Overview

Lesson Procedure

70-75 minutes of class time across 5 phases.

1. Warm-Up10 minutes
2. Direct Instruction20 minutes
3. Guided Practice15-20 minutes
4. Independent Practice20 minutes
5. Closure5 minutes

1. Warm-Up10 minutes

   Warm-Up Prompt

   "Think of a moment that lasted less than a minute but that you still remember in detail. What is the first thing you would tell a listener, and what would you leave out?"

   Give students three minutes to write, then take three answers and note on the board what each speaker told first. Read the opening of "To Build a Fire" aloud while students follow on paper and number the paragraphs 1-3. Ask: What do we know by the end of paragraph 1? Which sentence made you most worried for the man, and why? Ask students what London tells them about the man and what he leaves out.

   1Day had broken cold and grey, exceedingly cold and grey, when the man turned aside from the main Yukon trail and climbed the high earth-bank, where a dim and little-travelled trail led eastward through the fat spruce timberland. It was a steep bank, and he paused for breath at the top, excusing the act to himself by looking at his watch. It was nine o’clock. There was no sun nor hint of sun, though there was not a cloud in the sky. It was a clear day, and yet there seemed an intangible pall over the face of things, a subtle gloom that made the day dark, and that was due to the absence of sun. This fact did not worry the man. He was used to the lack of sun. It had been days since he had seen the sun, and he knew that a few more days must pass before that cheerful orb, due south, would just peep above the sky-line and dip immediately from view.

   2The man flung a look back along the way he had come. The Yukon lay a mile wide and hidden under three feet of ice. On top of this ice were as many feet of snow. It was all pure white, rolling in gentle undulations where the ice-jams of the freeze-up had formed. North and south, as far as his eye could see, it was unbroken white, save for a dark hair-line that curved and twisted from around the spruce-covered island to the south, and that curved and twisted away into the north, where it disappeared behind another spruce-covered island. This dark hair-line was the trail—the main trail—that led south five hundred miles to the Chilcoot Pass, Dyea, and salt water; and that led north seventy miles to Dawson, and still on to the north a thousand miles to Nulato, and finally to St. Michael on Bering Sea, a thousand miles and half a thousand more.

   3But all this—the mysterious, far-reaching hairline trail, the absence of sun from the sky, the tremendous cold, and the strangeness and weirdness of it all—made no impression on the man. It was not because he was long used to it. He was a new-comer in the land, a chechaquo, and this was his first winter. The trouble with him was that he was without imagination. He was quick and alert in the things of life, but only in the things, and not in the significances. Fifty degrees below zero meant eighty odd degrees of frost. Such fact impressed him as being cold and uncomfortable, and that was all. It did not lead him to meditate upon his frailty as a creature of temperature, and upon man’s frailty in general, able only to live within certain narrow limits of heat and cold; and from there on it did not lead him to the conjectural field of immortality and man’s place in the universe. Fifty degrees below zero stood for a bite of frost that hurt and that must be guarded against by the use of mittens, ear-flaps, warm moccasins, and thick socks. Fifty degrees below zero was to him just precisely fifty degrees below zero. That there should be anything more to it than that was a thought that never entered his head.

2. Direct Instruction20 minutes

   Use Diagram 2 to walk through the parts of a narrative and the letters of the standard. Stress two points: a narrative engages the reader with a problem, not with a list of what happened first, and every technique (dialogue, pacing, description, reflection) should move the story forward or reveal a character. Then work through the five examples below, one for each skill.

   • Opening that sets out a problem

     Draft opening: Last Saturday I went to my cousin's quinceañera. It was fun. The reader learns where the narrator went but meets no problem and no reason to keep reading.

     Result: Revision: Twenty minutes before the first dance, my cousin Marisol's shoe snapped at the heel, and I was the only person in the hall who knew where the glue gun was.

   • Choosing a point of view

     The same moment told two ways: first person (I told myself the dog was friendly.) and third person that moves between two characters.

     Result: Third person, two points of view: Nora told herself the dog was friendly. The dog, which had not yet decided, lowered its head and watched her hand.

   • Dialogue that reveals character

     Summary: My grandfather did not want help in the garden.

     Result: Dialogue: "I've been planting tomatoes since before your mother was born," Grandpa said, and then he handed me the hose anyway.

