College Level Reading Support: Readings to Engage Learners Common Cartridge of Assessments
WW2OverviewTranscript
College Level Reading Support: Readings to Engage Learners
Overview
These materials provide resources for those wanting to assist students with their reading comprehension and vocabulary. See section 1, titled "Overview" for additional information. The Overview (section 1) also contains a common course cartridge with the assessments for these learning materials including quizzes, discussions, and writing assignments.
Overview
Creative Commons Licensing
This course was created by Jean Gorgie and Karen Hutson, faculty members at Volunteer State Community College in Gallatin, Tennessee, part of the Tennessee Board of Regents (TBR). It uses material developed by the team and Open Educational Resources (OER) material that is available to be used under Creative Commons Licensing.
The course is licensed as Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).
Structure of Materials
The general pattern of these materials involves the students doing some of the following for each reading assignment:
- read lecture notes;
- watch videos;
- read and analyze an article, poem, or textbook excerpt;
- participate in an activity;
- participate in a discussion;
- complete a written assignment; and
- take a quiz.
Reading 1
Article: British Officer Knighted for Pandemic Fundraising
Reading 2
Article: Why the British Hero Captain Tom Moore Mattered
Reading 3
Article: Why I Write Scary Stories for Children
Reading 4
Article: Dr. Booker Taliaferro Washington
Reading 5
Article: Choose to Be Grateful. It Will Make You Happier.
Reading 6
Textbook Excerpt: Chapter 1 - Introduction to Psychology
Reading 7
Poetry: Assortment of Poems
Lecture Notes: Improving Your Vocabulary
Improving Your Vocabulary
The larger vocabulary you have, the easier it is to read, write, and speak well. Although you should be working to improve your vocabulary every time you read or hear a new word, you will focus this week on it for an assignment with the article, British Officer Knighted for Pandemic Fundraising" by Phil Davison.
Using Context Clues
When you come to a word that you do not know, the first step is to make an educated guess about its definition based on the rest of the words in the sentence or paragraph.
- Finish reading the sentence with the unknown word.
- Think about when you might have heard or read the word in the past.
- Re-read the whole paragraph.
- Look for context clues in the sentence and paragraph.
- IDEAS - Kinds of context clues:
- Inference: the writer give details in the sentence from which the reader can infer the meaning.
- "His corps was sent to India, still a British colony at the time - a grueling, six-week sea voyage - where he was tasked with setting up and heading a training program for British and Indian army motorcycle units, first in Bombay (now Mumbai) and later, after a three-week road odyssey during the monsoon season, in Calcutta (now Kolkata)." Putting the details in this sentence together, mainly about the length and locations of his voyages and training, the reader can infer that grueling means very difficult.
- Definition:
- Alexa felt enervated after the walk around her neighborhood; in fact, she felt so weakened and lacking energy that she went home and took a nap. Weakened and lacking energy provide a definition for enervated.
- Example: the writer provides an instance or example of the unknown word.
- "A motorcycle aficionado, he got his first bike when he was 12 - usually carrying his luck number, 23 - went on to compete in local road races against adults, winning several trophies on his British-built Scott Flying Squirrel model." The examples in this sentence of Moore's success with motorcycles indicate that aficionado has something to do with a person who is fan of, good at, or enthusiastic about something.
- Antonym: the writer provides a word that means the opposite of the unknown word.
- Alex felt enervated after the walk around the neighborhood, which made him think he might be ill because those walks had always left him feeling invigorated. The word invigorated is an antonym for enervated; these two words have opposite meanings.
- Synonym: the writer provides a word that means the same as the unknown word.
- "In early April last year, few outside his friends and family had heard the name of Capt. Tom Moore, a former British army officer and WWII veteran approaching his 100th birthday. By the end of that month, the frail centenarian was described as . . ." The author provides 100th birthday as a synonym for centenarian.
- Inference: the writer give details in the sentence from which the reader can infer the meaning.
Video: Using Context Clues to Figure Out New Words
Watch this 4:47 video for key points that will help you use context clues to discover new words. Be prepared to share with the class any ideas that stood out to you as helpful.
References
“Using Context Clues to Figure Out New Words’” YouTube, uploaded by Khan Academy, March 22, 2020, Accessed April 7, 2021, https://youtu.be/CiNggzdWkIo
Video: Roots and Affixes
What are Affixes?
Watch this 3:06 video to discover how learning the meaning of a few affixes will increase your vocabulary exponentially! Note any points that will help you build your vocabulary.
Latin and Greek Roots and Affixes
Ever wonder where all our different words originated? Watch this 6:23 video to better understand how many words were formed in the past and to recognize the pattern of new words you encounter. Be prepared to discuss something new you learned from the video.
References
“What are Affixes?’” YouTube, uploaded by Khan Academy, June 1, 2020. Accessed April 8, 2021. https://youtu.be/WYSnf6qy4WA
“Latin and Greek Roots and Affixes” YouTube, uploaded by Khan Academy, June 1, 2020. Accessed April 8, 2021. https://youtu.be/fiaPqgwJFo4
Video: How to Annotate Text While Reading
Watch this 7:51 video for several great suggestions of how to engage with a text while reading. Note two or three that seemed particularly useful to you.
References
“How to Annotate Text While Reading’” YouTube, uploaded by SchoolHabits, May 9, 2017. Accessed April 8, 2021. https://youtu.be/w5Mz4nwciWc
Video: Building Your Background Knowledge
Your background knowledge is everything that you know when you come to the reading of a text. You have developed it over the years by going to school, watching movies, listening to music, having conversations, reading books, and living life. The more background knowledge you have, the easier it is to understand what you are reading.
Never Skip a Chance to Build Your Knowledge
Now that you are in college, it is time to leave behind bad reading habits and develop good ones. When you come to a word that you don't know, what do you usually do? Most students (if they are honest) will sheepishly say that they simply skip it. So did you catch the word in that previous sentence? Did you look it up? Sheepishly: an adverb meaning to do something in an embarrassed way. Point made: always take the opportunity to learn. It's why you are in college.
After this video, you will read an article about a British Officer in World War 2. Watch this video first. It will provide you with background knowledge about World War 2 that will help you better understand the article you will read.
Article: British Officer Knighted for Pandemic Fundraising
Tom Moore, British army officer knighted for charitable work, dies at 100 of coronavirus
Alternate Format: Link to Washington Post Article
In early April last year, few outside his friends and family had heard the name of Capt. Tom Moore, a former British army officer and World War II veteran approaching his 100th birthday.
By the end of that month, the frail centenarian was described as a “national treasure” by Britons and made headlines around the world after he paced his 82-foot garden patio for days — pushing his walker to raise funds in support of Britain’s state-supported National Health Service (NHS), struggling under the weight of increasing coronavirus patients.
His aim was to raise 1,000 pounds (about $1,370) for NHS-related charities by doing 100 laps of his garden in the Bedfordshire village of Marston Moretaine, wearing his war medals over a blazer, to mark his birthday, April 30.
As news reporters, photographers and TV networks flocked to record his effort, he ended up raising 32 million pounds (around $45 million), entering Guinness World Records for the largest amount raised in a charity walk by an individual.
Then at 100, he became the oldest person to have a No. 1 hit single on British pop charts, voicing the lyrics of the Rodgers and Hammerstein ballad "You'll Never Walk Alone" as popular singer Michael Ball rendered the melody along with a choir of NHS doctors and nurses.
Another singer, the Canadian known as the Weekend, who was vying for the No. 1 spot at the time, graciously tweeted to his fans that they should buy Captain Tom’s record so that the British “national treasure” could top the charts on his 100th birthday. He did.
He formally became Capt. Sir Tom Moore when Queen Elizabeth II, herself in isolation in Windsor Castle during a covid-19 lockdown, tapped his shoulders with a sword in July 2020 and bestowed a knighthood. It was the queen’s first face-to-face meeting with a member of the public for four months, following public clamor for her to make him a “sir.”
She also promoted Capt. Moore to the rank of honorary colonel, but the nation continued to call him simply “Captain Tom.” (A British intercity train was renamed the Captain Tom Moore, and his autobiography, “Tomorrow Will Be A Good Day,” co-written by biographer Wendy Holden and published in September, became a bestseller in Britain.)
He died Feb. 2, in a hospital near his home, two days after he was admitted for treatment for pneumonia and covid-19, according to his daughter Hannah Ingram-Moore on the family’s Twitter account.
He had lived with his daughter and son-in-law since his wife, Pamela, died in 2006. Ingram-Moore did not specify a cause of death but said he had tested positive for coronavirus infection last week and was admitted to a hospital for “additional help” with his breathing. She said doctors had not given him a coronavirus vaccine because of his pneumonia medication.
