Overview

Lesson Procedure

65-75 minutes of class time across 5 phases.

1. Warm-Up10 minutes
2. Direct Instruction20 minutes
3. Guided Practice15 minutes
4. Independent Practice15-20 minutes
5. Closure5-10 minutes

1. Warm-Up10 minutes

   Project the two versions below. Students answer the three questions alone for three minutes, then compare with a partner.

   Warm-Up Prompt

   Version A: "Maya missed the bus, so she ran the two miles to school. She came through the door as the bell rang. The math test she had studied for all week began one minute later." Version B: "The math test Maya had studied for all week began one minute after she came through the door. She had run the two miles to school, because she had missed the bus. The bell was ringing as she arrived." (1) Which version tells the events in the order they happened? (2) What does Version B put first, and why might a writer choose to start there? (3) Find one word or phrase in each version that connects two events.

   Collect answers. Version A is chronological. Version B opens with the test, the moment with the most at stake, and then goes back to explain how Maya got there. Connecting words include "so" and "later" in A and "after" and "because" in B. Tell students that writers of nonfiction make the same choices, and that today they will analyze three of them: the order of the points, how each point is introduced and developed, and how the writer connects one point to the next.

2. Direct Instruction20 minutes

   Part 1: Three questions for any series of ideas or events. Order: in what sequence does the author present the points, and is that the order in which they happened or were thought? Introduction and development: how is each point first presented (a statement of its importance, a scene, a question, a claim), and what builds on it afterward (details, reactions, reflection)? Connections: how does the author link one point to the next, either with explicit words or by placing two points side by side?

   Kinds of connections and the words that often signal them

   Connection	What it does	Signal words
   Cause and effect	One point produces or explains another	because, so, owing to, this led me to, the result was
   Time	Places a point before, after or long after another	then, for the following weeks, never since, years afterward
   Comparison	Shows how two things are alike	like, reminded of, the same, in the same way
   Contrast	Sets two things against each other	but, yet, instead, not ... but
   Generalization	Moves from one case to many	this is what we were all doing, it is easy to, nothing is so

   Part 2: Model with Addams. Jane Addams (1860-1935) founded Hull-House, a settlement house in Chicago where educated young people lived among poor immigrant families and ran classes, clubs and services. In the chapter of her memoir called "The Snare of Preparation," she describes the years after college when she traveled in Europe and did not yet know what to do with her life. Read the excerpt aloud. Gloss omnibus (a horse-drawn bus with seats on top), hucksters (street sellers), farthings and ha'pennies (the smallest English coins) and submerged tenth (a phrase of the time for the poorest part of the population). Then work through the examples and Diagram 1, asking after each: Why is this point here and not somewhere else?

   1One of the most poignant of these experiences, which occurred during the first few months after our landing upon the other side of the Atlantic, was on a Saturday night, when I received an ineradicable impression of the wretchedness of East London, and also saw for the first time the overcrowded quarters of a great city at midnight. A small party of tourists were taken to the East End by a city missionary to witness the Saturday night sale of decaying vegetables and fruit, which, owing to the Sunday laws in London, could not be sold until Monday, and, as they were beyond safe keeping, were disposed of at auction as late as possible on Saturday night. On Mile End Road, from the top of an omnibus which paused at the end of a dingy street lighted by only occasional flares of gas, we saw two huge masses of ill-clad people clamoring around two hucksters' carts. They were bidding their farthings and ha'pennies for a vegetable held up by the auctioneer, which he at last scornfully flung, with a gibe for its cheapness, to the successful bidder. In the momentary pause only one man detached himself from the groups. He had bidden in a cabbage, and when it struck his hand, he instantly sat down on the curb, tore it with his teeth, and hastily devoured it, unwashed and uncooked as it was. He and his fellows were types of the "submerged tenth," as our missionary guide told us, with some little satisfaction in the then new phrase, and he further added that so many of them could scarcely be seen in one spot save at this Saturday night auction, the desire for cheap food being apparently the one thing which could move them simultaneously. They were huddled into ill-fitting, cast-off clothing, the ragged finery which one sees only in East London. Their pale faces were dominated by that most unlovely of human expressions, the cunning and shrewdness of the bargain-hunter who starves if he cannot make a successful trade, and yet the final impression was not of ragged, tawdry clothing nor of pinched and sallow faces, but of myriads of hands, empty, pathetic, nerveless and workworn, showing white in the uncertain light of the street, and clutching forward for food which was already unfit to eat.

