Lesson 6: Novel Study

Purpose

In this lesson, you will be analyzing the work of your chosen author through a novel. You will read either The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle or Shiloh. You will learn skills and strategies that will help you with any novel you will read.

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What You Will Learn

After completing this lesson, you should be able to do the following:

1. Apply what you know about the elements of literature to the novel you have chosen.
2. Write a constructed response.
3. Use several methods of documenting your thinking as an active reader.
4. Understand the meanings of words that are new to you.
5. Read for understanding as well as pleasure.
6. Understand the use of tense and point of view in literature.
7. Use graphic organizers.

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Reading Assignment

Select the novel (any edition) by the author you chose to study in lesson 5:

• The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by Avi
OR
• Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

Writers Express

• Writing Book Reviews, pages 166–171

Reading Your Novel

You will need to set reading goals for yourself as you read. How fast do you read? Is this book challenging for you, or would you consider it an “easy read”? Decide with your parent/teacher how many pages you should read each day, and document this goal on the Novel Reading Log Sheet. Most readers decide how many “chapters” they think they can read at a time. You may wish to read aloud to your parent/teacher and talk about the book as you read.

In this discussion, you will find activities to complete as you read. Divide your novel into five sections and complete an activity at the end of each section.

Here is a suggestion of how you might want to divide your reading:

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Discussion

Novel Study

Building on the elements of literature you studied in previous lessons, you will utilize a variety of graphic organizers (charts, diagrams, etc.) to help you organize your thinking and learning. You will learn how to write a constructed response, which will help you learn how to write an essay. You will also use sticky notes, two-column note taking, and bookmarks to document your thinking as an active reader.

As you read, document your thinking using one of the four methods listed below. You can choose to use the same method for the whole book or try each method and see which works best for you.

Sticky Notes

My students love using sticky notes, because they allow them to put their questions, thoughts, and “wonderings” right there in the book as they are reading. Here’s how it works.

As you read, you will be an active reader. You already know what this means from earlier lessons, and you have had plenty of practice with the lessons in your Daybook. When you are reading a novel, you may not want to write directly in the book, so you can use sticky notes to do the same type of documenting of your thinking as you read. For the different sections of the book, you will focus on different skills, strategies, and elements of literature. These are good things to document on your sticky notes.

You might begin by setting a specific number of sticky notes you plan to use. For example, you might decide that you will stick on at least one note for every three pages. That does not mean that you can’t stick on a note more often, but try to do at least the minimum you set for yourself.

You are not focusing on “right” or “wrong” answers, but on your involvement with and thinking about what you are reading. That’s what good readers do. I’ll include some points to focus on for you for each section of your book, but don’t be afraid to make your own original connections.

Bookmarking

When you use a bookmark method of documenting your thinking as you read, you write down “noticings” and “wonderings” as you go. You will need to write down the page number on your bookmark as you read. Decide in advance on the number of entries you will put on your bookmark; this will remind you to remain an active reader. I have included a sample of the type of bookmark that you can use. You can print it to use as you read. Otherwise, you can make your own personal bookmark with space to jot down your thinking.

As you read, you will jot down questions, important information, vocabulary that is new to you, and connections with the novel that you make. You can change to a new bookmark as you fill one up.

Two-Column Note Taking

Any time you read, two-column note taking is an excellent way to organize your thoughts. It is especially useful when studying nonfiction material, because it also gives you a way to review what you have learned. Divide your paper in half lengthwise (my students think of dividing it like a hot dog bun!) and put the topic in the left column and the details in the right column. Here’s an example of how it might look:

Literature Log

A literature log is very much like the journal you may have been keeping for your Daybook exercises. A log might have writings and drawings along with page numbers that go along with your comments and questions. Some readers even include in their logs things they find outside of the novel. For example, if you read about something that interests you, and you go find out more information about it from an encyclopedia, you could put that in your log. You might decide to write a new adventure or a poem about something in the book. A literature log gives you more space to write down your thoughts than the other methods.

How to Write a Constructed Response

From time to time as you are reading, you will be asked to complete “constructed responses” for specific questions. A constructed response addresses a specific prompt and is organized to include information that supports the answer to the prompt. An essay is a type of constructed response.

