Before you continue into the body of this post, read “Splitting the Atom,” a teaching essay about analysis and emulation:
It should take ten minutes to read and probably another 30 minutes to click through the necessary links.
Note that you can ask questions about any of this in the comment section that follows the examples below.
March 19, 2019 Update:
You will be reading the rest of the novel, The Invisible Man, with three days in class to hit specific page goals. You will not be able to choose another book in place of The Invisible Man.
We will then watch the 1933 film version of The Invisible Man. It will take two days. See the course calendar for the planned dates.
Finally, you will write a character analysis essay comparing the film to the novel. The majority of this will be completed in class. Again, see the course calendar for the planned dates.
Page numbers are taken from the Dover Thrift Edition available in the classroom. Use the direct link above if reading online.
We started The Invisible Man on February 7. For the next few weeks, we tackled essential questions, in-class discussion, and the next round of 20% projects. Most recently, we did close reading of later chapters in The Invisible Man to practice analytical writing.
Here is what that looks like in Google Classroom:
You were also given a daily calendar for the rest of the year and a streamlined process for choosing between the assigned novel and a work of equivalent literary merit.
This degree of preparation and planning was meant to give you choice. Consider the updated makerspace FAQ or this recently published overview of a makerspace: It takes much more work on our end to give you choices, because we are setting up individual feedback and flexibility.
Consider, too, the transparent attempt this year to focus first on skills while promoting choice in what we read. We gave you time to build stamina and develop good habits, which helped us, after A Long Way Gone, to choose to read instead of being forced to read.
We even showed you empathy and patience by studying, through close reading and discussion, the nature of your struggle with focus and self-control. That was back in October, and we’ve returned to your need for self-regulation and self-discipline repeatedly, most recently by banning phones to increase productivity.
Unfortunately, you have struggled collectively to stay focused. You aren’t meeting deadlines, and the lack of reading means your “choosing to read” analysis is ineffective.
To help you, we are having everyone read The Invisible Man. We may return to choice novels in Q4, but this novel and Macbeth will be mandated. We are also making these changes:
You will need to work on your Pareto Projects on your own time, carving out 20% of your schedule elsewhere. You are still responsible for the project itself. On April 12, before Spring Break, we’ll dedicate the period to these projects again, with the hope of using every Friday after that to plan and create.
Instead of your projects, you’ll be using the next three Fridays to catch up on the required reading and writing. You can see in the daily calendar what this specifically entails.
You will first finish the SOAPSTONE analysis assigned for this week:
We will update the daily calendar to reflect these changes. We will note page counts and other specifics, too. Ask questions in the comment section below.
Head back to the hub for The Invisible Man for essential questions, background, and a copy of the novel:
Handout #1: SOAPSTONE Overview
SOAPSTONE is an acronym that breaks down persuasive or expository writing into discrete components. By separating elements this way, you can analyze the overall rhetoric of a piece more efficiently and effectively. The acronym stands for Subject, Occasion, Audience, Purpose, Speaker, and Tone.
The overview and explanations in the handout come from Ogden Morse and the College Board:
SOAPSTone: A Strategy for Reading and Writing – AP Central
Introduction For many students, the creation of a piece of writing is a mysterious process. It is a laborious, academic exercise, required by teachers and limited to the classroom. They do not see it as a way of ordering the mind, explaining their thoughts and feelings, or achieving a personal voice.
Handout #2: Chapter 27 Analysis
The following letter comes from Chapter 27 of The Invisible Man. You are to analyze the rhetoric of this letter — the Invisible Man’s declaration of war — by using the SOAPSTONE tool.
Rhetoric is defined simply as “the art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing, especially the use of figures of speech and other compositional techniques.” To understand the rhetoric of Griffin’s missive, you should first annotate it, and then you can apply SOAPSTONE.