Although he had achieved near-sainthood status in Britain, a small but vociferous minority of online “trolls” attacked his daughter and her husband for letting him take a pre-Christmas holiday to Barbados (paid for by British Airways). Amid covid-19 restrictions, they protested, a seven-hour flight for a centenarian with underlying health conditions — he had skin cancer and had broken a hip in 2018 — was a bad idea.
Ingram-Moore responded that the trip was “legal” despite the covid-19 “guidelines” against unnecessary travel. Under current lockdown rules, Britons are advised to “stay home” — the government’s top pandemic slogan. She said the trip had been on her father’s “bucket list.” An overwhelming majority of Britons supported her, and news of his passing threw the nation into mourning.
Thomas Moore was born April 30, 1920, in Keighley, Yorkshire, in northern England. His father helped run the family’s home-building and repair company, while his mother was head teacher at a local school. Young Tom attended Keighley grammar school before starting an apprenticeship with a civil engineering firm.
A motorcycle aficionado, he got his first bike when he was 12 and — usually carrying his lucky number, 23 — went on to compete in local road races against adults, winning several trophies on his British-built Scott Flying Squirrel model. He also was a keen photographer.
His hobbies and apprenticeship were interrupted by the war. In May 1940, along with all able-bodied British men age 18 to 41, he was conscripted into the British army to fight Hitler’s Germany. He was assigned to the 8th Battalion, the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment, based in Cornwall, on the southwestern tip of England, to bolster coastal defenses in the face of a predicted German invasion.
In 1941, by then a second lieutenant, he was moved to the 9th Battalion, which converted from infantry into an armored unit as part of the 146th Regiment Royal Armored Corps. “Most of us had never driven a car, never mind a tank,” he recalled years later.
His corps was sent to India, still a British colony at the time — a grueling, six-week sea voyage — where he was tasked with setting up and heading a training program for British and Indian army motorcycle units, first in Bombay (now Mumbai) and later, after a three-week road odyssey during the monsoon season, in Calcutta (now Kolkata).
In early 1944, he was assigned to the British Fourteenth Army, including Indian, African and other allied troops, aiming to drive the Japanese out of Burma (now Myanmar), which they did. They later became known as the Forgotten Army because their heroism received little media coverage compared with the Allied landings at Normandy and the push to Berlin.
Promoted to captain Oct. 11, 1944, Tom Moore survived a bad bout of dengue fever and returned to Britain in February 1945 to become a tank instructor until the end of the war and his demobilization in early 1946.
In Yorkshire, he worked first as a salesman for a firm selling roofing materials, later as managing director of a concrete manufacturer. In 1949, he married a woman named Billie, but they divorced after a few years — “the darkest period of my life,” he told the Sun newspaper last year. He said the marriage had been unconsummated and that his wife had lived with what would now be called obsessive compulsive disorder.
In 1968, Capt. Moore married Pamela Paull, an office manager from Gravesend on the Thames estuary outside London. They went on to have two children, Lucy and Hannah, and two grandchildren. “[She] was a rather attractive young lady — she looked terrific to me, like a model,” he recalled. “So I had to do various trips and, shall we say, the attraction with the office manager became stronger, and I eventually married her.”
At his retirement, the couple fled the English weather and moved to Costa del Sol in southern Spain but returned to Britain after his wife developed a form of dementia and had to move to a nursing home. It was then that he moved in with his daughter and family in Marston Moretaine, where he got out his medals and his walker and hit his garden path for the health workers for whom he was so grateful.
His walk inspired countless others to emulate his fundraising efforts, including 5-year-old double amputee Tony Hudgell from Kent, in southern England, who having watched Capt. Moore’s effort, walked 10 kilometers (a bit over six miles) on his prosthetic legs. He raised 1 million pounds ($1.3 million) for health workers and proved that Capt. Moore was right: “You’ll never walk alone.”
References
Davison, Phil., Tom Moore, British army officer knighted for charitable work, dies at 100 of coronavirus. Washington Post, February 21, 2021. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/captain-tom-dies/2021/02/02/d3fa5fc8-64e9-11eb-8468-21bc48f07fe5_story.html. Accessed 8/3/2021.
Davison, Phil. "British Officer Knighted for Pandemic Fundraising." The Washington Post, Feb 03, 2021. ProQuest, https://libproxy.volstate.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/british-officer-knighted-pandemic-fundraising/docview/2485333407/se-2?accountid=14861.
Activity: Preparation for Quiz "British Officer Knighted for Pandemic Fundraising"
A common course cartridge containing assessments including quizzes, discussion prompts and written assignments is available as a companion resource for this material.
Preparing for the Quiz
The quiz preparation this week will focus on the concept of building your background knowledge. Remember that by doing this, you make reading more interesting and meaningful. and you are making yourself more knowledgeable.
There is a practice quiz for this, which I strongly encourage you to take. It will indicate all of the questions that you answer incorrectly, so you may focus your studying.
What to Research for the Quiz
Below is a list of vocabulary terms, historical events, and people with whom you might not be familiar. Your job is to look up all of these and be prepared for a matching quiz. Depending on the kind of class that you are in, you will do this alone or with a classmate.
FROM "BRITISH OFFICER KNIGHTED FOR PANDEMIC FUNDRAISING" BY PHIL DAVIDSON
- centenarian - adverb
- state-supported - adjective
- NHS - Britain's National Health Service
- flocked to - verb
- "You'll Never Walk Alone" by Rodgers and Hammerstein
- Michael Ball - singer
- the Weeknd - singer
- Queen Elizabeth II
- knighthood - noun
- clamor - noun
- vociferous - adjective
- troll - noun
- bucket list - noun
- apprenticeship - noun
- aficionado - noun
- conscript(ed) - verb
- corps - noun
- grueling - adjective
- odyssey - noun
- monsoon - noun
- allied landings at Normandy (World War II)
- bout - noun
- dengue fever - noun
- obsessive compulsive disorder - noun
- Thames - noun
- estuary - noun
- dementia - noun
Lecture Notes: Levels of Specificity
Levels of Specificity
When thinking as a reader, it is helpful to know terminology that applies to reading and how we understand what we read. As we engage with reading material this semester, your instructor will ask you about topics, main ideas, and supporting details. Below are basic definitions of the terms and well as examples.
Topic
A topic is the general subject that an author discusses. We can express this in a word or phrase.
EXAMPLES OF A TOPIC
In reading the article from last week, you might say that the topic is Sir Captain Moore or fundraising hero of the pandemic. Notice that these are phrases, not full sentences.
As college student in freshman composition class, you might choose a topic for a writing assignment, such as benefits of a Mediterranean diet or pollution in middle Tennessee. These are starting points of an essay. Your job would be to take the topic and turn it into a thesis statement, to make it a complete sentence with a point to support.
Main Idea
A main idea is the key point an author makes; it is expressed in a complete sentence. There are two kinds of main ideas.
- A thesis statement is the key point of an entire essay (usually found in the introduction paragraph in a college essay).
- A topic sentence is the key point of a body paragraph (usually found at the beginning of the paragraph). Remember that body paragraphs are those other than the introduction or conclusion.
EXAMPLES OF MAIN IDEAS
Look at the article from last week, "British Officer Knighted for Pandemic Fundraising." The second sentence of the article is the thesis statement, meaning it is the main idea of the entire essay:
By the end of that month, the frail centenarian was described as a "national treasure" by Britons and made headlines around the world after he paced his 82-foot garden patio for days - pushing his walker to raise funds in support of Britain's state-supported National Health Service (NHS), struggling under the weight of increasing coronavirus patients.
The rest of the article contains information that all supports and explains the thesis statement.
Toward the end of the article, you can see an example of a topic sentence, the main idea of a body paragraph:
In 1968, Capt. Moore married Pamela Paull, an office manager from Gravesend on the Thames estuary outside London.
The rest of the sentences in this paragraph explain Moore's marriage to Pamela.
Supporting Details
Supporting details are sentences that explain and prove the main idea. As a reader, you should look for supporting details to help you understand the main ideas. If you are reading something that is persuasive, you will want to use the supporting details to decide if the writer's argument is convincing or not. As a writer, you will provide supporting details, so you clearly communicate your ideas and perspectives to your reader.
EXAMPLES OF SUPPORTING DETAILS
From the article, "British Officer Knighted for Pandemic Fundraising," you will find details in it that support the idea that Moore was a "national treasure."