   • Pacing: summarize the wait, slow the moment

     Draft: We waited three hours for the results. Then my name was called. The draft gives the wait and the key moment the same weight.

     Result: Revision: The three hours in the waiting room passed in a blur of vending-machine pretzels. Then the door opened. The nurse looked at her clipboard, then at the room, then at me.

   • Precise words, telling detail, sensory language

     Draft: The kitchen was messy and smelled good.

     Result: Revision: Flour dusted the counter, the floor and one of the cat's ears, and the kitchen smelled of cinnamon and burnt sugar. Precise words: dusted, burnt sugar. Telling detail: the cat's ear. Sensory language: sight and smell.

   Hand out "The Brick" and have students number its paragraphs 1-8. Read it once for the story. On the second reading, students highlight dialogue in one color and sensory language in another, and mark with a star any place where the story slows down. Show Diagram 1 and ask what it reveals about where the writer spent her words.

   1The brick lay on the bottom of the deep end, twenty yards from the starting wall and nine feet down, a gray shape that wobbled whenever the water moved. To pass the lifeguard test, I had one minute and forty seconds to swim out, dive for it, and swim back on my back with both hands on the brick and my face at the surface. Two weeks earlier I had dropped it five yards from the wall. Ms. Okafor, the instructor, who never raised her voice, had written a small red X next to my name on her clipboard. Without that certificate, I could not take the summer job at the town pool that I had been counting on since March.

   2This time Dev was testing with me. He had been my lane partner all spring, and he had passed every event on the first try. "You're overthinking it," he said while we waited on the bench, dripping. "It's a brick. It wants to be picked up." I laughed, but my stomach did not.

   3Ms. Okafor lifted her whistle. "Kim. Whenever you're ready."

   4I pushed off the wall. The swim out went fast: stroke, breathe, stroke, the lane rope slapping my shoulder, the chlorine sharp in my nose. At the far end I tucked, swung my legs over my head, and went down.

   5The pressure squeezed my ears. The brick was colder and rougher than I remembered, like a chunk of sidewalk. I slid both hands under it, planted my feet on the tile, and shoved upward. When I broke the surface and rolled onto my back, the brick settled onto my chest, ten pounds that felt like forty.

   6Halfway back, my thighs began to burn, and I felt the old panic rise. Two weeks earlier, at exactly this point, I had lifted my head to look for the wall. My face had gone under, I had swallowed a mouthful of pool, and my fingers had opened. Now I kept my eyes on the ceiling, on a water stain shaped like Ohio, and I kicked. Somewhere above the splashing, Dev was counting the seconds out loud, badly: "Sixty! Sixty-one! Sixty-something!"

   7My head bumped the gutter. I reached back with one hand and held on. Ms. Okafor looked at her stopwatch, then at me. "One thirty-one," she said, and she drew a check mark next to my name, the same small size as the X.

   8I have lifted that brick many times since, mostly while teaching younger swimmers who do what I did, raising their heads to look for the wall. I tell them what the test taught me. The wall will be there whether you look for it or not. Keep your face up, trust your kick, and let the distance take care of itself.

3. Guided Practice15-20 minutes

   Pairs complete the map below for "The Brick." For each row they write the paragraph number and quote the words that show the element, then say in a phrase what it does for the reader. Circulate and ask each pair how one event leads to the next.

   Narrative map of "The Brick"

   Element	Paragraph (students fill in)	Quoted words and what they do (students fill in)
   The problem and why it matters
   Narrator and point of view
   Dialogue that reveals a character
   A slowed-down moment
   A technique that connects an earlier event to the present
   A telling detail
   The conclusion's reflection

   Next, pairs read the weak draft below and list every problem they find: the opening, the order of events, the vague words, the missing dialogue and the ending. They do not rewrite it yet; that happens in Activity 3.

   I woke up at 6:00 on Saturday and ate cereal and then my aunt picked me up. We drove to the farmers' market. It was really fun and interesting. There was a lot of stuff there. Then we set up the table. Then a lot of people came. Then a man was mad because the tomatoes cost too much. I didn't know what to do. Then my aunt helped. It was very busy. Then we went home. I was tired. In the end I learned that hard work pays off and you should always try your best.