These questions will not have “right” or “wrong” answers. They will ask you to make a statement about something and then support that statement with information from the book. Some of the terms you need to know in order to create a constructed response are listed below.

Explain:

When you explain something, you tell about it. Explanation is the “what” of a question. Explaining is providing details so that your reader knows what you mean. You need to be specific when you explain.

Support:

Support is the “why”of an answer. I tell my students, “Don’t just tell me what, tell me why.” Now that you are getting to be a more mature reader, you will find that questions often have more than one answer. It is not enough just to tell what you think the answer is; you must support your statement with examples and information from the text you are reading.

Compare:

Sometimes a question will ask you to compare one thing to another. That means to tell how two things are alike. Comparing shows that you understand concepts and can transfer what you know from one thing to another.

Contrast:

This means showing how two things are different. Contrast is often a part of comparison, because sometimes a question that asks you to compare two things is really asking you to tell not only how they are the same, but how they are different as well. Look closely at the question to decide what you are supposed to do.

Analyze:

To analyze something is to take it apart and look at individual pieces. When you analyze a piece of literature, you are generally looking at the elements of literature as they apply to that reading. You will look at what the author was trying to do and what you understand as you read.

Longer constructed responses are sometimes called essays. Here’s how to structure a constructed response. Begin by restating the gist (main idea) of the question in your first sentence. For example, if the question was:

What is the setting in chapter one?

You would begin the first sentence in your answer something like this:

The setting in chapter one is ….

It might seem like this sentence would be all that is needed. However, remember that you can’t just tell what, you also have to tell why. This is the second part of a constructed response. Now you would find two or three examples from the text to support your statement. You could use quotes or tell your reasons in your own words. You would write in complete sentences. Some responses require only a few sentences. Others are more complicated and require several paragraphs. Others are even broader and require several pages of writing. You can usually tell from the question what type of response is being asked.

Be sure to answer all parts of a constructed response question. Very often, you may need to do two or more things to complete a response and receive full credit. Look at the following question (prompt):

Looking back on their childhoods, some people remember a time when they realized their world was more complex than they had believed. Tell about a time when you realized that the world was not as simple as you thought. What did you learn from that time? How did it change you as a person?

In this question, there are actually three parts:

• Tell about an event from your own life that relates to the prompt (question).
• Tell what you learned.
• Show how you changed.

To receive full credit for this type of a question, you would have to answer all three parts and use complete sentences and specific examples to support what you say. This type of an answer will be longer and include more information than the question about the setting. Sometimes a long constructed response will need a conclusion. This is where you sum up what you have said. It is often just a restatement of the original question and may be only a sentence or two in most cases.

You will be asked to write several constructed responses during this lesson. You will also be required to answer this type of question for your next progress evaluation.

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Read and Practice

Now it is time for you to begin the novel you have chosen. Remember to document your thinking as you read in one of the ways listed earlier in this discussion. You can also find background information on your novel online if you are curious about anything that interests you as you read.

Section 1: Getting Started

You have learned about character, setting, and plot in your Daybook units. Remember that authors have several ways to tell the reader about characters. If you can’t remember what these are, you may want to go back to your earlier lessons and refresh your memory. Plot consists of the events of a story. At the beginning of a book, you may not learn much about the actual plot, because the author must do several things before getting on with the story. First, the author must establish the setting. The reader needs to know where and when the story takes place in order to understand all of the other elements of the book. As you begin reading the first of the five sections you divided your novel into, notice the function of the setting. It might (1) create a mood, (2) show the reader a different way of life, (3) make the action seem more real, (4) be the source of the conflict or problem in the story, or (5) symbolize an idea.

During the beginning of a novel (sometimes called the exposition), the author will usually introduce the characters and give readers an idea of what they can expect from these characters. Most of the time, you will know which character is the main character (protagonist) of the story at the very beginning of a book.

Activity: Look for plot, characters, and setting as you read the first section of your novel. Complete Activity 6.1. Remember to use the constructed response format for your answers. Write in complete sentences. You will not submit these activities to the Center for evaluation, but share them with your parent/teacher.

Section 2: Point of View

Mood is the feeling a reader gets from a book. If I asked you to describe a book you were reading, you might say that it’s sad, scary, funny, or exciting. These moods can change from one event to the other. Sometimes your book’s mood might be sad, and at another time, it might be exciting.

