! Other than giving the brief definitions offered to words students would likely not be able to define from context (underlined in the text), avoid giving any background context or instructional guidance at the outset of the lesson while students are reading the text silently. Teachers should engage in a close examination of such sentences to help students discover how they are built and how they convey meaning. The author very carefully and cautiously chose what and where certain parts go or even what word is the best. It is critical to cultivating independence and creating a culture of close reading that students initially grapple with rich texts like Dillards novel without the aid of prefatory material, extensive notes, or even teacher explanations. Both Anne Dillard and Gordon Grice develop a unique perspective on life based on their observations of nature in their essays Living Like Weasels and The Black Widow. In Living Like Weasels, Dillard meditates on the value and necessity of instinct and tenacity in human life. "if everything went perfectly- if his health did not degrade any further, if the weather held, if Burnham completed the other buildings on time, if strikes did not destroy the fair, if the many committees and directors" (118) uses parallel sentence . h>: 5CJ h>: 5CJ ( 7 9 I should have gone for the throatI should have lunged and mute and uncomprehending. (Q14) Dillard urges her readers to stalk your calling by plug[ging] into your purposeyet she describes this process as yielding, not fighting. What message is she trying to convey with these words? What did she find there? The topic of instinct is one she brings up several times throughout the rest of the story; in fact, one significant point she conveys through her writing is the value of one's instinct. [Reading intervening paragraphs.] This is yielding, not fighting. In winter, brown-and-white steers stand in the middle of it, merely dampening their hooves; from the distant shore they look like miracle itself, complete with miracle's nonchalance. The use of symbolism throughout the story proves to be vital to the reader, as it allows him or her to understand the importance of every action done to the monkeys paw has an opposite consequence. Dillard presents her argument using the analogy of a weasel and how the; weasel lives as hes meant to, yielding at every moment to the perfect freedom of single necessity (Dillard). Why is it significance? Under every bush is a muskrat hole or a beer can. A weasel lives its life the way it was created to, not questioning his motives, simply striking when the time is right. Day One: Instructional Exemplar for Dillards Living Like Weasels Summary of Activities (BEFORE Day One) Teacher introduces the essay with minimal commentary and has students read it for homework (ON Day One) Teacher or skillful reader then reads the passage out loud to the class as students follow along in the text Teacher asks the class to complete an introductory journal entry and discuss a set of text-dependent questions For homework, teacher asks students to complete another journal entry Text Passage under DiscussionDirections for Teachers/Guiding Questions For Students1 A weasel is wild. ! Louv further rouses hours readers with imagery, describing the empty farmhouse, steamy edges, and thunderheads and dancing rain that his readers grew up watching out their car windows. "he bites his prey". he had to walk half a mile to water, the weasel dangling from his palm, and soak him off like a stubborn label a man shot an eagleand found the dry skull of a weasel fixed by the jaws to his throat (Q3) At what point does the author start speaking about herself? Sleeps in an underground den. 2 Anti-Semitism is prejudice against Jewish members of the community. The taskmaster meets the dreamer, and it's time to get serious, take those . It also highlights the emphasis that Dillard is putting on this human involvement in the natural setting she just took the time to describe in paragraph 4. What is important is to allow all students to interact with challenging text on their own as frequently and independently as possible. One can see this through her desire to be the center of attention., The types of personal characteristics that evolve in a persons mind and body are innate in everyone. Dillard portrays her disagreement with such notion by using story telling techniques to enchant and then preach the lessons she herself learns from nature. He vanished under the wild rose. As Dillard reflects on her encounter, At first the purpose of the passage Owls by Mary Oliver is difficult to pinpoint. Text Passage under DiscussionDirections for Teachers/Guiding Questions For Students3 I have been reading about weasels because I saw one last week. Acting impulsively, without choice, allowed her to separate herself from the unknown world beyond the barbed fence and focus on what her instincts called for: roasted lamb that is not too well done. He had two black eyes I didn't see, any more than you see a window. It emptied our lungs. [Read intervening paragraphs.] But in the face of adversity an individual must either strive to fulfill their individual self-interests and ideas or abandon them to conform to authority. I was stunned into stillness twisted backward on the tree trunk. To be part of a group, the group should accept them for who they are. For example when Hushpuppy got connected to nature she would hear a heartbeat or her mother talking to her. The speaker