4. Independent Practice20 minutes

   Students read "The Call at Home" on their own and number its paragraphs 1-5. In the margin they mark each paragraph with the character whose thoughts it follows. Then they plan their own narrative of a real or imagined experience: a two-sentence statement of the problem, the narrator and the point of view, and a list of four to six events. Collect the plans; students draft the full narrative for homework. The quiz uses all four passages.

   1Luis Ortega had been a certified youth umpire for eleven days, and so far nobody had yelled at him. That changed in the bottom of the sixth inning, with the score tied 4-4 and a nine-year-old named Ruby Chen sprinting home from third.

   2From behind the plate, Luis saw everything at once: the catcher reaching for a throw that bounced short, the orange dust, Ruby's left foot sliding toward the corner of the plate. The tag and the foot seemed to arrive together. He heard the crowd inhale. He made himself wait one full second, the way his trainer had taught him, and then he swept his arms out wide. "Safe!"

   3Ruby did not hear the call at first. She heard her own breathing and felt the grit inside her sock. She had been thrown out at home twice that season, and she was already bracing for the word "out." When her teammates poured out of the dugout, she thought for a moment that they were coming to comfort her.

   4The other coach was already walking toward Luis, clipboard in hand. "That's a bad call, ump," he said, loud enough for the bleachers. Luis's heart hammered, but he kept his voice low. "Her foot beat the tag, Coach. I had a clear look." The coach stared at him for a long moment, then turned and walked back to his dugout.

   5After the game, Ruby's team lined up to shake hands. When she reached Luis, she stopped. "Was I really safe?" she asked. "You were really safe," he said. On the walk to his bike, Luis realized that the call he had dreaded all season had lasted about two seconds, and that the one second he waited had mattered more than all the others.

5. Closure5 minutes

   Exit ticket: (1) Write the first sentence of your narrative so that it sets out the problem. (2) Name the moment in your plan that you will slow down, and say why. (3) Write one sentence of reflection your narrator might say at the end.

   Teacher note: "To Build a Fire" uses the word chechaquo, a Chinook Jargon term for a newcomer to the North. Keep London's spelling and define it for students before reading.

Differentiation Strategies

Assessment Guidance

1. Question 1 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   In paragraph 1 of "To Build a Fire," how does London orient the reader?

   AHe opens with the man's childhood, then jumps forward to the Yukon. BHe places one man on a side trail on a cold, sunless morning. CHe opens with a conversation between the man and the dog about the cold. DHe tells the reader in the first sentence that the man will not survive the day.

2. Question 2 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   In paragraph 3, the narrator says of the man, "The trouble with him was that he was without imagination." What does this sentence do for the narrative?

   AIt gives the man a name and a history, so the reader can picture him clearly. BIt shows the man's own thoughts, which he says aloud to the dog. CIt names a weakness the man cannot see, which makes the cold a threat. DIt ends the story's opening by solving the problem of the cold.

3. Question 3 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Which phrase from "To Build a Fire" is sensory language that helps the reader see the landscape?

   A"a dark hair-line that curved and twisted" B"This fact did not worry the man." C"He was a new-comer in the land" D"That there should be anything more to it than that"

4. Question 4 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   London calls the man "a chechaquo," a Yukon word for a newcomer. Why is this a precise word choice?

   AIt is a sound word that imitates the crackle of the frozen air. BIt names his exact status, a first-winter newcomer, in the language of the North. CIt shows that the man speaks several languages. DIt is a vague word that leaves the reader to guess what the man is like.

5. Question 5 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   What point of view does "The Brick" use, and what does that choice let the writer show?

   AThird person, which lets the writer show what Dev and Ms. Okafor think BSecond person, which puts the reader in the pool CFirst person, which lets the writer show only the facts of the test, without feelings DFirst person, which lets the writer share Kim's fear and memory from the inside

6. Question 6 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   Which sentence in paragraph 1 of "The Brick" tells the reader what Kim stands to lose?

   A"The brick lay on the bottom of the deep end" B"Ms. Okafor, the instructor, who never raised her voice" C"Without that certificate, I could not take the summer job" D"a gray shape that wobbled whenever the water moved"

7. Question 7 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   In paragraph 2 of "The Brick," Dev says, "It's a brick. It wants to be picked up." What does this line of dialogue mainly do?

