Overview

Lesson Procedure

60-65 minutes of class time across 5 phases.

1. Warm-Up5-10 minutes
2. Direct Instruction20 minutes
3. Guided Practice15 minutes
4. Independent Practice15 minutes
5. Closure5 minutes

1. Warm-Up5-10 minutes

   Warm-Up Prompt

   "Your friend's new haircut is short. Write three sentences describing it: one a compliment, one neutral, one an insult. Keep the facts the same and change only the words."

   Take four or five answers and list the key words on the board, such as "sleek," "short," "buzzed" and "chopped." Point out that the facts did not change but the judgment did. That difference is connotation, and it is one of the main ways writers set a tone. Today students will track how many word choices together build the tone and setting of a passage.

2. Direct Instruction20 minutes

   Define four terms before reading:

   • Denotation: a word's dictionary meaning.
   • Connotation: the feelings and judgments a word carries ("slender" admires, "scrawny" criticizes).
   • Figurative meaning: a meaning beyond the literal, created by comparison or imagery (simile, metaphor, personification).
   • Tone: the attitude of the writer or narrator toward the subject. Formal tone uses careful, elevated vocabulary and complete, often long sentences; informal tone sounds like everyday speech, with contractions, slang or dialect.

   Then introduce the key word in the standard, cumulative: word choices build on each other. One gloomy word sets a mood for a moment; a paragraph of them creates a tone the reader cannot escape. Read Poe's opening paragraph aloud slowly.

   During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was—but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me—upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain—upon the bleak walls—upon the vacant eye-like windows—upon a few rank sedges—and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees—with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium—the bitter lapse into everyday life—the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart—an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was it—I paused to think—what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion, that while, beyond doubt, there are combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down—but with a shudder even more thrilling than before—upon the remodelled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows.

   • Connotation and cumulative effect

     "During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year..." What does each of the three adjectives take away from the day, and what do they add up to?

     Result: "Dull" takes away brightness of spirit, "dark" takes away light, "soundless" takes away sound. Stacked together, they describe a day emptied of life before anything has happened, and "whole" stretches that emptiness from morning to night.

   • Figurative meaning and time

     "...as the shades of the evening drew on." What are the "shades," and why is "drew on" a figurative choice?

     Result: The "shades" are the shadows of evening, but the word also meant ghosts, so it hints at the supernatural. "Drew on" pictures the dark being pulled in like a curtain. Together with "autumn of the year," the phrase sets the time: late in the day and late in the year, both times of ending.

   • Meaning in context and formal tone

     "...a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit." What does "pervaded" mean here, and what does the word choice do to the tone?

     Result: "Pervaded" means spread through every part. It shows the gloom soaking into him rather than simply arriving. A plain version, "I felt really down," keeps the basic meaning but loses the formal, heavy tone that the Latin-based word "pervaded" creates.

   Formal and informal side by side. Tell students that the next passage comes from a narrator as far from Poe's as possible: Huckleberry Finn, a boy from a Mississippi River town, telling his own story in his own speech. Model one sentence from it before they read:

   • Informal tone

     Huck says of the gold coins, "It was an awful sight of money when it was piled up." Does "awful" mean "terrible" here?

     Result: No. In Huck's everyday speech "awful" is an intensifier meaning "very great," and "a sight of" means "a lot of." Reading "awful" as "terrible" would miss both the meaning and the informal, spoken tone of the narration.

   Features of formal and informal tone

   Feature	Formal (Poe's narrator)	Informal (Huck)
   Vocabulary	Latin-based, abstract, literary	Everyday, concrete, regional
   Grammar	Standard, with inverted word order	Nonstandard, as spoken
   Sentences	Long, with qualifications	Joined with "and," like talk
   Effect	Distance, precision, weight	Closeness, humor, a real voice

3. Guided Practice15 minutes

   Pairs return to the Poe paragraph with a three-column chart headed Time, Place and Feeling. Work through three phrases together, asking pairs to sort and explain each before you confirm:

   1. "a singularly dreary tract of country". Teacher note: Place. "Tract" is a wide stretch of land, and "singularly" (unusually) makes the dreariness exceptional, not ordinary.
   2. "upon the bleak walls". Teacher note: Place. "Bleak" means bare and cold; the house itself is described with the same emptiness as the land around it.
   3. "There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart". Teacher note: Feeling. Three nouns, each worse than the last, move the gloom from the landscape into the narrator's body.

   Pairs then add at least two more phrases of their own to each column. Ask each pair to write one sentence that begins "Taken together, these words..." and states the tone. Share two or three sentences and compare them with Diagram 2.

4. Independent Practice15 minutes

   Students read the opening of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn on their own and complete three tasks on the handout: (1) choose three words or phrases whose meaning depends on context and explain each; (2) find two examples of figurative language or humor that comes from word choice; (3) write two sentences on how Huck's language sets an informal tone and what that tone shows about him. The quiz questions on this passage work as a check when students finish.

   1You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly—Tom’s Aunt Polly, she is—and Mary, and the Widow Douglas is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before.