   2Perhaps nothing is so fraught with significance as the human hand, this oldest tool with which man has dug his way from savagery, and with which he is constantly groping forward. I have never since been able to see a number of hands held upward, even when they are moving rhythmically in a calisthenic exercise, or when they belong to a class of chubby children who wave them in eager response to a teacher's query, without a certain revival of this memory, a clutching at the heart reminiscent of the despair and resentment which seized me then.

   • How a point is introduced

     Addams does not begin with the street. What does her first sentence (paragraph 1, sentence 1) tell the reader before any event happens?

     Result: It announces the event's importance first: it is "One of the most poignant of these experiences" and left "an ineradicable impression of the wretchedness of East London." The reader knows the scene will matter before seeing it, so every detail that follows is read as evidence of that impression.

   • Why this order

     Sentence 2 explains the Sunday laws before sentence 3 shows the crowd. Why put the explanation first?

     Result: The explanation turns the scene into a result. The vegetables "could not be sold until Monday" and were "beyond safe keeping," so the auction happens because of a law and spoiled food, not by chance. Placed first, the cause shapes how the reader sees the crowd; placed after, it would read as a footnote.

   • How a point is developed

     Trace how the scene develops across sentences 3-9. What moves the description forward?

     Result: It narrows, then widens. From "two huge masses of ill-clad people" it narrows to "only one man" and the cabbage, then widens again to clothing, faces and finally "myriads of hands." Addams names the order herself: "the final impression was not of ragged, tawdry clothing nor of pinched and sallow faces, but of myriads of hands." The last detail is the one she chooses to carry forward.

   • A connection across time

     Paragraph 2 leaves the street. What connection does it draw between the hands in 1883 and Addams's later life?

     Result: A generalization and a time link. First a claim about all people: "Perhaps nothing is so fraught with significance as the human hand." Then the memory is tied to the present: she has "never since" seen raised hands, even children's in a classroom, without "a certain revival of this memory." The event is connected to everything after it.

   • A connection left implied

     The missionary guide calls the crowd types of the "submerged tenth," "with some little satisfaction in the then new phrase." What connection does Addams let the reader draw?

     Result: A contrast she does not state. The guide is pleased with a label; the man beside him is eating an unwashed cabbage on the curb. By placing the guide's satisfaction between the cabbage and the hands, Addams sets a tidy phrase against real hunger without saying so. Students should name implied connections as inferences and support them with the placement of the details.

3. Guided Practice15 minutes

   Run Activity 1 first, before students see this excerpt in full. Then hand out the passage, which comes two paragraphs after the East London paragraphs in the chapter. Gloss De Quincey (Thomas De Quincey, an English essayist whose "The English Mail-Coach" includes "The Vision of Sudden Death"), the Iliad (Homer's epic of the Trojan War), Weltschmerz (German for sorrow over the state of the world) and "the great refusal" (a phrase from Dante for turning down a great calling). The quotation about conduct and culture is from the English critic Matthew Arnold.

   1No comfort came to me then from any source, and the painful impression was increased because at the very moment of looking down the East London street from the top of the omnibus, I had been sharply and painfully reminded of "The Vision of Sudden Death" which had confronted De Quincey one summer's night as he was being driven through rural England on a high mail coach. Two absorbed lovers suddenly appear between the narrow, blossoming hedgerows in the direct path of the huge vehicle which is sure to crush them to their death. De Quincey tries to send them a warning shout, but finds himself unable to make a sound because his mind is hopelessly entangled in an endeavor to recall the exact lines from the Iliad which describe the great cry with which Achilles alarmed all Asia militant. Only after his memory responds is his will released from its momentary paralysis, and he rides on through the fragrant night with the horror of the escaped calamity thick upon him, but he also bears with him the consciousness that he had given himself over so many years to classic learning—that when suddenly called upon for a quick decision in the world of life and death, he had been able to act only through a literary suggestion.