Some of these supporting details are the fact that Moore:
- raised "32 million pounds (around $45 million)" for the NHS by using his walker to do laps in his garden
- "became the oldest person to have a No. 1 hit single on the British pop charts"
- was knighted by "Queen Elizabeth II, herself in isolation in Windsor Castle during a covid-19 lockdown"
GENERAL TO SPECIFIC
TOPIC: MOST GENERAL
MAIN IDEA
SUPPORTING DETAIL: MOST SPECIFIC
Video: What is the Main Idea
This 5:13 video will help you determine the main idea of a paragraph. What are the key things to look for to find the main idea?
References
“What is a Main Idea?’” YouTube, uploaded by Khan Academy, March 27, 2020. Accessed April, 8, 2021. https://youtu.be/4swFGRhQoMI
Lecture Notes: The "Greatest" and Other Generations
The Generations Explained
In the next article you read, Chris Jones notes that Moore was one of the "Greatest Generation." What is a generation and what are the characteristics that make up the ones we currently recognize? The information below seeks to answer these questions. Note that the experts do not always agree on the birth years, so if you find information that is slightly different, that is the reason why.
Generation Z
- born after 1995
- racially diverse
- not fazed by differences in race, sexuality, or religion
- born with technology
- value financial and job security
- excessive screen time linked to loneliness and poor social skills
- mental health problems
- difficulty processing the significance of 9/11
- Liberal/Progressive in their politics and worldview
Millennials (aka Gen Y)
- born 1980s - 1990s
- technology focused
- diversity
- spirituality
- not interested in staying at one employer
- better educated than their grandparents
- delaying marriage and family longer
- more likely to be Democrats or lean that way
Generation X
- born 1965 - 1980
- work-life balance
- value education and good health
- human rights
- some trying to avoid divorce (as many in their parents' generation did divorce)
Baby Boomers
- born 1946 - 1964
- hippies of the 1960s: rock music, drugs, sex
- revolutionaries of the 1970s
- the "me" generation; focused on self above others
- first TV generation
- first generation of divorce becoming acceptable
- optimistic
- driven
- women of this generation were the first in large numbers to work outside the home
The Silent Generation
- born 1928 - 1945
- value family
- want personal interaction (not mediated by technology)
- loyalty
The Greatest Generation
Many people of this generation grew up during the Great Depression and lived through World War II, and they are the parents of the Baby Boomers ("boom" being used to describe the large increase in the number of babies born in the years after WWII).
- born 1900 - 1927
- saved the world from Hitler and the Axis powers
- built America
- selfless and hardworking
- favored traditional morality and civic duty
- saved their money
- few grew up with modern conveniences, such as washing machines and dishwashers
References
"The Whys and Hows of Generations Research," Pew Research Center, September 3, 2015, accessed October 13, 2021. The Whys and Hows of Generations Research | Pew Research Center
"What Are the Core Characteristics of Generation Z?" The Annie E. Casey Foundation, January 12, 2021, accessed October 13, 2021. What Are the Core Characteristics of Generation Z? - The Annie E. Casey Foundation (aecf.org).
Bialik, Kristen and Richard Fry, "Millennial Life: How young adulthood today compares with prior generations," Pew Research Center, accessed on October 13, 2021. https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2019/02/14/millennial-life-how-young-adulthood-today-compares-with-prior-generations-2/
Article: Why the British Hero Captain Tom Moore Mattered
Why did an old man pottering around his perfectly ordinary garden come to mean so much to the British struggle against COVID-19?
A hundred thousand reasons.
On Jan. 26, the United Kingdom reported its 100,000th death from the coronavirus. It was a grim milestone shared by the United States, which hit that number in May of last year, albeit reflecting a much larger population.
But there’s another relevant number when it comes to the beloved centenarian Captain Sir Tom Moore, who deserves his full title and who died Wednesday from both pneumonia and, in a cruel twist of fate, the virus he had empowered so many to better fight: 60,375.
That, according to Britain’s National Archives, was the number of civilian deaths during World War II. For many Brits of a certain age, the moment when the COVID-19 toll passed the number of ordinary folks killed between 1939 and 1945, mostly as a consequence of Nazi bombing campaigns, represented the most difficult day of all. Even for those not alive during the war, which now is the vast bulk of the population, the losses of those years are etched in the collective national memory as an unequaled collective sacrifice. Children were killed in rubble. Impoverished inner-city families were lost at their kitchen tables. Cities burned.
Moore was a veteran of that war, and thus he provided a crucial link to a previous era, a mythology really, where many people sacrificed their lives for the common good. Public health officials, desperate to get people to change their behavior, understood his symbolic power.
Most of the deaths from COVID-19 had taken place in the quiet shadows, in care homes and hospitals hidden not only from public view, but from the loving gaze of family members. They did not spark protests or riots for they were cloaked in old age. Few of them were rich people or citizens with access to social-media megaphones. They have been, in short, mostly anonymous occurrences, assessed collectively.
But Moore was a friendly face, a modest, self-deprecating volunteer, a man taking what little was available to him (his garden and his walking frame) and choosing to do something with those resources that he did not expect to benefit himself.
Not only was Moore a member of the so-called Greatest Generation, his walk around the garden to raise funds for Britain’s National Health Service might well go down in the history books as one of his generation’s last, great public acts of beneficence.
He could be the last chapter in that book.
And historians will argue it was not an insubstantial contribution.
He raised in excess of $50 million for the cause of public health, sure, but he also was a human motivation machine spawning countless other walks, runs, jogs and bake-offs. In the U.K., he was not the face of the virus, but the face of the war required to combat its ravages. Most of those who have died were old. It was right that their spokesperson was one of their own.
It’s easy to be cynical about heroes and, somewhere early in the story of Captain Sir Tom Moore, there was a daughter with a press release. But the modest aim, clearly, was just to raise a few British pounds for the NHS and help a man who still felt the need to serve. The rise of this man never felt like the consequence of a cynical algorithm.
Moore’s extraordinary age and humility helped. There was a book (”Tomorrow Will Be a Good Day”), talk shows and other stuff, but he was still about as pure a hero as it possible to be, not least because his heroism was so rooted in the ordinary.
A walk around the garden, that was all. But a walk after living and serving for a century.
In some ways, the end of Moore’s life is like a bucket-list fairy tale, something we might all wish in our most improbable dreams. An ordinary life that becomes not just a great life, but one acknowledged as such by much of the world.
Imagine. Interviews with media elites. An audience with the queen. A knighthood. The flag above the Prime Minister’s residence lowered in your honor. A respectful pause taken in contentious debate at the Houses of Parliament, noting your death.
A name written in fireworks across the London sky on New Year’s Eve.
A No. 1 single in the U.K. pop charts. Yeah.
A legacy of persistence, of sacrifice, of unselfishness, of humor and good cheer.
A quotidian life, suddenly of extraordinary usefulness by writ of its very ordinary nature.
What an incredibly wonderful way to go.
Written by Chris Jones
Chris Jones is chief theater critic and culture columnist for the Chicago Tribune. He also serves as Broadway critic for the New York Daily News and a critic for WBBM-Ch. 2. His latest book is "Rise Up! Broadway and American Society from 'Angels in America' to 'Hamilton.'" He has a Ph.D. from Ohio State and lives in Chicago with his wife and sons.
References
Jones, C. (2021, February 2). Column: Why the British hero captain Tom Moore mattered so much, dead now from pneumonia and coronavirus. chicagotribune.com. Retrieved September 19, 2021, from https://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/theater/chris-jones/ct-ent-captain-tom-moore-british-hero-dies-20210202-v2jv55xc7za3jklepwbcsv5lye-story.html.
Activity: Breaking Down the "Why the British Hero Captain Tom Moore Mattered" Article
Levels of Specificity
For this activity, you will apply what you have learned regarding topic, main ideas, and supporting details. Depending on the kind of class that you are in, you will work alone or with a classmate.
There is a practice quiz for this article, which I strongly encourage you to take. It will indicate all of the questions that you answer incorrectly, so you may focus your studying.
Reading with Purpose
- With topic, main ideas, and supporting details in mind, read the article through one time.
- Read the article a second time and underline any unknown terms, people, or events.
- Look up and write down everything you underlined in #2.
DISCUSSION ACTIVITY
Answer the following about the article:
- What is the topic?
- What is the thesis?
- What is one example of a topic sentence?
- What are two examples of supporting details?
- What words did you indicate as new to you?
Lecture Notes: Narration
Narration
One of the most common, and enjoyable, forms that writers use to develop ideas is narration, and it is a pattern that is most likely very familiar to you.
The Basics of Narration
To put it simply, narration is when a writer structures events and ideas so they have a beginning, middle, and end. If you have ever written an essay about your favorite summer, you have used narration. If you ever told your friends what happened at the basketball game, you have used narration, and if you have ever watched a popular Hollywood film, such as Wonder Woman 1984 or Mulan, you have seen narrative in action.
