
From Message in a Bottle by Nicholas Sparks
But the problem was that there was always something to do.
Dishes to be washed, bathrooms to be cleaned, the cat box to be
emptied; cars needed tune-ups, laundry needed to be done, and bills
had to be paid. Even though Kevin helped a lot with his chores, he
was almost as busy as she was with school and friends and all his
other activities. As it was, magazines went straight to the garbage
unread, letters went unwritten, and sometimes, in moments like
these, she worried that her life was slipping past her.
Day Seven
Materials:
David Foster Wallace sentence from The Pale King
Tall grass image
“Any Minute Mom Should Come Blasting Through the Door” by David Ordan
Handout on the New York Times portraits
Two sample New York Times portraits
Concept Terms:
Portrait, profile, sketch, lead
Vocabulary:
None today
Objectives:
1. Students will practice bringing a critical eye to published writing.
2. Students will use a conflict from short fiction to identify multiple human truths and how
those truths are experienced in their own lives.
3. Students will become familiarized with the development of a rhetorical form.
4. Students will deconstruct examples of that form, identifying and distinguishing individual
elements native to the form.
5. Students will become familiarized with a historical artifact.
Procedure:
1. Collect Monologues.
2. Put David Foster Wallace first sentence up on the Smartboard as an example of
extraordinary detail:
Past the flannel plains and blacktop graphs and skylines of canted
rust, and past the tobacco-brown river overhung with weeping
trees and coins of sunlight through them on the water downriver,
to the place beyond the windbreak, where untilled
-7.1-
fields simmer shrilly in the A.M. heat: shatter-cane, lamp’squarter, cutgrass, sawbrier, nutgrass, jimsonweed, wild mint,
dandelion, foxtail, muscadine, spine-cabbage, goldenrod,
creeping charlie, butter-print, nightshade, ragweed, wild oat,
vetch, butcher grass, invaginate volunteer beans, all heads gently
nodding in a morning breeze like a mother’s soft hand on your
cheek.
 Emphasize that Foster Wallace was known for his ridiculously long sentences, that
his writing is sort of over-the-top unusual, and that this sentence, and the novel The
Pale King, was published after his death, perhaps before his final edit of the
sentence. Take care to explain that this is a counter-example to the Spark excerpt,
not a suggestion of how students should write.
Key Questions
What scene is Foster Wallace describing?
What is a graph? Who wants to grab the dictionary to look it up, along with canted?
Is “flannel plains” evocative? “Tobacco-brown river?” “Coins of sunlight?”
Why the use of a list?
What is the strongest evocative detail?
 Put up an image of the tall grass heads bending in the breeze.
3. “Any Minute Mom Should Come Blasting Through the Door”
 Distribute story and post up on board.
 Ask volunteers to read.
 Walk the class through a close read of the story:
Key Questions
How would we describe the conflict? Is there a sentence that sums it up?
How would we describe the voice? The tone?
How much of life is “almost good?”
How much do we believe this narrator?
Do you agree: should we know about these things? If so, why don’t we?
What do we know about the relationship between the mom and the dad?
Do you know this dad? This family?
What is the power of the detail about shocking her good this time? What does this tell us?
Why does the narrator think so logically when he finds his mom? How does this match up
with Bob from “The First Snow” on page 2 when he says he thought crazy things: should I
do homework?
-7.2-
Why do strange thoughts intrude in stressful situations?
What level of responsibility is the narrator experiencing?
Who assigned him that responsibility?
Does he come by it the same way Bob does?
At the end of the “The First Snow” Bob talks about being scared of the future. This
narrator says “That’s when you’ve got your whole life to live…” Why does the future seem
so big to both boys?
What about the line “It was on.” How does such a simple sentence, a simple paragraph say
so much?
If simple can say so much, where does David Foster Wallace’s style fit?
Why does the narrator have to remind his father how much the son is needed?
What makes these dinners so painful for the narrator?
Why is the meat of the father-son conversations “off stage?”
 What are the basic human Truths of the story? Our weird thoughts that drop in
under times of stress? The level of responsibility that adolescents take upon
themselves? How life can change in an instant and we can be completely
unprepared? That too often we don’t fully appreciate the ones we love until we’ve
lost them?
4. A Look at those Truths in real life: The New York Times 9/11 Portrait Artifacts.





Distribute Portrait handout and put up on board.
Read through it as a class.
Distribute sample portraits.
Pair students to deconstruct the sample portraits for the elements listed on the handout.
Post sample portraits on board and as a class read through them to identify the elements.
5. Distribute “Silver Water” and its CPT and vocab sheets.
6. Cover unfamiliar references in “Silver Water”: La Traviata, Puccini, Mozart, Handel,
Bessie Smith, Schubert; Thorazine, borderline; Steinway piano; A.M.E. Zion Church;
aphids; concerti, contralto; aneurism; Lourdes; ferret
Homework:
Read “Silver Water” by Amy Bloom
Complete the story’s CPT and vocabulary sheet
-7.3-
Evaluation/Follow-up:
Read and assess monologues
Appendices:
David Foster Wallace sentence
“Any Minute Mom Should Come Blasting Through the Door” by David Ordan (not online)
Handout on the New York Times portraits
Two sample New York Times profiles
“Silver Water” by Amy Bloom
CPT for “Silver Water”
Vocab sheet for “Silver Water”
-7.4-
The Pale King by David Foster Wallace
The first sentence:
Past the flannel plains and blacktop graphs and skylines of canted rust, and
past the tobacco-brown river overhung with weeping trees and coins of
sunlight through them on the water downriver, to the place beyond the
windbreak, where untilled fields simmer shrilly in the A.M. heat: shatter-cane
lamp’s-quarter, cutgrass, sawbrier, nutgrass, jimsonweed, wild mint,
dandelion, foxtail, muscadine, spine-cabbage, goldenrod, creeping charlie,
butter-print, nightshade, ragweed, wild oat, vetch, butcher grass, invaginate
volunteer beans, all heads gently nodding in a morning breeze like a mother’s
soft hand on your cheek.