   AIt shows Dev's easy confidence, which makes Kim's nerves stand out by contrast. BIt explains the rules of the lifeguard test to the reader before the swim starts. CIt shows that Dev is secretly worried that he will fail the test too. DIt resolves the conflict before the test begins.

8. Question 8 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   In paragraphs 2 and 3 of "To Build a Fire," the man stands at the top of the bank and almost no story time passes. What does London do with this pause?

   AHe skips ahead to the evening, when the man reaches camp. BHe fills it with description and comment, so the reader grasps the danger first. CHe repeats the events of paragraph 1 in the same words to create suspense. DHe switches to the dog's point of view for the rest of the passage.

9. Question 9 of 20 · Multiple Choice

   In paragraph 6 of "The Brick," Kim remembers what happened two weeks earlier "at exactly this point." How does placing the memory here help build the sequence of events?

   AIt fills in background that the reader needs before the story can even begin. BIt changes the subject so that the reader can relax. CIt gives the story a second narrator. DIt comes at the moment of greatest danger, so the old failure raises the stakes now.

10. Question 10 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Which detail from "The Brick" is a telling detail, one small fact that reveals something larger about a character?

    A"twenty yards from the starting wall and nine feet down" B"a check mark next to my name, the same small size as the X" C"I pushed off the wall." D"the brick settled onto my chest, ten pounds that felt like forty"

11. Question 11 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    What does the conclusion of "The Brick" (paragraph 8) do?

    AIt repeats the events of the test in the same order. BIt introduces a new problem with Dev that the story never resolves. CIt reflects on what the test taught Kim, a lesson she now passes on to young swimmers. DIt states a general moral about hard work that has no connection to the events.

12. Question 12 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    The weak draft begins, "I woke up at 6:00 on Saturday and ate cereal and then my aunt picked me up." What is the main problem with this opening?

    AIt starts with routine and delays the problem until the seventh sentence. BIt uses the first person, which a narrative should avoid. CIt names too many characters in one sentence. DIt gives the exact time of day, which makes the opening too precise to be interesting.

13. Question 13 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    In "The Call at Home," paragraph 2 follows Luis and paragraph 3 follows Ruby. What does this shift in point of view add to the narrative?

    AIt lets the reader skip the moment of the call. BIt shows the same moment from both sides: Luis's care and Ruby's fear. CIt proves that Luis made the wrong call. DIt turns the narrative into a first-person story told by Ruby herself.

14. Question 14 of 20 · Multiple Choice

    Which phrase in "The Call at Home" moves the narrative smoothly from background information into the main event?

    A"On the walk to his bike" B"After the game" C"The tag and the foot seemed to arrive together." D"That changed in the bottom of the sixth inning"

15. Question 15 of 20 · Short Answer

    Revise these flat sentences into two or three sentences that use precise words, a telling detail and sensory language. Then label one example of each. "The storm was bad. Our house was scary. I was scared."

    Show model answer

16. Question 16 of 20 · Short Answer

    In paragraph 2 of "The Call at Home," Luis "made himself wait one full second" before calling the play. Explain how the writer uses pacing in this paragraph and how the paragraph builds toward the ending.

    Show model answer

17. Question 17 of 20 · Short Answer

    Write the first three or four sentences of a narrative about this situation: a ninth grader loses track of her six-year-old brother at a county fair. Set out the problem, introduce the narrator and at least one other character, and state which point of view you chose and why.

    Show model answer

18. Question 18 of 20 · Short Answer

    Rewrite this summary as a short scene of dialogue, four to six lines, that reveals both characters: "My coach told me I was not starting in the final game, and I was upset."

    Show model answer

19. Question 19 of 20 · Short Answer

    The weak draft ends, "In the end I learned that hard work pays off and you should always try your best." Explain why this ending does not follow from the events of the draft, then write a new conclusion of two or three sentences that reflects on what happened.

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20. Question 20 of 20 · Short Answer

    Put these sentences in the order that makes the smoothest progression, and name the word or phrase in two of them that links them to the sentence before: (a) By the time the bus pulled away, Sam was running beside it, waving the folder. (b) Sam's science project was due at 8:15, and his folder was still on the kitchen table. (c) Halfway down the block, he saw the number 12 bus turning the corner. (d) The driver braked, opened the door and said, "You get one of these a year." (e) He grabbed the folder and ran out without his jacket.

    Show model answer

These standards connect to W.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.