Just as movies that use narration have a message, so do narrative texts. The next article you will read is N.D. Wilson's "Why I Write Scary Stories." You will analyze how he uses narration to support this thesis.
Video: The Elements of a Story
Watch this 5:14 video to help you recognize the key elements of a story and the benefits of doing so.
References
“The Elements of a Story’” YouTube, uploaded by Khan Academy, April 10, 2020. Accessed on April 8, 2021. https://youtu.be/Zr1xLtSMMLo
Article: Why I Write Scary Stories for Children
Article: Why I Write Scary Stories for Children
APRIL 20, 2016 By N.D. Wilson
Their imaginations respond to being empowered against the things that terrify them.
Six years into my career as a children’s novelist, I was in need of a big story. My 100 Cupboards trilogy was off wandering the world in various translations, and I was hoping to wrap up The Ashtown Burials series the following year. And then what? Nothing. The calendar was empty. The future was blank. A new and strange uncertainty hung over my notebooks and bulletin boards.
I caught a nasty virus and went down hard, sweating and helpless with fever. The experience was as miserable as such sicknesses tend to be, right up until the increased brain heat brought me the strangest dream. By the time the fever broke and I was able to join my family at the dining room table, I had a new story ready to be pitched to my offspring.
Kids, meet Sam Miracle. He lives in a ranch outside of Tucson and he’s traumatically disabled, both mentally and physically. Sam struggles constantly with memory loss, he has daydreams of adventures in which he always dies, and his arms are so badly damaged that his elbows won’t bend.
My horrified children stopped eating and began straightening their arms in curious sympathy. So far, so good. They were gripped, breathing the heat of the desert while Sam was hunted by a San Francisco banker turned time-hopping arch-outlaw. They felt Sam’s extreme pain when his rigid arms were brutally shattered and he wavered on the edge of death. And then, when I told them how his arms were not only saved, but became faster than any arms had ever been before, they were so rapt they were barely breathing.
Two live rattlesnakes were grafted into Sam’s arms—one nice, one mean. He rattles whenever he’s surprised or scared, and his hands now have minds of their own. His right arm is out of control and perpetually distracted. His left arm wants to kill him and everything else it can reach.
Over dinner, spawned by a fever dream, Outlaws of Time was born. It’s a scary book, and the scariness is no accident. This story is a safe place that—at times—feels unsafe, a place where young readers can experience vicarious fear and practice vicarious courage, where they can watch new friends sacrifice and become heroes.
I write violent stories. I write dark stories. I write them for my own children, and I write them for yours. And when the topic comes up with a radio host or a mom or a teacher in a hallway, the explanation is simple. Every kid in every classroom, every kid in a bunk bed frantically reading by flashlight, every latchkey kid and every helicoptered kid, every single mortal child is growing into a life story in a world full of dangers and beauties. Every one will have struggles and ultimately, every one will face death and loss.
The goal isn’t to steer kids into stories of darkness because those are the stories that grip readers. The goal is to put the darkness in its place.There is absolutely a time and a place for The Pokey Little Puppy and Barnyard Dance, just like there’s a time and a place for footie pajamas. But as children grow, fear and danger and terror grow with them, courtesy of the world in which we live and the very real existence of shadows. The stories on which their imaginations feed should empower a courage and bravery stronger than whatever they are facing. And if what they are facing is truly and horribly awful (as is the case for too many kids), then fearless sacrificial friends walking their own fantastical (or realistic) dark roads to victory can be a very real inspiration and help.
With five children of my own (currently aged between 6 and 14), I live within a perfect focus group. Like many parents and teachers and librarians, I often look into a pair of eyes and hear the question, “What should I read next?” At any given moment, a dozen books are being consumed in our home: My kids are off wandering in Narnia or Middle Earth, making friends with Anne of Green Gables and The Penderwicks, exploring “The Wingfeather Saga” or the vivid pages and volumes of Amulet. Stories are being shared, told, and revisited all the time in our house, and when I venture out on tour or into schools, I meet thousands of kids who are off on the same fictional journeys as my own.
Overwhelmingly, in my own family and far beyond, the stories that land with the greatest impact are those where darkness, loss, and danger (emotional or physical) is a reality. But the goal isn’t to steer kids into stories of darkness and violence because those are the stories that grip readers. The goal is to put the darkness in its place.
When my eldest was first reading C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia on his own (at around the age of 7), he encountered an ink illustration of the White Witch’s evil band drawn by Pauline Baynes. Cue the nightmares. He couldn’t go on reading, and every time he slept, he saw those creatures coming to life and pursuing him.
In the wee hours of one nightmarish encounter, I realized that I had two choices. On the one hand, I could begin sheltering him from every single thing that his rich imagination might magnify and enliven into terror. This was my protective paternal impulse, but it seemed as impossible as it was short-sighted. I would be facilitating the preservation of his fearfulness.
My characters live in worlds that are fundamentally beautiful and magical, just like ours, in worlds that are broken and brutal, just like ours.My other course was to try and embolden his subconscious mind. I carried my son into my office and downloaded an old version of Quake—a first-person shooter video game with nasty, snarling aliens 10 times worse than anything drawn by Pauline. I put my son on my lap with his finger on the button that fired our pixelated shotgun, and we raced through the first level, blasting every monster and villain away. Then we high-fived, I pitched him a quick story about himself as a monster hunter, and then I prayed with him and tucked him back into bed. A bit bashfully, I admitted to my wife what I had just done—hoping I wouldn’t regret it.
I didn’t. The nightmare never shook him again.
Jump a few years and four more children. My youngest daughter (pig-tailed and precocious) was devouring all sorts of sweet little books. At her insistence, I even wrote a pair of board books just for her (Hello Ninja and Blah Blah Black Sheep) and we spent lots of time making up stories together about winged puppies. Despite all that wholesomeness, she entered a very dark period during which she was inexplicably haunted by dragons. Vivid dragons, coiling and shadowy, able to emerge from her bedroom wall with dripping jaws. For a couple of weeks, if a night passed without a nightmare, my wife and I rejoiced. We tried to track where the dragons might be coming from—fully prepared to discard whatever book or film or show might be causing such regular terror. But the root was nowhere to be found … until one Sunday at church (in a high school gymnasium) my daughter looked over my shoulder and sighed.
“Well, there’s my nightmare,” she said.
Turning, I saw it—a wriggling, snarling, slavering dragon squaring off with a mascot knight on a high school pep banner.My relief was instantaneous. That evening, I told her one of the scariest, funniest, most violent bedtime stories ever. I got the dragon description just right, and boy, did that serpent lose big. He died for good, right along with her nightmares.
I’m not interested in stories that sear terrifying images or monsters or villains into young minds—enough of those exist in the real world, and plenty of others will grow in children’s imaginations without any help. I am interested in telling stories that help prepare living characters for tearing those monsters down.
I don’t write horror. But I do write stories about terrified sheltered kids and fatherless kids and kids with the ghosts of abuse in their pasts. Those kids encounter horrors—witches and swamp monsters, black magical doors and undying villains, mad scientists and giant cheese-loving snapping turtles. Those kids feel real pain, described in real ways. They feel real loss. They learn that the truest victory comes from standing in the right place and doing the right thing against all odds, even if doing the right thing means losing everything. Even if doing the right thing means death. My characters live in worlds that are fundamentally beautiful and magical, just like ours, in worlds that are broken and brutal, just like ours. And, when characters live courageously and sacrificially, good will ultimately triumph over evil.
As children grow, fear and danger and terror grow with them, courtesy of the world in which we live and the very real existence of shadows.I’m not trying to con kids into optimism or false confidence. I really believe this stuff. My view of violence and victory in children’s stories hinges entirely on my faith. Samson lost his eyes and died … but he has new eyes in the resurrection. Israel was enslaved in Egypt, but God sent a wizard far more powerful than Gandalf to save His people. Christ took the world’s darkness on his shoulders and died in agony. But then … Easter.
In the end, good wins. Always.
There’s a time for amusement, for laughter and farcical tales. There’s absolutely a time for escapism and comfort and wish fulfillment (especially in the middle of a dark tale). There’s a time for sibling drama and humor and stories of shy heartbreak and school pressures. Intense and suspenseful pulse-pounding tales aren’t the one true diet for young readers. But I absolutely believe them to be healthy for growing imaginations, as essential as protein and calcium for young bones and muscles.