Portraits
In the days after the 9/11 attacks, families plastered New York City with missing-person
fliers, in the hopes of finding loved ones who had worked at the World Trade Center.
Reporters at The New York Times, working off of the fliers, began interviewing friends
and relatives of the missing. Those interviews were turned into brief portraits, or
sketches, that captured real people with real lives jumping off the page. The portraits
were brief and informal, sometimes funny and sometimes sad, often centered around a
single detail or story that captured a sense of the person. They were not intended to
cover an entire biography, but rather to give a snapshot of each personality, of a life
caught in mid-stream. Each profile was roughly 200 words.1
The NYT published over 1,800 of these portraits, and in the process the writers
perfected an art form that can be broken down into specific elements:2
1. A lead that captures a sense of character.
2. Movement from the general to the specific and sometimes back again.
3. Specific details that “make it real” and reveal personality
4. Quotes from friends and loved ones
5. A sense of the person’s hopes and dreams
6. A sense of a life caught in mid-action
7. Endings that give you a lingering sense of the person
Activity: In pairs, working from this list of elements, deconstruct the two sample
portraits. Underline and number the sentences that showcase the seven elements in
each of the portraits.
From “Closing a Scrapbook Full of Life and Sorrow” By JANNY SCOTT, The New York
Times. December 31, 2001
1
2
Heavily borrowed from Roy Peter Clark’s “Portraits of Grief” for the Poynter Institute
A Fan of Basketball and School
Unlike many 11-year-olds, Bernard Curtis Brown II bounded out of his house every
school day. "He lived to go to school,'' said his mother, Sinita. ''If he was sick, he would
always say he was feeling better so he could get to school."
But before Bernard left, a few things had to be in order. His parents did not demand it,
but Bernard's bed had to be made, his room straightened, and his clothes ironed before
he stepped out into the world. ''Oh yes, he was a neat child,'' his mother said with a
laugh.
He also awoke with a unusual energy. "He would just pop right up," his mother said. So
she did not mind letting him stay up late to watch basketball on television.
An ambitious player, Bernard had just bought a pair of Air Jordan basketball shoes and
was wearing them on Sept. 11 on a flight to California as part of a trip sponsored by the
National Geographic Society. A Washington resident, he was enlivened by the prospect
of Michael Jordan running the court for his hometown Wizards.
The Archetypal Good Kid
His friends nicknamed Brian P. Monaghan Jr., "slick" — but not the deceptive, smoothtalking, street-smart kind of slick. Around Inwood, where he lived, Mr. Monaghan was
known as the archetypal good kid, a 21- year-old who helped elderly women across
streets and went to the store for neighbors who could not.
No, they called him Slick because of the way he wore his hair: smoothed back, matineeidol style.
He grew up playing baseball and handball on the courts near 207th Street. The older
guys use to tease Brian Sr., the Little League coach, that Junior was not going to be a
New York Yankee. But if the former World Champs drafted on the basis of heart, Brian
Jr. would have been wearing pinstripes for a living.
He chose carpentry as a profession. Sept. 11 would have been his second day on the
job at Certified Installation Services on the 98th floor of 2 World Trade Center. Mr.
Monaghan had already made an impression on his co-workers.
After Sept. 11, his new colleagues said what those who have known Brian Jr. all his life
have said: he was a good kid
Silver Water
By Amy Bloom
My sister’s voice was like mountain water in a silver pitcher; the clear blue beauty of it cools you
and lifts you up beyond your heat, beyond your body. After we went to see La Traviata, when she
was fourteen and I was twelve, she elbowed me in the parking lot and said, “Check this out” And
she opened her mouth unnaturally wide and her voice came out, so crystalline and bright that all
the departing operagoers stood frozen by their cars, unable to take out their keys or open their
doors until she had finished, and then they cheered like hell.
That’s what I like to remember and that’s the story I told to all of her therapists. I wanted them
to know her, to know that who they saw was not all there was to see. That before her constant
tinkling of commercials and fast-food jingles there had been Puccini and Mozart and hymns so
sweet and mighty you expected Jesus to come down off his cross and clap. That before there was
a mountain of Thorazined fat, swaying down the halls in nylon maternity tops and sweatpants,
there had been the prettiest girl in Arrandale Elementary School, the belle of Landmark Junior
High. Maybe there were other pretty girls, but I didn’t see them. To me, Rose, my beautiful
blond defender, my guide to Tampax and my mother’s moods, was perfect.
She had her first psychotic break when she was fifteen. She had been coming home moody and
tearful, then quietly beaming, then she stopped coming home. She would go out into the woods
behind our house and not come in until my mother went after her at dusk, and stepped gently
into the briars and saplings and pulled her out, blank-faced, her pale blue sweater covered with
crumbled leaves, her white jeans smeared with dirt. After three weeks of this, my mother who is
a musician and widely regarded as eccentric, said to my father, who is psychiatrist and a kind,
sad man, “She’s going off.”
“What is that, your professional opinion?” He picked up the newspaper and put it down again,
sighing. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to snap at you. I know something’s bothering her. Have you
talked to her?”
“What’s there to say? David, she’s going crazy. She doesn’t need a heart-to-heart talk with Mom,
she needs a hospital.”
They went back and forth, and my father sat down with Rose for a few hours, and she sat there
licking the hairs on her forearm, first one way, then the other. My mother stood in the hallway,
dry-eyed and pale, watching the two of them. She had already packed, and when three of my
father’s friends dropped by to offer free consultations and recommendations, my mother and
Rose’s suitcase were already in the car. My mother hugged me and told me that they would be
back that night, but not with Rose, She also said, divining my worst fear, “It won’t happen to
you, honey. Some people go crazy and some people never do.
