English 9: Sliding Glass Doors: Introduction and Topic Study

...Then follow Noodletools Tutorial

Noodletools is our citation generator. Used correctly, it will format your citations for you and ensure you get full credit for providing your sources. 

Log in to Destiny Discover to access these sources:

username: your ID#

password: your first name (all lowercase) (ie. kevin)

"Books are sometimes windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange. These windows are also sliding glass doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created and recreated by the author. When lighting conditions are just right, however, a window can also be a mirror. Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us, and in that reflection we can see our own lives and experiences as part of the larger human experience. Reading, then, becomes a means of self-affirmation, and readers often seek their mirrors in books." (Bishop, 1990)

Significant Task 1 Guidelines

What you’re doing:

Read a set of short American texts (including fiction and nonfiction) that address the same overarching issue in American society: education, race, gender, class/economics, justice system/civil liberties, environment, or technology.

How you’re doing it:

Using media or technology, develop a group presentation that synthesizes content from two texts and addresses the question: Who is narrating, and how does culture, experience, or status affect his or her perspective?  

Step 1: Pick a topic

• Education

• Social Class

• Race

• Gender

• Justice/Civil liberties

• Environment

• Technology

Step 2: Looking through Of Mice and Men

• Use your topic trackers to create a list of quotes and ideas from the book that relate back to the topic you chose in Step 1.

  • Determine what Steinbeck was trying to say about the topic you chose.

  • Find quotes from the book to support your argument.

Step 3: Finding more texts

• Find 1-2 additional texts (fictional or nonfictional) that address your topic.

  • Example texts can be found here and here.

• Use a topic tracker to create a list of quotes and ideas from the chosen text(s) that relate back to the topic you chose in Step 1.

  • Determine what the author was trying to say about the topic you chose.

  • Find quotes from the text(s) to support your argument.

Step 4: Synthesizing the information

• Look through your topic trackers and find quotes from each text that answer this question: Who is narrating, and how does culture, experience, or status affect his or her perspective?

  • What do these texts say about your topic? Why do you think that is the author’s perspective?

  • What similarities do you see between Steinbeck’s perspective on your topic and the perspective of the text(s) you chose? What differences do you see?

Step 5: Creating a presentation

• Put together a presentation that demonstrates your learning from both Of Mice and Men and your selected text.

  • Synthesis of information to answer the question: Who is narrating, and how does culture, experience, or status affect his or her perspective?

• The presentation can be in any multimedia form.

  • Examples: collage, slide presentation, wiki site, podcast, etc.

Step 6: Presenting

• You will present in small groups on April 8th (1A & 2A) and April 18th (2B & 4B)

Here’s the rubric for the presentation

Password: windsorwarriors