My children have only ever known me as a writer. When the older three still toddled, I was always plinking away on a keyboard in the corner of their playroom. By the time all five were fully aware, I was writing in an office at the end of a long attic with bunk beds tucked into dormers. Their night-light was the glow beneath my door, and when someone couldn’t sleep or a dream took a bad turn, I was the closest port in the storm. As it turns out, five children can produce worries and fears and dreams in bulk, and I’ve spent many hours fighting story with story.
In our house, when a day has brought struggle or pain or frustration, when we’ve stood at a deathbed or beside a new grave, we gather together, we sit down and listen. We assess characters and choices, villains and themes. We talk about darkness, we talk about light. We talk about loss and bittersweet victory. We talk about winter and spring resurrections. And through all of this talking, my children have learned, the most important stories are the stories we live.
The rest are all food for the journey.
References
Wilson, N. D. (2016, April 21). Why I write scary stories for children. The Atlantic. Retrieved September 19, 2021, from https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/04/why-i-write-scary-stories-for-children/478977/.
Activity: "Why I Write Scary Stories for Children"
The Effectiveness of Narration
With this assignment, you will analyze how successful N.D. Wilson is in making his point about writing scary stories. Depending on the kind of class that you are in, you will work alone or with a classmate.
Thesis and Support
Do the following after you have read through the article one time:
- Underline Wilson's thesis statement. Remember that this will be a complete sentence. In this article, it occurs more than once. Hint: it is not in the first paragraph.
- Examine how the writer uses narration. It is not one long narrative essay; instead, he includes three narratives within the overall article. After talking to your classmates, mark the location of the three narratives.
- How effective is the narration to convince you of his thesis? What makes the narration strong and what makes it weak?
- What other supporting details does the writer use to convince you of thesis? List three of them. You may copy them down directly or write them in your own words.
Lecture Notes: Summary Writing
Summary Writing
What is a summary
A summary is a shortened version of an essay, chapter, or book.
It is written in your own words.
It is approximately ¼ the length of the original.
It does not contain a lot of directly copied sentences.
If you do quote directly, you must use quotation marks.
Do not include your opinion in a summary.
How to Title a summary
In most cases, you will put the title of what you are summarizing in quotation marks.
Include the phrase "Summary of " so your reader knows that you have written a summary of someone else’s work.
Center your title.
Sample title:
Summary of “Booker Taliaferro Washington”
The First Sentence
Be sure to include the following in the first sentence:
- the title of the article (essay, book, etc.)
- the source
- the name(s) of the author
- the writer’s main point
Add the Major Supporting Details
Your next step is to add the major supporting details in your own words.
To do this, re-read the pages and underline the details that you think should go into your summary.
Write them down in your own words and in the order in which they appear.
Use transition words to move from sentence to sentence (or event to event).
Video: Summarizing Nonfiction
This 2:42 video will help you be able to quickly and easily summarize nonfiction writings. While you watch, note the steps to efficiently do this useful skill.
References
Summarizing nonfiction: Reading: Khan Academy. YouTube. (2020, March 27). Retrieved September 29, 2021, from https://youtu.be/as7xe8UQEr4.
Video: Short Biography of Booker T. Washington
Use this link to watch this 3:30 minute video on Biography.com's website.
Booker T. Washington Mini Biography
The video will help you to become better acquainted with this important man in history. While watching, take note of how he overcame many difficult trials in his life.
References
A&E Networks Television. (2019, April 12). Booker T. Washington - Mini Biography. Biography.com. Retrieved September 29, 2021, from https://www.biography.com/video/booker-t-washington-mini-biography-11188803909.
Article: Dr. Booker Taliaferro Washington
Dr. Booker Taliaferro Washington
Founder and First President of Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute (now Tuskegee University)
Term in Office: 1881-1915
Born April 5, 1856, in Franklin County, Virginia, Booker Taliaferro was the son of an unknown White man and Jane, an enslaved cook of James Burroughs, a small planter.
Jane named her son Booker Taliaferro but later dropped the second name. Booker gave himself the surname "Washington" when he first enrolled in school. Sometime after Booker's birth, his mother was married to Washington Ferguson, a slave. A daughter, Amanda, was born to this marriage. James, Booker's younger half-brother, was adopted. Booker's elder brother, John, was also the son of a White man.
Booker spent his first nine years as a slave on the Burroughs farm. In 1865, his mother took her children to Malden, West Virginia, to join her husband, who had gone there earlier and found work in the salt mines. At age nine, Booker was put to work packing salt. Between the ages of ten and twelve, he worked in a coal mine. He attended school while continuing to work in the mines. In 1871, he went to work as a houseboy for the wife of Gen. Lewis Ruffner, owner of the mines.
Securing an Education ...
In 1872, at age sixteen, Booker T. Washington entered Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute in Virginia. The dominant personality at the school, which had opened in 1868 under the auspices of the American Missionary Association, was the principal, Samuel Chapman Armstrong, the son of American missionaries in Hawaii.
Armstrong, who had commanded Black troops in the Civil War, believed that the progress of freedmen and their descendants depended on education of a special sort, which would be practical and utilitarian and would at the same time inculcate character and morality.
Washington traveled most of the distance from Malden to Hampton on foot, arriving penniless. His entrance examination to Hampton was to clean a room. The teacher inspected his work with a spotless, white handkerchief. Booker was admitted. He was given work as a janitor to pay the cost of his room and board, and Armstrong arranged for a White benefactor to pay his tuition.
At Hampton, Washington studied academic subjects and agriculture, which included work in the fields and pigsties. He also learned lessons in personal cleanliness and good manners. His special interest was public speaking and debate. He was jubilant when he was chosen to speak at his commencement.
The most important part of his experience at Hampton was his association with Armstrong, who he described in his autobiography as "a great man - the noblest, rarest human being it has ever been my privilege to meet." From Armstrong, Washington derived much of his educational philosophy.
After graduating from Hampton with honors in 1875, Washington returned to Malden to teach. For eight months he was a student at Wayland Seminary, an institution with a curriculum that was entirely academic. This experience reinforced his belief in an educational system that emphasized practical skills and self-help. In 1879, Washington returned to Hampton to teach in a program for American Indians.
Educating Others ...
In 1880, a bill that included a yearly appropriation of $2,000 was passed by the Alabama State Legislature to establish a school for Blacks in Macon County. This action was generated by two men - Lewis Adams, a former slave, and George W. Campbell, a former slave owner. On February 12, 1881, Governor Rufus Willis Cobb signed the bill into law, establishing the Tuskegee Normal School for the training of Black teachers.
Armstrong was invited to recommend a White teacher as principal of the school. Instead, he suggested Washington, who was accepted. When Washington arrived at Tuskegee, he found that no land or buildings had been acquired for the projected school, nor was there any money for these purposes since the appropriation was for salaries only. Undaunted, Washington began selling the idea of the school, recruiting students and seeking support of local Whites.
The school opened July 4, 1881, in a shanty loaned by a Black church, Butler A.M.E. Zion. With money borrowed from Hampton Institute's treasurer, Washington purchased an abandoned 100-acre plantation on the outskirts of Tuskegee. Students built a kiln, made bricks for buildings and sold bricks to raise money. Within a few years, they built a classroom building, a dining hall, a girl’s dormitory and a chapel.
By 1888, the 540-acre Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute had an enrollment of more than 400 and offered training in such skilled trades as carpentry, cabinet-omaking, printing, shoemaking and tinsmithing. Boys also studied farming and dairying, while girls learned such domestic skills as cooking and sewing.
Through their own labor, students supplied a large part of the needs of the school. In the academic departments, Washington insisted that efforts be made to relate the subject matter to the actual experiences of the students. Strong emphasis was placed on personal hygiene, manners and character building.
Students followed a rigid schedule of study and work, arising at five in the morning and retiring at nine-thirty at night. Although Tuskegee was non-denominational, all students were required to attend chapel daily and a series of religious services on Sunday. Washington himself usually spoke to the students on Sunday evening.
Olivia Davidson, a graduate of Hampton and Framingham State Normal School in Massachusetts, became teacher and assistant principal at Tuskegee in 1881. In 1885, Washington's older brother John, also a Hampton graduate, came to Tuskegee to direct the vocational training program.
Other notable additions to the staff were acclaimed scientist Dr. George Washington Carver, who became director of the agriculture program in 1896; Emmett J. Scott, who became Washington 's private secretary in 1897; and Monroe Nathan Work, who became head of the Records and Research Department in 1908.
Establishing a legacy ...
On Tuskegee's 25th anniversary, Washington had transformed an idea into a 2,000-acre, eighty-three building campus that, combined with such personal property as equipment, live stock and stock in trade, was valued at $831,895. Tuskegee's endowment fund was $1,275,644 and training in thirty-seven industries was available for the more than 1,500 students enrolled that year.