You never will.” She smiled and stroked my hair. “Not even when you want to.”
Rose was in hospitals, great and small, for the next ten years. She had lots of terrible therapists
and a few good ones. One place had no pictures on the walls, no windows, and the patients all
wore slippers with the hospital crest on them. My mother didn’t even bother to go to
Admissions. She turned Rose around and the two of them marched out, my father walking
behind them, apologizing to his colleagues. My mother ignored the psychiatrists, the social
workers, and the nurses, and played Handel and Bessie Smith for the patients on whatever was
available. At some places, she had a Steinway donated by a grateful, or optimistic, family; at
others, she banged out “Gimme a Pigfoot and a Bottle of Beer” on an old, scarred box that hadn’t
been tuned since there’d been English-speaking physicians on the grounds. My father talked in
serious, appreciative tones to the administrators and unit chiefs and tried to be friendly with
whoever was managing Rose’s case. We all hated the family therapists.
The worst family therapist we ever had sat in a pale green room with us, visibly taking stock of
my mother’s ethereal beauty and her faded blue t-shirt and girl-sized jeans, my father’s rumpled
suit and stained tie, and my own unreadable seventeen-year-old fashion statement. Rose was
beyond fashion that year, in one of her dancing teddybear smocks and extra-extra-large Celtics
sweatpants. Mr. Walker read Rose’s file in front of us and then watched in alarm as Rose began
crooning, beautifully, and slowly massaging her breasts. My mother and I laughed, and even my
father started to smile. This was Rose’s usual opening salvo for new therapists.
Mr. Walker said, “I wonder why it is that everyone is so entertained by Rose behaving
inappropriately.”
Rose burped, and then we all laughed. This was the seventh family therapist we bad seen, and
none of them had lasted very long. Mr. Walker, unfortunately, was determined to do right by us.
“What do you think of Rose’s behavior, Violet?” They do this sometimes. In their manual it must
say, if you think the parents are too weird, try talking to the sister.
“I don’t know. Maybe she’s trying to get you to stop talking about her in the third person.”
“Nicely put,” my mother said, “Indeed,” my father said, “Fuckin’ A,” Rose said.
-2-
“Well, this is something that the whole family agrees upon,” Mr. Walker said, trying to act as if
he understood or even liked us.
“That was not a successful intervention, Ferret Face.” Rose tended to function better when she
was angry. He did look like a blond ferret, and we all laughed again. Even my father, who tried
to give these people a chance, out of some sense of collegiality had given it up.
After fourteen minutes, Mr. Walker decided that our time I was up and walked out, leaving us
grinning at each other. Rose was still nuts, but at least we’d all had a little fun.
The day we met our best family therapist started out almost as badly. We scared off a resident
and then scared off her supervisor, who sent us Dr. Thorne. Three hundred pounds of Texas
chili, cornbread, and Lone Star beer, finished off with big black cowboy boots and a small string
tie around the area of his neck.
“O frabjous day, it’s Big Nut.” Rose was in heaven and stopped massaging her breasts
immediately.
“Hey, Little Nut.” You have to understand how big a man would have to be to call my sister
“little.” He christened us all, right away. “And it’s the good Doctor Nut, and Madame Hickory
Nut, ‘cause they are the hardest damn nuts to crack, over here in the overalls and not much else
is No One’s Nut”—-a name that summed up both my sanity and my loneliness. We all relaxed.
Dr. Thorne was good for us, Rose moved into a halfway house whose director loved Big Nut so
much that she kept Rose even when Rose went through a period of having sex with everyone
who passed her door. She was in a fever for a while, trying to still the voices by fucking her
brains out.
Big Nut said, “Darlin’, I can’t. I cannot make love to every beautiful woman I meet, and
furthermore, I can’t do that and be your therapist too, It’s a great shame, but I think you might
be able to find a really nice guy, someone who treats you just as sweet and kind as I would if I
were lucky enough to be your beau, I don’t want you to settle for less,” And she stopped
propositioning the crack addicts and the alcoholics and the guys at the shelter. We loved Dr.
Thorne.
My father went back to seeing rich neurotics and helped out one day a week at Dr. Thorne’s
Walk-In Clinic. My mother finished a recording of Mozart concerti and played at fund-raisers
for Rose’s halfway house. I went back to college and found a wonderful linebacker from Texas
-3-
to sleep with. In the dark, I would make him call me “darlin’.” Rose took her meds, lost about
fifty pounds, and began singing at the A.M.E. Zion Church, down the street from the halfway
house.
At first they didn’t know what do to with this big blond lady, dressed funny and hovering
wistfully in the doorway during their rehearsals, but she gave them a few bars of “Precious Lord”
and the choir director felt God’s hand and saw then with the help of His sweet child Rose, the
Prospect Street Choir was going all the way to the Gospel Olympics.
Amidst a sea of beige, umber, cinnamon, and espresso faces, there was Rose, bigger, blonder,
and pinker than any white women could be. And Rose and the choir’s contralto, Addie
Robicheaux, laid out their gold and silver voices and wove them together in strands as fine as
silk, as strong as steel. And we wept as Rose and Addie, in their billowing garnet robes, swayed
together clasping hands until the last perfect note floated up to God, and then they smiled down
at us.
Rose would still go off from time to time and the voices would tell her to do bad things, but Dr.
Thorne or Addle or my mother could usually bring her back. After five good years, Big Nut died,
Stuffing his face with a chili dog, sitting in his unair-conditioned office in the middle of July, he
had one big, Texas-sized aneurysm and died.
Rose held on tight for seven days; she took her meds, went to choir practice, and rearranged her
room about a hundred times. His funeral was like a Lourdes for the mentally ill. If you were
psychotic, borderline, bad-off neurotic, or lust very hard to get along with, you were there.