   2Now the way that the book winds up is this: Tom and me found the money that the robbers hid in the cave, and it made us rich. We got six thousand dollars apiece—all gold. It was an awful sight of money when it was piled up. Well, Judge Thatcher he took it and put it out at interest, and it fetched us a dollar a day apiece all the year round—more than a body could tell what to do with. The Widow Douglas she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me; but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when I couldn’t stand it no longer I lit out. I got into my old rags and my sugar-hogshead again, and was free and satisfied. But Tom Sawyer he hunted me up and said he was going to start a band of robbers, and I might join if I would go back to the widow and be respectable. So I went back.

   3The widow she cried over me, and called me a poor lost lamb, and she called me a lot of other names, too, but she never meant no harm by it. She put me in them new clothes again, and I couldn’t do nothing but sweat and sweat, and feel all cramped up. Well, then, the old thing commenced again. The widow rung a bell for supper, and you had to come to time. When you got to the table you couldn’t go right to eating, but you had to wait for the widow to tuck down her head and grumble a little over the victuals, though there warn’t really anything the matter with them,—that is, nothing only everything was cooked by itself. In a barrel of odds and ends it is different; things get mixed up, and the juice kind of swaps around, and the things go better.

   4After supper she got out her book and learned me about Moses and the Bulrushers, and I was in a sweat to find out all about him; but by-and-by she let it out that Moses had been dead a considerable long time; so then I didn’t care no more about him, because I don’t take no stock in dead people.

5. Closure5 minutes

   Exit ticket: (1) Write one sentence that explains the difference between the impact of one word and the cumulative impact of many. (2) Rewrite this plain sentence twice, once in a formal tone and once in an informal tone: "I did not want to go to the meeting."

   Teacher note on language: the Huckleberry Finn passage keeps Twain's nonstandard spellings and grammar, which are deliberate features of Huck's voice, not errors. The novel as a whole contains a racial slur used many times and racist portrayals typical of its period; this excerpt does not include them, but tell students before they read further in the book and plan how the class will discuss that language. Poe's narrator compares his mood to coming down from opium; treat it as a figure of speech in an 1839 text.

   For homework: students read the opening of Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (1820) below, which the homework uses.

   1In the bosom of one of those spacious coves which indent the eastern shore of the Hudson, at that broad expansion of the river denominated by the ancient Dutch navigators the Tappan Zee, and where they always prudently shortened sail and implored the protection of St. Nicholas when they crossed, there lies a small market town or rural port, which by some is called Greensburgh, but which is more generally and properly known by the name of Tarry Town. This name was given, we are told, in former days, by the good housewives of the adjacent country, from the inveterate propensity of their husbands to linger about the village tavern on market days. Be that as it may, I do not vouch for the fact, but merely advert to it, for the sake of being precise and authentic. Not far from this village, perhaps about two miles, there is a little valley or rather lap of land among high hills, which is one of the quietest places in the whole world. A small brook glides through it, with just murmur enough to lull one to repose; and the occasional whistle of a quail or tapping of a woodpecker is almost the only sound that ever breaks in upon the uniform tranquillity.

   2I recollect that, when a stripling, my first exploit in squirrel-shooting was in a grove of tall walnut-trees that shades one side of the valley. I had wandered into it at noontime, when all nature is peculiarly quiet, and was startled by the roar of my own gun, as it broke the Sabbath stillness around and was prolonged and reverberated by the angry echoes. If ever I should wish for a retreat whither I might steal from the world and its distractions, and dream quietly away the remnant of a troubled life, I know of none more promising than this little valley.

Differentiation Strategies

Assessment Guidance

1. Question 1 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Which pair of words shares a denotation (dictionary meaning) but differs most in connotation (the feelings and judgments a word carries)?

   A"chair" and "table" B"happy" and "sad" C"determined" and "stubborn" D"walk" and "swim"

2. Question 2 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Poe's narrator looks upon "the bleak walls" and "a few rank sedges" (sedges are grass-like plants of wet ground). In this context, "rank" most nearly means

   Agrowing thick and coarse, with a hint of decay Bholding a high position or official importance Cset out neatly in rows, like soldiers Dordered from best to worst

3. Question 3 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Near the end of the paragraph, Poe's narrator reins his horse "to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling" and looks down at the "inverted images" of the house. What is a tarn?

   AA steep cliff above the house BA stone tower beside the house CA patch of marsh grass DA small, still lake or pool

4. Question 4 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   The narrator compares his mood to "the after-dream of the reveller upon opium," "the bitter lapse into everyday life," "the hideous dropping off of the veil." What does this figurative comparison suggest?

   AThe narrator has been taking opium on his journey. BHis gloom feels like the harsh moment when a pleasant illusion ends and bare reality returns. CThe windows of the house are covered with veils. DThe narrator is still asleep on his horse and is dreaming the whole scene, including the house.

5. Question 5 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Poe writes that the narrator felt "an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime." ("Aught" is an old word for "anything.") What does the phrase mean?