   2This is what we were all doing, lumbering our minds with literature that only served to cloud the really vital situation spread before our eyes. It seemed to me too preposterous that in my first view of the horror of East London I should have recalled De Quincey's literary description of the literary suggestion which had once paralyzed him. In my disgust it all appeared a hateful, vicious circle which even the apostles of culture themselves admitted, for had not one of the greatest among the moderns plainly said that "conduct, and not culture is three fourths of human life."

   3For two years in the midst of my distress over the poverty which, thus suddenly driven into my consciousness, had become to me the "Weltschmerz," there was mingled a sense of futility, of misdirected energy, the belief that the pursuit of cultivation would not in the end bring either solace or relief. I gradually reached a conviction that the first generation of college women had taken their learning too quickly, had departed too suddenly from the active, emotional life led by their grandmothers and great-grandmothers; that the contemporary education of young women had developed too exclusively the power of acquiring knowledge and of merely receiving impressions; that somewhere in the process of 'being educated' they had lost that simple and almost automatic response to the human appeal, that old healthful reaction resulting in activity from the mere presence of suffering or of helplessness; that they are so sheltered and pampered they have no chance even to make "the great refusal."

   Pairs complete a three-row organizer, one row per paragraph: the point (one sentence), how it is introduced (quote the opening words) and how it connects to the paragraph before. Debrief by building the chain on the board. Paragraph 1 links the East London view to a memory of reading: the pain "was increased because at the very moment" she looked down the street she thought of De Quincey. Paragraph 2 turns one mind into many: "This is what we were all doing." Paragraph 3 moves forward two years and ties the new conviction back to the street with "thus suddenly driven into my consciousness." Ask: The passage starts with a memory of a book and ends with a claim about how young women are educated. Which sentence makes that jump possible?

4. Independent Practice15-20 minutes

   Students read the next excerpt alone and answer quiz questions 1-19 with the passage open; question 20 also uses the Guided Practice passage. The excerpt comes from the end of the same chapter. Between the Guided Practice excerpt and this one, Addams describes several more years of travel and study, a return trip to Europe, and her growing doubts. Gloss the Settlement (Hull-House, which she opened in Chicago in 1889), caparisoned (covered in decorated cloth), chagrin (embarrassed disappointment), raison d'etre (French: reason for being) and dupe (a person who is fooled). The [...] at the start of paragraph 3 marks two paragraphs the excerpt skips, in which Addams tells the plan to her school friend Ellen Gates Starr, who was traveling with her, and then goes to London to visit Toynbee Hall in June 1888. Content note: paragraph 2 describes a bullfight in which bulls and horses are killed.

   1It is hard to tell just when the very simple plan which afterward developed into the Settlement began to form itself in my mind. It may have been even before I went to Europe for the second time, but I gradually became convinced that it would be a good thing to rent a house in a part of the city where many primitive and actual needs are found, in which young women who had been given over too exclusively to study might restore a balance of activity along traditional lines and learn of life from life itself; where they might try out some of the things they had been taught and put truth to "the ultimate test of the conduct it dictates or inspires." I do not remember to have mentioned this plan to anyone until we reached Madrid in April, 1888.