People shaking so bad from years of heavy meds that they fell out of the pews. People holding
hands, crying, moaning, talking to themselves. The crazy people and the not-so-crazy people
were all huddled together, like puppies at the pound.
Rose stopped taking her meds, and the halfway house wouldn’t keep her after she pitched
another patient down the stairs. My father called the insurance company and found out that
Rose’s new, improved psychiatric coverage wouldn’t begin for forty-five days. I put all of her
stuff in a garbage bag, and we walked out of the halfway house, Rose winking at the poor
drooling boy on the couch.
“This is going to be difficult--not all bad, but difficult--for the whole family, and I thought we
should discuss everybody’s expectations. I know I have some concerns.” My father had convened
a family meeting as soon as Rose finished putting each one of her thirty stuffed bears in its own
special place.
-4-
“No meds,” Rose said, her eyes lowered, her stubby fingers, those fingers that had braided my
hair and painted tulips on my cheeks, pulling hard on the hem of her dirty smock. My father
looked in despair at my mother.
“Rosie, do you want to drive the new car?” my mother asked.
Rose’s face lit up. “I’d love to drive that car, I’d drive to California, I’d go see the bears at the San
Diego Zoo, would take you, Violet, but you always hated the zoo. Remember how she cried at the
Bronx Zoo when she found out that the animals didn’t get to go home at closing?” Rose put her
damp hand on mine and squeezed it sympathetically “Poor Vi.”
“If you take your medication, after a while you’ll be able to drive the car. That’s the deal. Meds,
car,” My mother sounded accommodating but unenthusiastic, careful not to heat up Rose’s
paranoia.
“You got yourself a deal, darlin’.”
I was living about an hour away then, teaching English during the day, writing poetry at night. I
went home every few days for dinner. I called every night.
My father said, quietly, “It’s very hard. We’re doing all right, I think, Rose has been walking in
the mornings with your mother and she watches a lot of TV. She won’t go to the day hospital,
and she won’t go back to the choir. Her friend Mrs. Robicheaux came by a couple of times. What
a sweet woman, Rose wouldn’t even talk to her. She just sat there, staring at the wall and
humming. We’re not doing all that well actually, but I guess we’re getting by. I’m sorry,
sweetheart, don’t mean to depress you.”
My mother said, emphatically, “We’re doing fine. We’ve got our routine and we stick to it and
we’re fine. You don’t need to come home so often, you know. Wait ‘til Sunday, just come for the
day. Lead your life, Vi. She’s leading hers.”
I stayed away all week, afraid to pick up my phone, grateful to my mother for her harsh calm and
her reticence, the qualities that had enraged me throughout my childhood.
I came on Sunday, in the early afternoon, to help my father garden, something we had always
enjoyed together. We weeded and staked tomatoes and killed aphids while my mother and Rose
were down at the Lake. I didn’t even go into the house until four, when I needed a glass of water.
-5-
Someone had broken the piano bench into five neatly stacked pieces and placed them where the
piano bench usually was.
“We were having such a nice time, I couldn’t bear to bring it up,” my father said, standing in the
doorway, carefully keeping his gardening boots out of the kitchen.
“What did Mommy say?”
“She said, ‘Better the bench than the piano.’ And your sister lay down on the floor and just wept.
Then your mother took her down to the lake. This can’t go on, Vi. We have twenty-seven days
left, your mother gets no sleep because Rose doesn’t sleep, and if I could just pay twenty-seven
thousand dollars to keep her in the hospital until the insurance takes over, I’d do it.”
“All right. Do it. Pay the money and take her back to Hartley-Rees. It was the prettiest place, and
she liked the art therapy there.”
“I would if I could. The policy states that she must be symptom-free for at least forty-five days
before her coverage begins. Symptom-free means no hospitalization.”
“Jesus, Daddy, how could you get that kind of policy? She hasn’t been symptom-free for fortyfive minutes.”
“It’s the only one I could get for long-term psychiatric.” He put his hand over his mouth, to block
whatever he was about to say, and went back out to the garden. I couldn’t see if he was crying.
He stayed outside and I stayed inside. Rose and my mother came home from the lake. Rose’s
soggy sweatpants were rolled up to her knees, and she had a bucketful of shells and seaweed,
which my mother persuaded her to leave on the back porch. My mother kissed me lightly and
told Rose to go up to her room and change out of her wet pants.
Rose’s eyes grew very wide. “Never. I will never. . .” She knelt down and began banging her head
on the kitchen floor with rhythmic intensity, throwing all her weight behind each attack. My
mother put her arms around Rose’s waist and tried to hold her back. Rose shook her off, not
even looking around to see what was slowing her down. My mother lay up against the
refrigerator.
“Violet, please . . .”
-6-
I threw myself onto the kitchen floor, becoming the spot that Rose was smacking her head
against. She stopped a fraction of an inch short of my stomach.
“Oh Vi, Mommy, I’m sorry. I’m sorry don’t hate me.” She staggered to her feet and ran wailing to
her room.
My mother got up and washed her face brusquely, rubbing it dry with a dishcloth. My father
heard the wailing and came running in, slipping his long bare feet out of his rubber boots.
“Galen, Galen, let me see.” He held her head and looked closely for bruises on her pale, small,
face. “What happened?” My mother looked at me. “Violet, what happened? Where’s Rose?”
“Rose got upset, and when she went running upstairs she pushed Mommy out of the way.” I’ve
only told three lies in my life, and that was my second.
“She must feel terrible, pushing you, of all people. It would have to be you, but I know she didn’t
want it to be.” He made my mother a cup of tea, and all the love he had for her, despite her silent
rages and her vague stares, came pouring through the teapot, warming her cup, filling her small,
long-fingered hands. She rested her head against his hip, and I looked away.
“Let’s make dinner, then I’ll call her. Or you call her, David, maybe she’d rather see your face
first,”
Dinner was filled with all of our starts and stops and Rose’s desperate efforts to control herself.