Through progress at Tuskegee, Washington showed that an oppressed people could advance. His concept of practical education was a contribution to the general field of education. His writings, which included 40 books, were widely read and highly regarded. Among his works was an autobiography titled "Up From Slavery" (1901), "Character Building" (1902), "My Larger Education" (1911), and "The Man Farthest Down" (1912).
Washington settled into the national scene on opening day of the Atlanta Exposition in 1895 when he spoke about "The New Negro," one with "the knowledge of how to live ... how to cultivate the soil, to husband their resources, and make the most of their opportunities."
Eyebrows raised again on Oct. 16, 1901, when Washington became the first Black person to dine at the White House. Counsel to many U.S. presidents, he was there at the invitation of President Theodore Roosevelt.
Washington was married three times. In 1882, he married his Malden sweetheart, Fannie Norton Smith. She died two years later, leaving an infant daughter, Portia (who married William Sidney Pittman, an architect, in 1907).
In 1885, Washington married Hampton graduate Olivia Davidson, the assistant principal of Tuskegee, who died in 1889. Two sons were born to this marriage: Booker Taliaferro, Jr. and Ernest Davidson.
In 1893, Washington married Fisk University graduate Margaret James Murray, who had come to Tuskegee as lady principal in 1889 and directed the programs for female students and initiated the Women's Meetings. Margaret Murray Washington died in 1925.
Margaret and her husband's three children and four grandchildren survived Washington, who died November 14, 1915, at age fifty-nine of arteriosclerosis and exhaustion. He died after an illness in St. Luke's hospital, New York City, where he had been admitted on November 5. Aware that the end was near, he left with his wife and his physician, Dr. John A. Kennedy, Sr., on November 12, so that he could die in Tuskegee.
Booker T. Washington's funeral on November 17, 1915 was held in the Tuskegee Institute Chapel, and was attended by nearly 8,000 people. He was buried on campus in a brick tomb, made by students, on a hill commanding a view of the entire campus.
References
Dr. Booker Taliaferro Washington Founder and First President of Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute. Tuskegee University. (n.d.). Retrieved September 29, 2021, from https://www.tuskegee.edu/discover-tu/tu-presidents/booker-t-washington.
Assignment: Booker T. Washington Article Summary
After reading, the biography of Booker T. Washington you will write a summary. Here are the steps:
- Read the article all the way through one time.
- Circle any unknown words and write down their definitions. Dictionary.com is a good website for this.
- On notebook paper, write one or two sentences that describe each paragraph or group of paragraphs in your own words.
- Follow the steps in Lecture Notes: Summary Writing to create your summary.
- Follow the MLA format for the heading, title, page numbers, spacing, and margins. The Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) has an overview of the format if you need it.
- Title your document LastNameSummaryAssignment.
- Submit it by the due date for a grade.
Lecture Notes: Making Connections
How to Connect What You Read
Effective readers connect what they are reading in multiple ways: text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world.
Text-to-Self Connections
These kinds of connections are when you think about what you are reading and how it relates to your experiences, beliefs, and current understandings. Consider:
- how you are the same or different.
- how you agree or disagree and why.
- how it reminds you of something or someone in your life.
- how reading it makes you feel.
Text-to-Text Connections
As a student, one of your goals should be to connect what you have read to something else that you have read/learned from a textbook, novel, academic journal article, news source, book, lecture, etc. Consider:
- how does this support what I learned from . . .
- how is this different from what I learned in . . .
- how does this relate to what I read in . . .
- how what author does here reminds me of . .
Text-to-World Connections
It is natural to think about how what you read connects to you as an individual, but it is also important to connect your reading to the larger world. Consider:
- how does this impact what I know about my immediate community?
- how might this impact my state or region of the country?
- how might this impact other countries?
- how does this alter my understanding of something from history?
- what might be the future implications of this?
Article: Choose to Be Grateful. It Will Make You Happier.
Choose to Be Grateful. It Will Make You Happier.
Nov. 21, 2015, by Arthur C. Brooks
TWENTY-FOUR years ago this month, my wife and I married in Barcelona, Spain. Two weeks after our wedding, flush with international idealism, I had the bright idea of sharing a bit of American culture with my Spanish in-laws by cooking a full Thanksgiving dinner.
Easier said than done. Turkeys are not common in Barcelona. The local butcher shop had to order the bird from a specialty farm in France, and it came only partially plucked. Our tiny oven was too small for the turkey. No one had ever heard of cranberries.
Over dinner, my new family had many queries. Some were practical, such as, “What does this beast eat to be so filled with bread?” But others were philosophical: “Should you celebrate this holiday even if you don’t feel grateful?”
I stumbled over this last question. At the time, I believed one should feel grateful in order to give thanks. To do anything else seemed somehow dishonest or fake — a kind of bourgeois, saccharine insincerity that one should reject. It’s best to be emotionally authentic, right? Wrong. Building the best life does not require fealty to feelings in the name of authenticity, but rather rebelling against negative impulses and acting right even when we don’t feel like it. In a nutshell, acting grateful can actually make you grateful.
For many people, gratitude is difficult, because life is difficult. Even beyond deprivation and depression, there are many ordinary circumstances in which gratitude doesn’t come easily. This point will elicit a knowing, mirthless chuckle from readers whose Thanksgiving dinners are usually ruined by a drunk uncle who always needs to share his political views. Thanks for nothing.
Beyond rotten circumstances, some people are just naturally more grateful than others. A 2014 article in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience identified a variation in a gene (CD38) associated with gratitude. Some people simply have a heightened genetic tendency to experience, in the researchers’ words, “global relationship satisfaction, perceived partner responsiveness and positive emotions (particularly love).” That is, those relentlessly positive people you know who seem grateful all the time may simply be mutants.
But we are more than slaves to our feelings, circumstances and genes. Evidence suggests that we can actively choose to practice gratitude — and that doing so raises our happiness.
This is not just self-improvement hokum. For example, researchers in one 2003 study randomly assigned one group of study participants to keep a short weekly list of the things they were grateful for, while other groups listed hassles or neutral events. Ten weeks later, the first group enjoyed significantly greater life satisfaction than the others. Other studies have shown the same pattern and lead to the same conclusion. If you want a truly happy holiday, choose to keep the “thanks” in Thanksgiving, whether you feel like it or not.
How does all this work? One explanation is that acting happy, regardless of feelings, coaxes one’s brain into processing positive emotions. In one famous 1993 experiment, researchers asked human subjects to smile forcibly for 20 seconds while tensing facial muscles, notably the muscles around the eyes called the orbicularis oculi (which create “crow’s feet”). They found that this action stimulated brain activity associated with positive emotions.
If grinning for an uncomfortably long time like a scary lunatic isn’t your cup of tea, try expressing gratitude instead. According to research published in the journal Cerebral Cortex, gratitude stimulates the hypothalamus (a key part of the brain that regulates stress) and the ventral tegmental area (part of our “reward circuitry” that produces the sensation of pleasure).
It’s science, but also common sense: Choosing to focus on good things makes you feel better than focusing on bad things. As my teenage kids would say, “Thank you, Captain Obvious.” In the slightly more elegant language of the Stoic philosopher Epictetus, “He is a man of sense who does not grieve for what he has not, but rejoices in what he has.”
In addition to building our own happiness, choosing gratitude can also bring out the best in those around us. Researchers at the University of Southern California showed this in a 2011 study of people with high power but low emotional security (think of the worst boss you’ve ever had). The research demonstrated that when their competence was questioned, the subjects tended to lash out with aggression and personal denigration. When shown gratitude, however, they reduced the bad behavior. That is, the best way to disarm an angry interlocutor is with a warm “thank you.”
I learned this lesson 10 years ago. At the time, I was an academic social scientist toiling in professorial obscurity, writing technical articles and books that would be read by a few dozen people at most. Soon after securing tenure, however, I published a book about charitable giving that, to my utter befuddlement, gained a popular audience. Overnight, I started receiving feedback from total strangers who had seen me on television or heard me on the radio.
One afternoon, I received an unsolicited email. “Dear Professor Brooks,” it began, “You are a fraud.” That seemed pretty unpromising, but I read on anyway. My correspondent made, in brutal detail, a case against every chapter of my book. As I made my way through the long email, however, my dominant thought wasn’t resentment. It was, “He read my book!” And so I wrote him back — rebutting a few of his points, but mostly just expressing gratitude for his time and attention. I felt good writing it, and his near-immediate response came with a warm and friendly tone.