   2We had been to see a bull fight rendered in the most magnificent Spanish style, where greatly to my surprise and horror, I found that I had seen, with comparative indifference, five bulls and many more horses killed. The sense that this was the last survival of all the glories of the amphitheater, the illusion that the riders on the caparisoned horses might have been knights of a tournament, or the matadore a slightly armed gladiator facing his martyrdom, and all the rest of the obscure yet vivid associations of an historic survival, had carried me beyond the endurance of any of the rest of the party. I finally met them in the foyer, stern and pale with disapproval of my brutal endurance, and but partially recovered from the faintness and disgust which the spectacle itself had produced upon them. I had no defense to offer to their reproaches save that I had not thought much about the bloodshed; but in the evening the natural and inevitable reaction came, and in deep chagrin I felt myself tried and condemned, not only by this disgusting experience but by the entire moral situation which it revealed. It was suddenly made quite clear to me that I was lulling my conscience by a dreamer's scheme, that a mere paper reform had become a defense for continued idleness, and that I was making it a raison d'etre for going on indefinitely with study and travel. It is easy to become the dupe of a deferred purpose, of the promise the future can never keep, and I had fallen into the meanest type of self-deception in making myself believe that all this was in preparation for great things to come. Nothing less than the moral reaction following the experience at a bullfight had been able to reveal to me that so far from following in the wake of a chariot of philanthropic fire, I had been tied to the tail of the veriest ox-cart of self-seeking.

   3[...] It was not until years afterward that I came upon Tolstoy's phrase "the snare of preparation," which he insists we spread before the feet of young people, hopelessly entangling them in a curious inactivity at the very period of life when they are longing to construct the world anew and to conform it to their own ideals.

5. Closure5-10 minutes

   Exit ticket: "Name one way an author can order a series of events other than the order in which they happened, and say what that order can do for a reader. Then name one kind of connection an author can draw between two points and give a signal word for it." Sort the tickets by which part of the standard each student handled well (order, development or connections) to plan the next lesson.

   Homework passage. Introduce the excerpt from Andrew Carnegie's autobiography, published in 1920 after his death. Carnegie (1835-1919) came to Pittsburgh from Scotland as a boy and, at about fourteen, became a messenger for the telegraph office, carrying printed telegrams to businesses around the city. Mr. Brooks was the office manager. In Carnegie's time a message arrived as dots and dashes printed on a moving paper slip, and one worker read the slip aloud while a copyist wrote it out. The [...] marks where the excerpt skips a short trip to fill in for an operator in another town.

   1Having to sweep out the operating-room in the mornings, the boys had an opportunity of practicing upon the telegraph instruments before the operators arrived. This was a new chance. I soon began to play with the key and to talk with the boys who were at the other stations who had like purposes to my own. Whenever one learns to do anything he has never to wait long for an opportunity of putting his knowledge to use.

   2One morning I heard the Pittsburgh call given with vigor. It seemed to me I could divine that some one wished greatly to communicate. I ventured to answer, and let the slip run. It was Philadelphia that wanted to send "a death message" to Pittsburgh immediately. Could I take it? I replied that I would try if they would send slowly. I succeeded in getting the message and ran out with it. I waited anxiously for Mr. Brooks to come in, and told him what I had dared to do. Fortunately, he appreciated it and complimented me, instead of scolding me for my temerity; yet dismissing me with the admonition to be very careful and not to make mistakes. It was not long before I was called sometimes to watch the instrument, while the operator wished to be absent, and in this way I learned the art of telegraphy.

   3We were blessed at this time with a rather indolent operator, who was only too glad to have me do his work. It was then the practice for us to receive the messages on a running slip of paper, from which the operator read to a copyist, but rumors had reached us that a man in the West had learned to read by sound and could really take a message by ear. This led me to practice the new method. One of the operators in the office, Mr. Maclean, became expert at it, and encouraged me by his success. I was surprised at the ease with which I learned the new language. One day, desiring to take a message in the absence of the operator, the old gentleman who acted as copyist resented my presumption and refused to "copy" for a messenger boy. I shut off the paper slip, took pencil and paper and began taking the message by ear. I shall never forget his surprise. He ordered me to give him back his pencil and pad, and after that there was never any difficulty between dear old Courtney Hughes and myself. He was my devoted friend and copyist.