She could barely eat and hummed the McDonald’s theme song over and over again, pausing only
to spill her juice down the front of her smock and begin weeping. My father looked at my mother
and handed Rose his napkin. She dabbed at herself listlessly, but the tears stopped.
“I want to go to bed, I want to go to bed and be in my head. I want to go to bed and be in my bed
and in my head and just wear red, for red is the color that my baby wore arid once more, it’s
true, yes, it is, it’s true, Please don’t wear red tonight, oh, oh, please don’t wear red tonight, for
red is the color—”
“Okay, okay, Rose. It’s okay. I’ll go upstairs with you and you can get ready for bed. Then
Mommy will come up and say good night too. It’s okay, Rose.” My father reached out his hand
and Rose grasped it, and they walked out of the dining room together, his long arm around her
middle.
-7-
My mother sat at the table for a moment, her face in her hands, and then she began clearing the
plates. We cleared without talking, my mother humming Schubert’s “Schiummerlied,” a lullaby
about the woods and the river calling to the child to go to deep. She sang it to us every night
when we were small.
My father came into the kitchen and signaled to my mother. They went upstairs and came back
down together a few minutes later.
“She’s asleep,” they said, and we went to sit on the porch and listen to the crickets. I don’t
remember the rest of the evening, but I remember it as quietly sad, and I remember the rare
sight of my parents holding hands, sitting on the picnic table, watching the sunset.
I woke up at three o’clock in the morning, feeling the cool night air through my sheet. I went
down the hall for a blanket and looked into Rose’s room, for no reason. She wasn’t there. I put
on my jeans and a sweater and went downstairs. I could feel her absence. I went outside and saw
her wide, draggy footprints darkening the wet grass into the woods.
“Rosie,” I called, too softly, not wanting to wake my parents, not wanting to startle Rose. “Rosie,
it’s me. Are you here? Are you all right?”
I almost fell over her. Huge and white in the moonlight, her flowered smock bleached in the
light and shadow, her sweatpants now completely wet. Her head was flung back, her white,
white neck exposed like a lost Greek column.
“Rosie, Rosie—” Her breathing was very slow, and her lips were not as pink as they usually were.
Her eyelids fluttered.
“Closing time,” she whispered. I believe that’s what she said.
I sat with her, uncovering the bottle of Seconal by her hand, and watched the stars fade.
When the stars were invisible and the sun was warming the air, I went back to the house. My
mother was standing on the porch, wrapped in a blanket, watching me. Every step I took
overwhelmed me; I could picture my mother slapping me, shooting me for letting her favorite
die.
“Warrior queens,” she said, wrapping her thin strong arms around me. “I raised warrior
queens.” She kissed me fiercely and went into the woods by herself.
-8-
Later in the morning she woke my father, who could not go into the woods, and still later she
called the police and the funeral parlor. She hung up the phone, lay down, and didn’t get back
out of bed until the day of the funeral. My father fed us both and called the people who needed
to be called and picked out Rose’s coffin by himself.
My mother played the piano and Addie sang her pure gold notes and I closed my eyes and saw
my sister, fourteen years old, lion’s mane thrown back and eyes tightly closed against the glare
of the parking lot lights. That sweet sound held us tight, flowing around us, eddying through our
hearts, rising, still rising.
-9-
CONFLICT/PLOT/TRUTH (C/P/T) HANDOUT
SHORT STORY TITLE:___Silver Water______________________________
IDENTIFY THE CONFLICT (THE PROBLEM FACED BY THE MAIN
CHARACTER OR PERSON TELLING THE STORY):__________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
QUOTE THE FIRST SENTENCE THAT INTRODUCES THE CONFLICT:
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
GIVE A BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE PLOT (WHAT HAPPENS IN THE
STORY?):____________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
WHAT TRUTH ABOUT THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE DO YOU THINK
THE WRITER IS EXPLORING?_____________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
QUOTE THE ONE SENTENCE THAT BEST EXPLAINS THAT TRUTH:
__________________________________________________________________
“Silver Water” Vocabulary Sheet
word
crystalline
belle
defender
psychotic
briar
sapling
eccentric
divine
crest
colleague
ethereal
croon
salvo
Know
in
context
?
Definition I know or needed to
look up
Original sentence
word
intervention
collegiality
resident
christen
beau
propositions
neurotics
wistful
umber
billow
know
in
context
?
Definition I know or needed to
look up
Original sentence
word
garnet
pitch
convene
sympathetic
paranoia
empathetically
reticent
brusque
listless
overwhelm
eddying
Know
in
context
?
Definition I know or needed to
look up
Original sentence
Day Eight
Materials:
Highlighted dialogue copies of “Silver Water”
Portrait handout available as a reference
Concept Terms: None today
Vocabulary:
crystalline, belle, defender, psychotic, briar, sapling, eccentric, divine,
crest, colleague, ethereal, croon, salvo, intervention, collegiality,
resident, christen, beau, proposition, neurotics, wistful, umber, billow,
garnet, pitch, convene, sympathetic, paranoia, emphatically, reticence,
brusque, listless, overwhelm, eddying
Objectives:
1. Students will discuss aspects of character and plot in “Silver Water,” prompted by key
questions in relation to the text, to “Ride,” First Snow,” “Any Minute” and their own
experiences.
2. Students will discuss their identification and description of the conflict, plot, and Truth in
“Silver Water.”
3. Students will use the portrait rhetorical form to access and unveil insight and understanding
of the story and character.
4. Students will design questions for research and interview of a portrait subject candidate.
Procedure:
1. Return monologues.
2. Read through several scenes in “Silver Water” with volunteers taking the role of specific
Characters.
3. Discuss the story, the CPTs, the themes of responsibility, the reliability of the narrator, etc.
-8.1-
Key Questions
From the story, we gather quite a bit of information about Rose. But what do we know about
Violet?