   AHis imagination tortured him with frightening visions of the house and of whatever might be waiting inside it. BThe house looked grand and sublime, but his thoughts were dreary. CHowever hard he pushed his imagination, he could not turn the gloom into anything grand or awe-inspiring. DHe forced himself to stop imagining things and see only the facts.

6. Question 6 of 20 · Short Answer

   The paragraph ends with the narrator gazing at "the remodelled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows." Earlier he saw "a few rank sedges," "white trunks of decayed trees" and "vacant eye-like windows." Explain how Poe's word choices in this repetition add to the cumulative impact of the paragraph.

   Show model answer

7. Question 7 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   "It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression." Which feature of this sentence does most to create its formal tone?

   ASlang and short, clipped phrases BLong, qualified phrasing with abstract words such as "particulars" and "capacity" CContractions such as "it's" and "couldn't," and direct address to the reader as "you" DRhyme and a regular beat

8. Question 8 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Huck says Mark Twain "told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched," and later calls Tom Sawyer "mostly a true book, with some stretchers." What does Huck mean by "stretchers"?

   AExaggerations or small untruths BStretchers for carrying injured people CExercises for warming up DChapters that go on too long

9. Question 9 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Huck explains that living with the widow was rough, "considering how dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her ways." What do the connotations of these words reveal?

   AHuck is praising the widow's good habits. BHuck admires how regular and decent the widow is, but he thinks she is a sad and lonely woman. CHuck suspects the widow is secretly dishonest and only pretends to be decent when people are watching her. D"Regular" and "decent," usually words of praise, sound like complaints from Huck, showing what he values.

10. Question 10 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    At supper, Huck says, "you had to wait for the widow to tuck down her head and grumble a little over the victuals, though there warn't really anything the matter with them." What is the widow actually doing, and what does Huck's word choice show?

    AShe is saying grace; calling a prayer "grumbling" shows Huck does not share the custom. BShe is complaining that the food is badly cooked and not fit to eat. CShe is falling asleep at the table. DShe is scolding Huck for coming to supper late and for not washing his hands before eating.

11. Question 11 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Which feature of Huck's language does most to set the informal tone of the passage?

    ALong sentences full of abstract, Latin-based words and careful qualifications BFormal titles such as "Madam" and "Sir" CNonstandard grammar from everyday speech, as in "that ain't no matter" DRhymed lines and stanza breaks

12. Question 12 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Huck says of Moses, "I don't take no stock in dead people." What does "take stock in" mean here?

    ATo count the goods in a store BTo buy shares of stock in a company or business CTo be afraid of something DTo care about or put value in something

13. Question 13 of 20 · Short Answer

    Quote three words or phrases from paragraphs 2-3 of the Huckleberry Finn passage that evoke a particular time and place, and explain the cumulative sense of time and place they create.

    Show model answer

14. Question 14 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    "The widow she cried over me, and called me a poor lost lamb." What does the widow's figurative name for Huck suggest?

    AShe sees him as a helpless stray to be rescued, like the lost sheep in the Bible. BShe thinks he is too young to eat supper at the table. CShe means it as an insult, because she thinks he smells and behaves like a farm animal. DHuck actually works as a shepherd on her land.

15. Question 15 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Huck says the widow "allowed she would sivilize me." What is the effect of Twain's spelling "sivilize"?

    AIt is a printing error in the first edition that later editions of the novel corrected. BIt names a town on the Mississippi River. CIt shows Huck's lack of schooling and makes civilizing look foreign, something done to him. DIt means "to punish," which is what the widow is planning to do to Huck after he runs away.

16. Question 16 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    A student rewrites Huck's "I lit out" as "I departed from the residence." How does the change affect meaning and tone?

    AIt changes what happens, because in the new version Huck decides to stay home with the widow. BLeaving is still the meaning, but the stiff, formal words erase Huck's casual runaway voice. CIt makes the sentence more informal and more like Huck. DIt adds a sense of time and place that the original lacked.

17. Question 17 of 20 · Short Answer

    Choose one sentence from the Poe passage and one from the Twain passage. For each, name two word choices that make its tone formal or informal, and explain what that tone tells a reader about the narrator.

    Show model answer

18. Question 18 of 20 · Short Answer

    Poe's narrator writes, "a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible." Explain what the narrator means by stopping to repeat "insufferable," and how this affects the tone.

    Show model answer

19. Question 19 of 20 · Short Answer

    Huck complains that at the widow's table "everything was cooked by itself," and says, "In a barrel of odds and ends it is different; things get mixed up, and the juice kind of swaps around, and the things go better." Beyond food, what might this comparison suggest about Huck? Use the passage to support your answer.

    Show model answer

20. Question 20 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    A student writes: "Poe uses the word 'gloom' to create a dark tone." Which revision turns this into an analysis of the cumulative impact of Poe's word choices?

    AAdd the dictionary definition of "gloom" and give its part of speech. BCount how many times the exact word "gloom" appears in the whole paragraph. CGroup "gloom" with "dreary," "bleak" and "iciness" and show how together they build dread. DAdd facts about Poe's life to explain why he wrote such a dark story.

These standards connect to RL.9-10.4: 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.