   4[...] Promotion soon came. A new operator was wanted and Mr. Brooks telegraphed to my afterward dear friend James D. Reid, then general superintendent of the line, another fine specimen of the Scotsman, and took upon himself to recommend me as an assistant operator. The telegram from Louisville in reply stated that Mr. Reid highly approved of promoting "Andy," provided Mr. Brooks considered him competent. The result was that I began as a telegraph operator at the tremendous salary of twenty-five dollars per month, which I thought a fortune. To Mr. Brooks and Mr. Reid I owe my promotion from the messenger's station to the operating-room. I was then in my seventeenth year and had served my apprenticeship. I was now performing a man's part, no longer a boy's—earning a dollar every working day.

   Teacher note on language. Addams writes as a well-off American of the 1880s, and some of her words reflect that position. "Savagery" (Direct Instruction passage, paragraph 2) comes from a nineteenth-century idea of human progress that ranked peoples from "savage" to "civilized"; "submerged tenth" and the descriptions of faces as "cunning" were labels observers of the time applied to the poor. The words are quoted exactly as printed. In the paragraph that follows this excerpt in the chapter, Addams herself admits that this one glimpse gave her a partial and unfair picture of East London, because she saw nothing of the people who were already working to relieve the poverty there; this is worth sharing if students raise the question.

Differentiation Strategies

Assessment Guidance

1. Question 1 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   In what order does Addams present the three paragraphs of this excerpt?

   AThe bullfight, then the plan it inspired, then the opening of Hull-House BThe plan, the event that exposed her delay, then a phrase found years later CA phrase from Tolstoy, then the plan it inspired, then the bullfight DThe trip to Madrid, then her friends' plan, then her own decision to join them

2. Question 2 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   How does Addams introduce the plan in paragraph 1?

   ABy describing the day she first thought of it in Madrid BBy comparing it with the settlement houses she had already visited in London CBy explaining that a doctor had advised her to begin it DBy admitting she cannot date its start, then saying what it was

3. Question 3 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Why does paragraph 1 end with "I do not remember to have mentioned this plan to anyone until we reached Madrid in April, 1888"?

   AIt moves the account to Madrid and shows the plan had stayed private BIt proves that the plan first formed in her mind while she was in Madrid CIt explains why her friends later disapproved of the plan she described DIt shows that she had forgotten about the plan during her years of travel

4. Question 4 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   How does Addams introduce the bullfight in paragraph 2, sentence 1?

   AThrough a detailed description of the arena and the crowd around her BThrough her friends' reaction as they waited for her in the foyer CThrough her own surprise and horror at how little she had felt DThrough a short history of bullfighting and its place in Spain

5. Question 5 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   In sentence 2 of paragraph 2, what connection does Addams draw between her sense of history and her reaction to the bullfight?

   AImagining knights and gladiators let her keep watching after the others could not BHer knowledge of history made her object to the bullfight more than the others did CHer friends' interest in history kept them in the arena after she had left it DThe bullfight reminded her of a book about ancient Rome she was reading then

6. Question 6 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   What role do the friends in the foyer play in how the event develops?

   AThey explain the history of the amphitheater to her after the fight BThey persuade her that evening to tell them about her plan at last CTheir disapproval sets an outside judgment against her indifference DTheir faintness shows that the fight was milder than she had expected

7. Question 7 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   "but in the evening the natural and inevitable reaction came" (paragraph 2). What does this shift in time add to the account?

   AIt shows that she and her party left Madrid later that same evening BIt shows that the meaning of the event reached her hours after it CIt shows that her friends' disapproval had faded by the evening DIt shows that she went back to a second bullfight that evening

8. Question 8 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   She felt "tried and condemned, not only by this disgusting experience but by the entire moral situation which it revealed." What connection does this phrase draw?

   AIt contrasts the bullfight with a better experience earlier that day BIt compares Spanish customs with the customs of her own country CIt links her feeling of disgust to the reproaches of her friends DIt links one afternoon to how she had been living for years

9. Question 9 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Which sentence states most directly what the bullfight revealed about her plan?