As a narrator, Violet seems willing to tell us what she sees, not what she feels. Why?
How would this story be different if told in the third person?
What do you think of the family’s use of humor?
How does that use of humor compare to Bob’s in “The First Snow”?
The parents are fully fledged in this story. Violet is not required to assume any responsibility
until she is an adult. How does this family protect Violet?
Since she has been protected and no one is asking for her to step up, why do you think she
voluntarily takes on that level of responsibility down by the lake?
Rose says “Closing time.” What do those words mean to you?
“Warrior queens”: what is so unexpected about these words?
Even though they are unexpected, why do they make so much sense coming from Galen?
Rose required a lot of attention. Do you think the parents loved Rose and Violet equally?
How is each of the characters complicit in Rose’s death?
4. Using key elements and form from the NYT portraits and the portrait handout as a guide,
students will draft a similar portrait for Rose, drawing from the story for information and
imagined but logical quotes.
5. In groups of four, students share their portraits. After all four portraits have been read, the
peer group runs through the drafts, taking stock of Clark’s seven portrait characteristics.
6. Brief redrafting, editing period.
7. Assign students the task of writing another portrait, based on a living person of their
choosing. This portrait will not be a work of fiction, so access to the subject will be
necessary. Working individually, students formulate interview and research questions to be
fulfilled outside of class.
8. If class time remains, ask students to share their interview questions and research strategies.
9. Collect “Silver Water” CPTs and vocab sheet.
Homework:
Final draft of the Rose portrait
Research, interview and draft Living portrait
Evaluation/Follow-up: Read “Silver Water” CPTs and input vocabulary words to
spreadsheet
Appendices: None
Day Nine
Materials:
Geoffrey Becker letter
Visual PowerPoint for unfamiliar references in “Bluestown”
Concept Terms: Colon, semi-colon, dash, parentheses
Vocabulary: none today
Objectives:
1. Students will practice the use of punctuation by editing their own work for opportunities
to employ colons, semi-colons, dashes, and parentheses.
2. Students will demonstrate to themselves that the use of many types of punctuation is the
choice of writer as a device to direct the reader’s attention.
3. Students will translate interview and research notes into a specific rhetorical form.
4. Students will practice peer review, both giving and receiving.
5. Students will revisit the genesis of story and authorial intent.
6. Students will draw from their own experience in order to briefly explore a topic in
writing, mimicking the author’s draw from personal experience.
Procedure:
1. Return “Silver Water” CPTs and vocab sheets.
2. Whole class mini lesson on the cool punctuation: colons, semi-colons, dashes and
parentheses. When and how to use them, particularly in short pieces such as the portrait.
During the mini-lesson, students can look for usage opportunities in their Rose portrait.
3. Living Portraits
 Drafting period, turning interview and research notes into prose.
 Four student review groups, taking stock of seven elements and sense of the living
subject.
 Final drafting period for Living portraits.
 Interview questions and notes as well as all relevant research material should be attached
to the Living portrait.
 Collect Rose portraits and Living portraits
4.
Geoffrey Becker Letter
 Put letter up on Smartboard.
 Ask a volunteer to read it.
 Provoke discussion with key questions.
Key Questions
Have you seen a child disappear inside himself under similar circumstances?
Why are those moments so painful to witness?
Do you agree that family relationships can’t be beat for conflict?
Try to remember that line “a momentary stay against confusion.”
 Brief freewrite prompt: When have you seen a parent (any parent) grab the spotlight, act
irresponsibly, immaturely, or otherwise act selfishly to the detriment of a child, even if
that detriment was only momentary?
 Ask volunteers to share their freewrite with the class.
Key Questions
As you were freewriting from today’s writing prompt, did/do you experience any stay?
Any relaxation as Becker describes it?
Is there personal satisfaction in excavating personal experience and putting it on paper?
5. Cover unfamiliar references in “Bluestown,” using visual PowerPoint when applicable:
amplifier, aviator sunglasses, counter-culture, phase-shifter, compressor,
greaser, black and white milkshake, guitar slide, mutton-chop sideburns,
turnpike, motor-court, shuffleboard table, tape deck
6. Distribute “Bluestown” and its CPT and vocabulary sheets
Homework:
Read “Bluestown”
“Bluestown” CPT
“Bluestown” vocabulary sheet
-9.2-
Evaluation/Follow-up:
Read and assess (check, check plus, check minus) the Rose portraits and the living subject
portraits.
Appendices:
Geoffrey Becker letter (not online)
“Bluestown” (not on line)
“Bluestown” CPT
“Bluestown” vocabulary sheet
-9.3-
CONFLICT/PLOT/TRUTH (C/P/T) HANDOUT
SHORT STORY TITLE:___Bluestown__________________________________
IDENTIFY THE CONFLICT (THE PROBLEM FACED BY THE MAIN
CHARACTER OR PERSON TELLING THE STORY):__________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
QUOTE THE FIRST SENTENCE THAT INTRODUCES THE CONFLICT:
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
GIVE A BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE PLOT (WHAT HAPPENS IN THE
STORY?):____________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
WHAT TRUTH ABOUT THE HUMAN EXPERIENCE DO YOU THINK
THE WRITER IS EXPLORING?_____________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
QUOTE THE ONE SENTENCE THAT BEST EXPLAINS THAT TRUTH:
__________________________________________________________________
“Bluestown” Vocabulary Sheet
word
alternately
commiserate
banish
obscure
intensity
emaciated
solemn
transformation
coverage
grounded
bodice
squinch
blatant
Know
in
context
?
Definition I know or needed to
look up
Original sentence
word
hostility
legendary
damping
mime
silhouette
contour
extravagant
quaint
simplicity
crest
know
in
context
?