“Point of view” is the term we use to describe who is telling the story. Think about who is narrating the story. Is it one of the characters in the story, or is it someone outside of the action of the story? If one of the characters inside the story is narrating, the story is said to be in first person. If someone outside of the story is narrating, the story is written in third person. If the story is in first person, you will probably be able to name the narrator. However, if the person is outside of the action of the story, it may seem like the author is telling the story. Other times, you may not exactly know who the narrator is supposed to be. First person point of view is characterized by the use of words like “I,” “we,” “us,” and “me.” Third person point of view would use pronouns like “they,” “he,” and “she” to tell the story.

When the point of view is one of the characters in the novel, the information you know may be limited. Because the reader can know only what the narrator knows, and the narrator is in the story, you might not know as much about other characters as you do about the narrator. You are seeing the world through the narrator’s eyes.

When a novel is written in third person, we sometimes say this is the omniscient point of view. “Omniscient” means “all knowing.” When the narrator is outside the action of a book, the reader may know everything: what each character is thinking, why each does what he or she does, and maybe background information and hints about what will come later in the book.

Activity: When you have finished the second part of your book, complete Activity 6.2. Remember to use the constructed response format for your answers. Share your work with your parent/teacher, but do not send your work to the Center for evaluation.

Section 3: Conflict and Verb Tense

By now, you are nearing the middle of your book. You should have a good idea of where the plot is heading and what the main idea of the book is. By this time, you should have a good sense of the main conflict of the book. If you are having trouble identifying the conflict, think about problems the main character is having. Are there other characters causing the problems? Is the setting itself a challenge for the character? What is the main character concerned about? Remember that there are probably many small conflicts that arise and are resolved, but there will be one big conflict that keeps going through the whole book.

You should be able to connect with some of the characters in the book on a personal level. These connections should become apparent to you as you look back over your sticky notes or log. Can you put yourself in the place of the main character and understand how you might feel or react? Even though the exact events haven’t happened to you personally, can you connect to the way the characters respond? Would you respond the same way?

You learned about verb tenses in the lesson 5 skill lesson. Many novels are told in the past tense. When an author writes in past tense, he or she will use words like “went,” “drove,” “ran,” “walked,” etc. Sometimes an author decides to narrate a book in present tense. The narrator tells things as they happen. When a book is written in present tense, it limits what the narrator is aware of, because he or she can’t know what will happen in the future. In present tense, the author will use words like “go,” “drive,” “run,” and “walk.” Can you figure out the tense of the novel you are reading? How do you know?

Do you notice that you are using the same skills and strategies that you learned in your Daybook lessons? This is applying what you have learned. Good students learn to apply what they learn to new situations. It is the foundation for building strong reading and writing structures. The type of thinking you do as an active reader is just the type of practice that you can use in any reading you are doing. The more you practice these skills, the easier they will become.

Activity: When you have finished the third part of your book, complete Activity 6.3, using the constructed response format. Share your work with your parent/teacher, but do not send your work to the Center for evaluation.

Section 4: Theme and Tone

You worked with theme earlier in your Daybook, and now you are ready to think about theme as it relates to your novel. Theme is the main idea or underlying meaning of a story. Sometimes it is directly stated, and other times it is implied (you are supposed to figure it out as you read). You often have to look at the pattern of events in a story in order to figure out the theme.

Theme is kind of like a moral or a lesson for living. However, a theme does not really tell readers what they should do in a similar situation. When you are looking for theme, you are looking for the main idea. The theme is not the subject or topic of the work, but rather, some statement or an opinion expressed about that topic. A work of literature does not have to contain a theme. Some stories are written for entertainment only and do not have a direct “message” or “lesson” the author is trying to get across.

Be sure not to mention specific characters, events, or settings when identifying the theme, since theme is a general message not specifically tied to the events in the story. For example, in the story of Cinderella, the theme might be something like, “People who are truly good are rewarded in the end.” A more updated stating of the theme might be, “What goes around comes around”! The theme would not be, “Cinderella finally gets to marry the prince, because she is a good person.”

The theme will be something that the reader can apply to his or her own life and experiences. You might not agree with the theme, but you can usually figure out what the author is trying to tell you through the story.