You have been amazingly energetic and clever, though what you stand to gain by it I cannot imagine. You are against me. For a whole day you have chased me; you have tried to rob me of a night’s rest. But I have had food in spite of you, I have slept in spite of you, and the game is only beginning. The game is only beginning. There is nothing for it, but to start the Terror. This announces the first day of the Terror. Port Burdock is no longer under the Queen, tell your Colonel of Police, and the rest of them; it is under me—the Terror! This is day one of year one of the new epoch—the Epoch of the Invisible Man. I am Invisible Man the First. To begin with the rule will be easy. The first day there will be one execution for the sake of example—a man named Kemp. Death starts for him to-day. He may lock himself away, hide himself away, get guards about him, put on armour if he likes—Death, the unseen Death, is coming. Let him take precautions; it will impress my people. Death starts from the pillar box by midday. The letter will fall in as the postman comes along, then off! The game begins. Death starts. Help him not, my people, lest Death fall upon you also. To-day Kemp is to die.
The handout has a printable SOAPSTONE chart. You can also work in a notebook or with a separate sheet of paper. Look to Google Classroom for the formal/typed assignment.
Ask questions about this work below.
From the 1933 film version of The Invisible Man, which is quite different from the novel. We will watch the film, regardless of your individual reading choices.
In education, the sort of question you’ll find below is often called essential. The Greeks called these discussions dialectics. In brief, they are the reason we read and think and write: to answer questions that matter. Or, at least, to start to answer them.
You have a foundation now, and you’ve been using it to read and write. You know what is expected in a learning environment like this one1. You also have a reading process that guides us through literature and more:
As you did with your first assigned, full-length novel, you are required to read enough of the next book to hit John Holt’s threshold, which will allow you to choose what to read. Before we get to the assigned book, remember that anything you read in here must
Your assigned novel is The Invisible Man, by H.G. Wells. This is a short, strange story that uses science fiction to grapple with issues of morality and society. It also has an excellent film adaptation that uses the idea of an invisible man to tell a much different story.
You can read the novel here:
More on why reading online helps later. First, you need to answer the essential questions that go with this novel:
Define terms, seek examples, and, above all, talk to each other. Ask clarifying questions below in the comments. Use the makerspace to anchor your in-class conversations and then continue those conversations in writing. Share your observations and insights as often and widely as you can.
Note: As always, the formal assignment will be posted to Google Classroom, alongside copies of the novel and links to the other resources you need.
We will also add to these questions as we continue, shifting the language and focus as necessary. As you read and write, new questions will occur to you. This is Piet Hein’s idea: “Art is solving problems that cannot be formulated before they have been solved. The shaping of the question is part of the answer.”
Throughout all of this, work in writing as often as possible. Sketch out ideas, take notes, write metacognitive responses — whatever it takes to generate understanding and GAP evidence, since those are one and the same in this course. Look to Google Classroom for formal assignments, as always, and advocate for yourself when you feel lost.
Again, we are using John Holt’s litmus test for reading to choose what to read:
I would like you to read a lot of books this year, but I want you to read them only for pleasure. I am not going to ask you questions to find out whether you understand the books or not. If you understand enough of a book to enjoy it and want to go on reading it, that’s enough for me…
I don’t want you to feel that just because you start a book, you have to finish it. Give an author thirty or forty pages or so to get his story going. Then if you don’t like the characters and don’t care what happens to them, close the book, put it away, and get another. I don’t care whether the books are easy or hard, short or long, as long as you enjoy them.
This time, you will use the protocol for choosing a work of literary merit after about nine chapters of The Invisible Man. At that point, if you want to start a different novel, you will be encouraged to choose one of the following:
These are shorter novels chosen as much for their length as the quality of the stories. They are also the same sort of science-fiction novel as The Invisible Man. If you want to choose a new novel other than these two, we’ll look first at Victorian science-fiction literature. Then we’ll look at more modern novels that cover the same concepts. So you’ll have choice within a predetermined framework.
We have a few copies of The Invisible Man on our bookshelf, almost a full class set of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but no hard copies of The Time Machine. That’s okay: You should attempt to read these novels online when possible.
Here again is The Invisible Man:
The most compelling reason to use this online version is that we can also use Snap&Read to translate the text, Co:Writer to take notes, and an open browser tab to look up character and plot summaries. Your Chromebook (or other device) becomes a powerful tool for navigating an interesting but difficult text.
We will review Snap&Read and Co:Writer as we start this novel. If you have questions, ask them below.
Which is an atelier model, by the way — a specific kind of makerspace that centralizes creativity and expertise through the ripple effect of teaching others. That’s worth mentioning in a footnote. ↩