Definition I know or needed to
look up
Original sentence
Day Ten
Materials:
“Bluestown” by Geoffrey Becker
Copies of story with highlighted dialogue for volunteers
Photographic children
GAL pre-write sheet
GAL Parenting Questionnaire Form
GAL Assessment sheet
Concepts:
Guardian Ad Litem, persuasion
Vocabulary:
alternately, commiserate, banish, obscure, intensity, emaciated, solemn, transformation,
coverage, grounded, bodice, squinch, blatant, hostility, legendary, damping, mime, silhouette,
contour, extravagant, quaint, simplicity, crest
Objectives:
1. Students will draw from their own experience in developing a future, fictional version
of themselves.
2. Students will practice attention to audience, tone, purpose, and persuasion in the writing
assignment.
Procedure:
1. Return portraits.
2. “Bluestown”
 ask for six volunteers to read character dialogue
 distribute story; highlighted copies go to the volunteers
 read highlighted scenes aloud
-10.1-
 Scenes:
-
Opening paragraph
Dairy Queen scene
Motel room scene
Bar scene
Closing paragraph
 open discussion with key questions
Key Questions
When do we first start to realize that Spencer’s dad doesn’t fit the stereotypical role of a dad?
When are we sure he doesn’t?
How would we describe the father’s character; is he a “good” man?
Do you know this father?
Tell me about Hal. What do you think of him? What does Spencer think of him?
Spencer’s mother marries Hal as an insurance policy. Against what?
What do we know about the mother and father’s relationship?
The father says that Spencer is “A little romantic, but you’re supposed to be romantic at 15.”
What does it mean to be romantic in this sense?
Are we suppose to give up the luxury of romanticism when we have children?
What do you think Spencer’s dad should have been willing to give up when he became a dad?
What truth about the parent/child relationship is Becker expressing here?
What is Becker trying to say about adulthood?
3. Writing Prompt -- Prewrite
 Explain the role of a Guardian Ad Litem in a custody battle.
 Randomly distribute a photographic child to each student.
 Distribute pre-write worksheet.
Key Questions:
What is the fictional conflict that brought about this custody battle?
What is the pertinent “plot” of your fictional autobiography?
How do you describe your fictional child?
What is the Truth about you as a parent?
 Pair students as they work on the pre-write.
-10.2-
 Ask students to briefly outline their fictional custody situation for the class
4. Writing Prompt – Drafting
 Distribute GAL Parent Questionnaire form (ask students to attach the pre-writes to their
forms).
 Run through the questions on the Smartboard.
 Discuss audience, tone, and strategies for persuasion, all as open ended questions.
 Distribute Assessment sheet.
 Begin in-class writing time to draft responses to the questionnaire.
5. Collect “Bluestown” CPTs and vocab sheets
Homework:
Complete the GAL Parenting Questionnaire for next class. Teacher will be available 7-10 to
provide feedback via email.
Evaluation/Follow-up:
Read “Bluestown” CPTs and vocab sheets
Enter unknown vocab words into spread sheet
Gauge level of investment/difficulty in GAL project via evening email activity
Design final vocab test
Appendices:
GAL pre-write sheet
GAL Parenting Questionnaire
GAL assessment sheet
Photographic children, pulled from stock Google Images (not online)
-10.3-
GAL Pre-Write Sheet
1. How do you imagine yourself ten or fifteen years from now? What will
your autobiography – the key events of your life – look like and how did you
meet your co-parent?
2. Describe your child: age, name, likes and dislikes, personality,
temperament:
3. What fictional conflict led to this custody battle?
4. What kind of parent do you imagine your adult self to be? What are your
core parenting values or philosophy?
5. How do you feel about your co-parent and what quality of relationship
would you like to have with him/her?
6. How much involvement do you imagine the adult you would want with
your child?
Guardian Ad Litem Parenting Questionnaire
(Use additional sheets if your answers require more space)
Date________________________
Case Number _____________________
Name:
Age:
Occupation_______________________________________________________
Name of Child: _______________________ M/F_______Age___________
Please describe your child’s personality and temperament _________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
Please describe your relationship with your child: __________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
Please describe your parenting philosophy:
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
What role do you envision playing in your child’s day to day life?
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
Please describe your parenting weaknesses :
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
Please describe your parenting strengths:
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
Please describe your relationship with your co-parent:
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
Do you think it is ever okay to leave your child in the care of someone
else (friend, babysitter, grandparent) during your scheduled
visitation time? ___________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
What custody ruling are you asking of the court?
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
GAL Parenting Questionnaire Assessment
Student Name:
________________________________________
Excellent
Good
Score 1Just the Basics You are not getting custody! 4
Conflict
Strong, clear,
believable
statement of
conflict
supported by
evidence
throughout the
form.
Clear,
believable
statement of
conflict
supported by
hints
throughout the
form.
Sense of conflict,
but that conflict
might be generic,
completely
unbelievable,
merely hinted at, or
not supported by
any of the evidence.
Plot/fictional
autobiography
You've
presented a
believable life
and history on
the form,
supported by
details and
examples.
You've
presented a
believable life
on the form
and included
some details
or examples.
You've presented a You're hiding your past or you are in
life or history.
denial or you are unaware because
the GAL knows nothing about you.
Development of
character, both
your future self
and the child
You write with
a strong voice
and with
enough
personal
details and
observations
that the GAL
knows both
you and your
child -- your
temperaments,
personalities,
and values.
The GAL has
a sense of you
or your child
from your
voice, details,
and
observations.
The GAL
knows a little
about your
temperaments,
personalities,
and values.
The GAL knows
The GAL doesn't think you know
your name and the your child or yourself at all.
name of your child
and a few facts
about one or both of
you.
Strength/Clarity
of Custody
Request
The GAL
knows exactly
what ruling
you are
requesting
from the court
and that
request is
completely
reasonable in
light of your
responses.
The GAL has
a general idea
of what you
are requesting
from the court
and why you
think the
request is
reasonable.