   A"It was suddenly made quite clear to me that I was lulling my conscience ..." B"I finally met them in the foyer, stern and pale with disapproval of my brutal endurance ..." C"I do not remember to have mentioned this plan to anyone until we reached Madrid ..." D"It was not until years afterward that I came upon Tolstoy's phrase ..."

10. Question 10 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    "It is easy to become the dupe of a deferred purpose, of the promise the future can never keep." How does this sentence develop her analysis?

    AIt describes a specific promise that her friends had failed to keep BIt predicts that the settlement plan will fail when she tries it CIt returns the reader to the details of the fight in the arena DIt turns her own case into a general warning about putting off action

11. Question 11 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Paragraph 2 ends with an image: she was not "following in the wake of a chariot of philanthropic fire" but was "tied to the tail of the veriest ox-cart of self-seeking." What connection does the image draw?

    AA comparison between Spanish farm carts and Roman chariots BA cause: the slow ox-cart explains why she arrived in Madrid late CA contrast between how she had seen herself and what she now saw DA time link between the bullfight and a memory from her childhood

12. Question 12 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Why does Addams place the Tolstoy sentence (paragraph 3) last, after the events of 1888?

    ABecause she read Tolstoy on the evening after the bullfight in Madrid BBecause she found it years later, and it names what the events showed CBecause Tolstoy had written to advise her to open the settlement house DBecause the phrase describes the bullfight itself rather than her years of study

13. Question 13 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Which statement best describes how Addams unfolds the excerpt as a whole?

    AFrom a private plan, to an event that exposes her delay, to a judgment on herself, to a name for the pattern BFrom a judgment on herself, to a new plan, to an event that proves it wrong, to a second, better plan CFrom a history of Spain, to a description of a bullfight, to advice for travelers who plan to visit Madrid DFrom a list of her travels, to the founding of Hull-House, to the fame that came to her later

14. Question 14 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Paragraph 1 describes a house where young women "who had been given over too exclusively to study" could "learn of life from life itself." What connection does paragraph 2 draw back to that description?

    AIt shows that her traveling friends were the young women the house was meant for BIt shows that Addams, "going on indefinitely with study and travel," was one of them CIt shows that watching the bullfight was part of the education the plan described DIt shows that the plan had been meant for poor families in Madrid rather than Chicago

15. Question 15 of 20 · Short Answer

    Addams could have told this excerpt in time order, with the bullfight first and the plan afterward. Explain why she describes the plan before the bullfight, and what a reader would miss if the order were reversed.

    Show model answer

16. Question 16 of 20 · Short Answer

    Trace how the bullfight is developed across paragraph 2. Name four stages, in order, and quote a few words for each.

    Show model answer

17. Question 17 of 20 · Short Answer

    Find two words or phrases in paragraph 2 that signal a connection between points (for example, a turn in time or a cause). For each one, say which two points it connects and what kind of connection it is.

    Show model answer

18. Question 18 of 20 · Short Answer

    Addams says she had "no defense" to offer her friends except "that I had not thought much about the bloodshed." Explain how this admission connects to sentence 2 of paragraph 2 and to what she realizes later in the paragraph.

    Show model answer

19. Question 19 of 20 · Short Answer

    In one paragraph of 5-7 sentences, analyze how Addams unfolds the series of events and ideas in this excerpt. Discuss the order of the points, how at least one point is introduced and developed, and at least two connections she draws.

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20. Question 20 of 20 · Short Answer

    Reread paragraph 2 of the Guided Practice excerpt ("This is what we were all doing ..."). In that excerpt and this one, Addams connects something she witnessed with a habit of her own mind. Compare the two connections: what she witnessed and what habit appears in each, and how the second goes further than the first.

    Show model answer

These standards connect to RI.9-10.3: prerequisites to review first, parallel standards at the same level, and next steps that build on it.

Standard text: Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy. © Copyright 2010. National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and Council of Chief State School Officers. All rights reserved.