DOES expressing gratitude have any downside? Actually, it might: There is some research suggesting it could make you fat. A new study in the Journal of Consumer Psychology finds evidence that people begin to crave sweets when they are asked to express gratitude. If this finding holds up, we might call it the Pumpkin Pie Paradox.
The costs to your weight notwithstanding, the prescription for all of us is clear: Make gratitude a routine, independent of how you feel — and not just once each November, but all year long.
There are concrete strategies that each of us can adopt. First, start with “interior gratitude,” the practice of giving thanks privately. Having a job that involves giving frequent speeches — not always to friendly audiences — I have tried to adopt the mantra in my own work of being grateful to the people who come to see me.
Next, move to “exterior gratitude,” which focuses on public expression. The psychologist Martin Seligman, father of the field known as “positive psychology,” gives some practical suggestions on how to do this. In his best seller “Authentic Happiness,” he recommends that readers systematically express gratitude in letters to loved ones and colleagues. A disciplined way to put this into practice is to make it as routine as morning coffee. Write two short emails each morning to friends, family or colleagues, thanking them for what they do.
Finally, be grateful for useless things. It is relatively easy to be thankful for the most important and obvious parts of life — a happy marriage, healthy kids or living in America. But truly happy people find ways to give thanks for the little, insignificant trifles. Ponder the impractical joy in Gerard Manley Hopkins’s poem “Pied Beauty”:
Glory be to God for dappled things —
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced — fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
Be honest: When was the last time you were grateful for the spots on a trout? More seriously, think of the small, useless things you experience — the smell of fall in the air, the fragment of a song that reminds you of when you were a kid. Give thanks.
This Thanksgiving, don’t express gratitude only when you feel it. Give thanks especially when you don’t feel it. Rebel against the emotional “authenticity” that holds you back from your bliss. As for me, I am taking my own advice and updating my gratitude list. It includes my family, faith, friends and work. But also the dappled complexion of my bread-packed bird. And it includes you, for reading this column.
References
Brooks, A. C. (2015, November 21). Choose to be grateful. it will make you happier. The New York Times. Retrieved September 29, 2021, from https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/opinion/sunday/choose-to-be-grateful-it-will-make-you-happier.html.
Activity 1: "Choose to be Grateful. It Will Make You Happier."
Preparing for the Quiz
The quiz preparation this week will continue with building your background knowledge. Remember that by doing this, you make reading more interesting and meaningful. and you are making yourself more knowledgeable.
There is a practice quiz for this, which I strongly encourage you to take. It will indicate all of the questions that you answer incorrectly, so you may focus your studying.
What to Research for the Quiz
Below is a list of vocabulary terms, historical events, and people with whom you might not be familiar. Your job is to look up all of these and be prepared to complete a matching quiz. Depending on the kind of class that you are in, you will complete this activity alone or with a classmate.
FROM "CHOOSE TO BE GRATEFUL. IT WILL MAKE YOU HAPPIER" BY ARTHUR C. BROOKS
- idealism - noun
- queries (query) - noun
- bourgeois - adjective
- saccharine - adjective
- insincerity - noun
- fealty - noun
- gratitude - noun
- deprivation - noun
- elicit - verb
- mirthless - adjective
- mutants - noun
- hokum - noun
- coax(es) - verb
- crow's feet - hint: it is a slang term for something - noun
- lunatic - noun
- Stoic philosopher Epictetus - noun
- lash out - verb
- denigration - noun
- interlocutor - noun
- toil - verb
- obscurity - noun
- tenure - noun
- befuddlement - noun
- unsolicited - adjective
- fraud - noun
- dominant - adjective
- resentment - noun
- rebut(ting) - verb
- mantra - noun
- bliss - noun
Activity 2: "Choose to Be Grateful. It Will Make You Happier."
Making Connections to the Text
This week you will work on levels of specificity and making connections to the text using "Choose to Be Grateful. It Will Make You Happier" by Arthur C. Brooks.
Activity
Do the following connection activity. Depending on the kind of class that you are in, you will complete this alone or with a classmate.
- Read this week's lecture notes about making connections when reading.
- Re-read Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem "Pied Beauty." For what exactly is he grateful? (You might need to look up some unknown words, such as pied.)
- What is the writer's thesis? Be sure to give a complete sentence.
- What did you find to be convincing research? Copy down one instance of convincing support.
- Along with using research to prove his thesis, Brooks also uses a personal anecdote as support. Give a brief summary in your own words of what happened when he practiced gratitude with a person who read his book but was very negative about it.
- Toward the end of the essay, Brooks gives suggestions for how to "make gratitude a routine." Follow some of his suggestions:
- In order make a text-to-self connection, make a list of all of the things for which you are grateful.
- In order to make a text-to-text connection, write about what you have previously learned about what should make people happy (whether true or not).
- In order to make a text-to-world connection, write about what makes people happy in your family, town, state, country, and/or another country.
Lecture Notes: Textbook Strategies
Textbook Strategies
Many students read a textbook by starting at the first page of the chapter and stopping at the last. This is not an effective method. Textbooks contain so much new information and can be a little dry, so you need to have a plan and some strategies whenever your professor assigns you to read a chapter from textbook.
Location/Mindset/Distractions
Before you sit down to conquer your textbook, think about your location. Are you where it is quiet and free from distractions? Have you removed your phone from the room (maybe placed it in the dishwasher for safe keeping)? Are you absolutely exhausted and tucked under the covers? Think about how your answers to these question are helping, or hurting, how effectively you are reading your textbook. They all can make a huge difference, and, luckily, these are things that you can control. If you want to manage your time to learn and remember what you read (remember: staring at words is not reading), find a quiet room, sit in a chair, turn off all distractions, have your supplies ready, and focus on learning the material.
Preview
During the preview step of reading, the goals are to become familiar with your textbook, activate prior knowledge (what you already know), and learn a little about the topic.
- Look at the table of contents and introductory material, meaning everything that comes before Chapter 1. Notice that you are to "look at," not read or try to memorize.
- Look at the end-of-the book and end-of-chapter information: summaries, questions, the glossary (important terms and their definitions), and the index. Put a sticky notes on important pages, such a chapter questions since this is where your professor will like find some of the questions for a quiz, essay, or exam.
- For the chapter, look for helpful elements, such as boldface words, words in italics, notes in the margins, and visual aids (graphs, drawings, photographs, charts, tables).
Read
- During the read step, you are reading with a purpose. Get out the questions and be ready to write the answers.
- Annotate: have your pens, highlighters, and list of questions. At the end of each page (or every paragraph if the text is difficult), annotate what you think is important and write the answers to the questions.
- Chunk: don't read the whole chapter in one sitting (which means no procrastinating); instead, divide the book into manageable parts, start with ten pages as your goal to complete, and increase it as you get better at it. Every hour or so, take a break: do work from a different class, take a walk outside, get a snack, or fold a load of laundry. Do not pick up your phone or start gaming --those are both ways to get off track and waste your valuable time.
- Continue until you finish the chapter. At the end, you should have an annotated chapter and a set of answers/notes.
Review
- Let twenty-four hours pass.
- Re-read your annotations, answers, and notes.
- Create flashcards (note cards or online - such a Quizlet) and test yourself. Have others test you as well. See if you can teach someone what you learned.
- Do this each day until you take the quiz/test.
Something to Note
How many people reading this do you think already know some of these tips? Most? At least some do! The key is to take part in this process. Knowing this strategy is meaningless unless you actually use it.
Video: Effective Reading with SQ4R
Effective Reading with SQ4R
This 6:06 video will teach you the six steps of how to comprehend college-level reading in less time. As you watch, take note of the six steps, exactly what you do with each step, and how to apply these steps to gain knowledge and be successful on college quizzes and tests of textbook material.
References
“Effective Reading with SQ4R” YouTube, uploaded by OSLIS Secondary Videos, Oct 2, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziofH7N8ZOE,
Reading and Activity: Chapter 1 - Introduction to Psychology
Active Reading and Textbooks
For this activity, you will use the Chapter 1: Introduction to Psychology from the online textbook Psychology (use the blue link to reach the textbook) to practice using a study reading strategy and using the textbook's features. Depending on which kind of class you are in, you will do this alone or with a classmate.
Location/Mindset/Distractions: find a quiet room, sit in a chair, turn off all distractions, have your supplies ready, and focus on learning the material.
Preview
- Look at the table of contents and introductory material.
- Look at the end-of-chapter and end-of-book material.
- Locate the summary and questions for Chapter 1. (Pay special attention to the Review Questions that seem like they are from section 1.4, which is about careers in psychology.)
Read
- From the table of contents, choose section 1.4 for this assignment.