The GAL feels you The GAL feels you have given up
are leaving the
any hope or desire for custody or
specifics up to the visitation.
court and that you
are perhaps unsure
of your request. Or
the GAL feels your
request is
unreasonable,
given your
responses, or your
motivations are
suspect.
CATEGORY
No statement or sense of conflict,
which makes you a very unaware
parent or a parent who is never
wrong.
You are
careful with
the task and
as you
respond to the
form you make
an effort to be
somewhat
honest,
respectful,
cooperative,
and thorough
for the GAL.
You complete the
responses
according to the
form, but not
necessarily
according to the
reactions of the
GAL.
You make little effort to be honest,
thorough, cooperative or respectful.
Your responses suggest you think
you are always right.
Persuasiveness Your
Many of your
responses
support your
request. You
are an
adequate
parent.
Your responses do
not necessarily
connect to your
request. You are
making a request
without necessarily
selling yourself as a
parent.
You make no effort to gain the
support of the GAL. You have not
presented yourself as an adequate
parent and you offer no support for
your request.
Clarity of Prose Your
Your
responses are
clear and easy
to read. Most
connect
directly to the
question and
offer support
for your
request. You
use a few
interesting
words.
Your responses can
be figured out.
Some are
connected to the
question and some
support your
request.
Your responses don't show any
understanding of the questions or the
purpose of the form. They are hard to
follow.
Your
responses
have been
proofread and
you've taken
care with
spelling and
punctuation.
You use few
vague
pronouns.
You have missed
some errors in
spelling and
punctuation, and
you often rely on
vague pronouns.
The GAL wishes
you had taken more
care with your final
draft.
Your responses have enough
misspellings and errors that the GAL
is convinced you don't care or you
could have paid a lot more attention
in school.
Awareness of
audience and
formality of
task
You take the
task seriously,
responding to
the GAL rather
than just the
form, taking
great care to
be respectful,
honest,
reasonable,
cooperative
and thorough.
responses all
support your
request. You
make a great
case for
yourself as a
parent.
responses are
clear and easy
to read. Each
response
connects
directly to the
question and
every
response
supports your
request. Your
word choice is
deliberate.
Editing and
Polishing
Your
responses are
flawless, even
if the
sentences are
simple. The
spelling and
punctuation is
perfect. You
use no vague
pronouns.
Day Eleven
Materials:
Vocabulary Tests
Portfolio Assignment and Self-Assessment Sheet
Concept Terms:
Self-assessment, Portfolio
Vocabulary:
None today.
Objectives:
1. Students will demonstrate their adoption of unit vocabulary.
2. Students will develop strong, clear custody request statements.
3. Students will be introduced to the concept of self-assessment.
Procedure:
1. Customized Vocabulary
 Distribute vocabulary sheets
 In groups of four, students explain their unknown words, listing and defining the words
for their peers. Students should given an example of how the word could be used in a
sentence.
2. Brief revision, polishing period for GAL Questionnaires
3. As a class, each student provides an oral introduction of his/her child and reads his/her
custody request statement (to uncover any statements that are weak or lacking specific
detail.)
4. Students are paired to review each other’s entire Questionnaire, playing the role of the GAL
and taking stock of clarity, tone, persuasiveness, your insight into your child, and the
strength of your presentation of yourself as a responsible and capable parent.
-11.1-
5. Finalizing drafting period.
6. Vocabulary Test.
7. Discussion of Portfolio Requirements and distribution of Assignment Sheet.
8. Discussion of Self-Assessment Letter Requirements and distribution of sheet.
9. Remaining class time used to begin drafting of self-assessment letter.
Homework:
Final, final draft of the GAL Questionnaire
Pulling together of portfolio
Self-Assessment letter
Portfolio with self-assessment letter due next class
Evaluation/Follow-up:
Assess vocabulary tests
Next class session collect final portfolios and return customized vocab tests.
Submission of unit portfolios officially ends the “Reading – and writing from – Short Fiction”
unit.
Appendices:
Portfolio Assignment and Self-Assessment sheet
Additional Stories for Possible Inclusion in the Future:
“Two Soldiers” by William Faulkner, accompanied by Academy Award winning Short Film
The short story, “Push” by Sapphire, accompanied by audio cassette reading by author
“Lust” by Susan Minot
“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” by Joyce Carol Oates, accompanied by the
film Smooth Talk starring Laura Dern
-12.2-
Final Unit Portfolio
Your final portfolio should include the final draft of individual assignments,
earlier drafts of each, any peer review sheets, and any pre-write material you
have accumulated throughout the unit.
The individual assignments are:







Police Report prompted by “Ride”
Artifact Conversation prompted by “If It’s Love”
Monologue prompted by “The First Snow”
Portrait of Rose from “Silver Water”
Living Subject Portrait
GAL Parenting Questionnaire prompted by “Bluestown”
Self-Assessment report*
5%
20%
10%
5%
5%
10%
10%
*Guidelines for the Self-Assessment report are below.
The final unit portfolio will account for 65% of your unit grade. The CPT
worksheets for “Silver Water,” “The First Snow,” and “Bluestown” will
account for 15%. The vocabulary assignments and final test will account for
10%, and the final 10% of your unit grade is reserved for what I call the “X”
factor: risk taking, growth and development of your writing over the course of
the unit, class participation, and the general success of your complete body of
work.
The Self Assessment report will be true to its title: you will issue a report of
your successes and stumbles over the course of the unit.







Which assignment or aspect of the unit represents your greatest success?
Which assignment or aspect of the unit is most disappointing to you?
What have you learned about yourself as a writer during the unit?
What have you learned about yourself as a reader during the unit?
If you could change one thing about your writing, what would it be?
Where did you see your greatest growth as a writer during the unit?
What grade do you think most fairly represents your performance
during this unit?