Tone is often a difficult element to identify for young readers (and older readers too!). Tone is often mistaken for mood, and sometimes it does parallel the mood of a story. Mood is the feeling the reader gets during reading. While the mood of the book may move from exciting, to funny, to sad, the tone is the author’s attitude about the topic. Tone doesn’t really change from one part of the story to the other. An author shows tone through the choice of words and details used to describe setting, characters, and plot.

Tone might be described as “triumphant,” “resentful,” “amused,” “sarcastic,” or “despairing.” These are great words; if they are new to you, look them up and see what they mean. Then try to figure out what the author’s attitude is toward the subject of the novel you are reading.

Activity: Now complete Activity 6.4 to practice your understanding of theme and tone. Remember to use the constructed response format for your answers. Share your work with your parent/teacher, but don’t submit your work to the Center for evaluation.

Section 5: Climax, Resolution, and Falling Action

You should now finish reading your novel and pull together all of the analysis work you have done. As you finish reading, you will discover the resolution of the conflict. You may have predicted this resolution by making inferences based on events and information presented by the author. These skills, which you learned earlier in this class, helped you get the most out of your reading.

As you complete your novel, you may notice that after the climax of the story and the resolution of the conflict, there is still more left in the story. This is called the falling action. The falling action ties up loose ends for the reader. It may give information about things that happen in the future of the character. This is where the author makes sure that the reader is “satisfied.”

When you close the cover of your book for the last time, the falling action will help you feel like you are really finished with the story the author had to tell. Sometimes when I finish a book I really liked, I’m disappointed, because I’m not ready for it to be over. If the author has done a good job at the end of the book, though, I don’t feel disappointed in the story itself. However, I might just go searching for another book by the same author or a book on the same subject!

Activity: In Activity 6.5, you will identify the climax, resolution, and falling action for your novel. Remember to use the constructed response format for your answers. Share your work with your parent/teacher, but don’t submit your work to the Center for evaluation.

I hope you have enjoyed reading your novel in this way. Reading to analyze is different from reading for entertainment. (Not that you can’t do both at the same time!) However, both types of reading are important and valuable. Can you think how each type of reading will benefit you in the future? Share your thoughts with your parent/teacher.

Doing this type of “thinking about your thinking” makes all your hard work pay off. You are doing a great job and learning so much. Keep working hard and looking for ways to apply what you are learning in other things you are doing. That’s what real learning is all about!

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Skill Lessons

Writing a Book Review

Pages 166–171 in Writers Express provide a good overview of how to write a book review. At the end of this lesson, you will write a book review about either The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle or Shiloh. You will want to tell readers three things:

1. What the novel you read is about

2. Whether you thought the book was good (why or why not)

3. Whether you would recommend it for another fifth-grade student to read (why or why not)

You should use specific examples from the book to support your statements. Remember, don’t just tell what you think, also tell why you think it. If you say that the characters were realistic, you must tell why you think so and where in the novel you saw evidence. You may use direct quotes from the book if you would like.

You should deal with the main elements of literature (plot, characters, and setting) and include other elements that seemed important to you, such as conflict, point of view, tone, mood, and theme. You should not include all the elements of literature in your discussion. Instead, focus on the three main elements and maybe one or two of the others.

You may use any prewriting strategies that work for you, but submit only your final draft of the writing. Before you begin, review the active reading documentation you wrote as you read (sticky notes, literature log, etc.). Decide what things you want to include in your answer. When you tell what your book is about, don’t try to tell every detail. Decide on the important events. When you discuss why you did or didn’t like the book and why you would or wouldn’t recommend it, you will probably talk about the other elements of literature.

Use the guidelines for a constructed response that you learned in this lesson. Go back to the discussion on writing constructed responses, if you have forgotten what those are.

Now it is time to complete the lesson 6 progress evaluation.

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Progress Evaluation

You should now complete the lesson 6 progress evaluation. Be sure to reread the general requirements for progress evaluations from the overview.

Instructor-evaluated; 20 points total

Book Review

Review the scoring criteria for the characteristics of an excellent paper.

Your work will be evaluated by an instructor, using the scoring guide below.

Scoring Guide

Note: Progress evaluations must be submitted in sequence, and you cannot submit more than three progress evaluations in a seven-day period.

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