- You may want to print this section of the textbook. You can use copy and paste to get it into a program that you can print from. Or, you can right-click on it from your browser and print from the browser menu.
- As you read, use the highlighting feature to note key information.
- Create a set of notes of what you think is the most important information from 1.4. Try to anticipate what questions your professor will ask on a quiz over this section of chapter 1.
Review
- Let twenty-four hours pass.
- Take the practice quiz for 1.4 from Chapter 1. You will find it in next week's module. You have two attempts. Be sure to write down anything that you answered incorrectly, so you can learn from your mistakes. (You will late take the regular quiz for a grade.)
Assignment: Maximizing Your Textbooks
For this assignment, you will use the online textbook Psychology, 2e, by Spielman, Jenkins, and Lovett (senior contributing authors). Read Lecture Notes: Textbook's Strategies before you complete this assignment.
Depending on what kind of class you are in, you will complete this alone or with a classmate.
Using what you learned about previewing in the Lecture Notes: Textbook Strategies, answer the following questions. Use Microsoft Word, number your answers, and use complete sentences. Follow the MLA format for the heading, title, page numbers, spacing, and margins. The Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) has an overview of the format if you need it.
You do not need to read any of the chapters for this dropbox assignment. Just answer these questions about the book:
- What introductory material does the book contain? (This is what comes before Chapter 1.)
- How many chapters does the book have?
- What end-of-the-book materials does the book contain?
- What end-of-the-chapter materials does the book contain?
- Browse through a couple of chapters. What kind of helpful elements do the writers include?
Video: The Elements of a Poem
Watch this 5:06 video to better understand the "art" and the parts of poem. What important points are notable to you?
References
“The Elements of a Poem’” YouTube, uploaded by Khan Academy, April 10, 2020. Accessed April 8, 2021. https://youtu.be/zFNnbxCZPBU
Lecture Notes: Reading Poetry
Reading Poetry
Some of the greatest works of art are poems, poems that speak to readers from different cultures and times. How do poets achieve this and how as readers can we best understand the literary form of poetry?
Tips for Reading Poetry
Contrary to what some students may think, poems are meant to be understood and enjoyed. They are intended to delight, to teach, and to transform. Because some are unfamiliar with, or intimidated by, the form, they feel defeated before they even start. To combat this, there are steps and tips that can help to unlock a poem.
- Throw away and preconceived notions that you have about poetry and your ability to understand it.
- Unless you are reading a very lengthy poem, read through all of it at one time.
- Pay attention to the punctuation. It matters! If there is a period, stop, and if there is a comma, pause. Punctuation is a key way that poets communicate their ideas. If there is no period at the end of a line, keep reading until you come to a period or comma.
- Poets use very few words to develop and convey meaning. Each word is important, more so than in prose. Consider the meanings of the the words. It is common for a word to have more than one meaning.
- Poets use literary devices, such a metaphor, simile, personification, allusion, hyperbole, symbolism, and alliteration. You will learn about these and others when you complete the Poetry Assignment.
Lecture Notes: Imply and Infer
Imply and Infer
If you have ever been told that you need to "read between the lines," you have been asked to think about what the author implies and then infer the meaning correctly. If we take the phrase literally, we are asking for you to look at what is between two lines of text, and, of course, there is nothing between two lines of text; there is only blank space, but the phrase does make sense once you learn about implying and inferring.
If you ever made a guess about someone's job based on what they were wearing, you have made an inference. If you ever looked at a magazine advertisement, and understood that the message was, "if you buy this, you will look like this model," you have made made a inference. The clothes that we wear imply something about us (accurate and inaccurate). The glossy ad with good-looking model implies that buying the product will make us good looking as well.
Definitions and Examples
To imply means to hint at or suggest. It is what the writer (speaker, painter, sculptor) does. It is a verb.
To infer means to understand what is implied. It is what the reader (listener or viewer) does. It is a verb. When you infer, you are looking for clues as to what the real meaning is, clues such as context, tone, or sarcasm.
Consider:
- Pat says the following: "I see that you are all going out to each lunch today. Well, I am hungry, and I really want to go, but I am short on cash. I sure do wish I could go and didn't have to stay here all by myself, hungry and alone."
Pat implies that he wants his workmates to pay for his lunch.
Pat's workmates infer that Pat is asking for them to pay for his lunch.
Here is another. Notice the change of meaning as the context changes:
- Maria says that she is happy to see that state spent billions of dollars on freeway construction because it greatly decreased the traffic problem.
This is straightforward and no inferencing is needed, but if the context changes, Maria implies something different:
- As Maria sits stuck in horrible traffic on the 405 freeway, which makes her late for work, she says that she is happy to see that state spent billions of dollars on freeway construction because it greatly decreased the traffic problem.
As the readers, we infer that Maria believes the costly construction made no improvement in the traffic. We might even infer that she is upset about the wasted money. Maria's real meaning (what she is implying) is the exact opposite of the literal meaning of the words. If we don't read between the lines to infer the real meaning, we are completely wrong about what Maria is saying.
Poem: "Dreams" by Langston Hughes
"Dreams" by Langston Hughes
Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.
References
Hughes, Langston. “Dreams by Langston Hughes - Poems | Academy of American Poets.” Poets.org, Academy of American Poets, https://poets.org/poem/dreams.
Poem: "the sonnet-ballad" by Gwendolyn Brooks
"the sonnet-ballad" by Gwendolyn Brooks
Oh mother, mother, where is happiness?
They took my lover's tallness off to war,
Left me lamenting. Now I cannot guess
What I can use an empty heart-cup for.
He won't be coming back here any more.
Some day the war will end, but, oh, I knew
When he went walking grandly out that door
That my sweet love would have to be untrue.
Would have to be untrue. Would have to court
Coquettish death, whose impudent and strange
Possessive arms and beauty (of a sort)
Can make a hard man hesitate—and change.
And he will be the one to stammer, "Yes."
Oh mother, mother, where is happiness?
From "Appendix to The Anniad: leaves from a loose-leaf war diary" in Annie Allen by Gwendolyn Brooks, published by Harper. © 1949 by Gwendolyn Brooks. All rights reserved.
References
Brooks, Gwendolyn. “the sonnet-ballad by Gwendolyn Brooks - Poems | Academy of American Poets.” Poets.org, Academy of American Poets, https://poets.org/poem/sonnet-ballad.
Poem: "Still I Rise" by Maya Angelou
"Still I Rise" by Maya Angelou
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
’Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.
From And Still I Rise by Maya Angelou. Copyright © 1978 by Maya Angelou.
References
Angelou, Maya. “Still I Rise by Maya Angelou - Poems | Academy of American Poets.” Poets.org, Academy of American Poets, https://poets.org/poem/still-i-rise.
Poem: "Do not go gentle into that good night" by Dylan Thomas
"Do not go gentle into that good night" by Dylan Thomas
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
From The Poems of Dylan Thomas, published by New Directions. Copyright © 1952, 1953 Dylan Thomas. Copyright © 1937, 1945, 1955, 1962, 1966, 1967 the Trustees for the Copyrights of Dylan Thomas. Copyright © 1938, 1939, 1943, 1946, 1971 New Directions Publishing Corp.
References
Thomas, Dylan. “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas - Poems | Academy of American Poets.” Poets.org, Academy of American Poets, https://poets.org/poem/do-not-go-gentle-good-night.
Assignment: Engaging with Poetry
Poetry Assignment
The goal of this assignment is to practice reading poetry as a way to understand figurative language and draw inferences. Depending on which kind of class you are in, you will complete this assignment alone or with a classmate.
Using your computer or smart phone, define the following AND give an example of each. Choose your own theme (as in the student example in this module) to create your own example of each one:
- metaphor
- simile
- imagery
- personification
- allusion
- hyperbole
- alliteration
- irony
- conflict
- euphemism For Questions 11 -12, choose a poem from this module.
- What is the main point that the author is making? In other words, write what you think the author's thesis is. You will need to infer the meaning to do this.
- Write a list of all literary devices you find in the poem by copying it down and indicating which literary device it is. See the example below for #12.
- Follow the MLA format for the heading, title, page numbers, spacing, and margins. The Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) has an overview of the format if you need it. Number your answers.
- Include the first and last name of all group members in the heading of your document. Title your document PoetryAssignment.
- Submit it by the due date for a grade.
EXAMPLE Format for this assignment:
- metaphor
- simile
- imagery
- personification
- allusion
- hyperbole
- alliteration
- irony
- conflict
- euphemism
- In Emily Dickinson's poem, "Hope," the writer's thesis is that she has never had hope.
- There is one metaphor in the poem: "Hope is a thing with feathers."