recognizes his/her actions and realizes they are being taken over by a deeper, darker force, however, he/she continued to kill off the woodchucks one by one. Additionally, she presents her argument through the structure of the essay, and through her use of language. "he lives in his den for two days". To add-on to that, the amount of writing and the opportunities, has helped her as well., Piggy was brutally honest and wasnt afraid to express his thoughts and ideas. In a forest, Dillard describes the encounter with the weasel when they lock eyes; she then explains what is inside of the weasels brain, his habits and traits. Then even death, where you're going no matter how you live, cannot you part. In the short story "Living Like Weasels" authored by Annie Dillard, the role of a small, furry, brown-colored rodent's life develops an extreme significance as the story progresses. It makes a dry, upholstered bench at the upper, marshy end of the pond, a plush jetty raised from the thorny shore between a shallow blue body of water and a deep blue body of sky. 14 I would like to learn, or remember, how to live. Read the essay out loud to the class as students follow along in the text. Ask the class to answer a small set of text-dependent guided questions and perform targeted tasks about the passage, with answers in the form of notes, annotations to the text, or more formal responses as appropriate. Unlike the rest of the group, he was highly intelligent and thought logically through the problems they endured. One naturalist refused to kill a weasel who was socketed into his hand deeply as a rattlesnake. Homework: Dillard revisits the opening image of a weasel dangling from the neck of an eagle in the final paragraph of her essay, but this time substituting the reader. She speaks about how weasels live in necessity while humans live through choice. Walker incorporates in her argument the similarities between her emotions as a human, and the emotions of animals. In the novel Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler paints a picture of a dystopia in the United States in which the current societal problems are overly exaggerated into the worst-case scenario. 305-310. Their brains are designed to correlate the outgoing impulses with the subsequent echoes, and the information thus acquired enables bats to make precise discriminations of distance, size, shape, motion, and texture comparable to those we make by vision. Annie Dillard - "Living Like Weasels" - Grades 11-12 (updated with Mini-Assessment) Learning Objective : The goal of this four-day exemplar, with a mini-assessment on day five, is to give students the opportunity to use the reading and writing habits they've been practicing on a regular basis to discover the rich language and life lesson . Discussion Task: Students will discuss the passage in depth with their teacher and their classmates, performing activities that result in a close reading of the text. This is because Oliver begins with describing the penetrating fear of a terrible (33) great horned owl, and suddenly develops into a section discussing a desultory and trivial field of flowers. She saw small subtleties, and she wants students to see them too, for these are the details that will eventually bring her message together. At first she believes that like her, the weasel is attempting to strike a meaningful exchange of introspective thoughts. This section of the exemplar provides an explanation of the process . The Possums seem to have melted into the background and are watching helplessly as the rabbits claim this land as theirs. Annie Dillards essay is just an exploration into the way human beings might live. The man could in no way pry the tiny weasel off, and he had to walk half a mile to water, the weasel dangling from his palm, and soak him off like a stubborn label. Find a juxtaposition. His face was fierce, small and pointed as a lizard's; he would have made a good arrowhead. She was willing to die for her clan, even if she would die for a cause that might be remembered as pitiful foolhardy stubbornness. ! Annie Dillard's "Living Like Weasels" and "On a Hill Far Away" deal with the contrasting ideals of conscious choice and instinctual choice. meaning: the claw of a bird of prey (n.) related words: talus . I remember muteness as a prolonged and giddy fast, where every moment is a feast of utterance received. Our sensible and above all, brave protagonist, Lauren Olamina, is the heart of the story. 17 I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you. The she-cat shivered and paused for a moment to survey they area, her fellow clan-mates halted and watched her with weary appearances, each thin and poignant. What significance do these observations hold? What does a weasel think about? Seize it and let it seize you up aloft even, till your eyes burn out and drop; let your musky flesh fall off in shreds, and let your very bones unhinge and scatter, loosened over fields, over fields and woods, lightly, thoughtless, from any height at all, from as high as eagles. 100. . What experience does Dillard compare it to, and how is this an apt comparison? Other animal species only have instinct, thus making them less smart. Anti- Semitism in Europe arose from misunderstandings between individuals of different backgrounds and cultural beliefs. In my opinion, the theme is that dont treat other people badly because they are different compared to you. Why might she have chosen this point in the text for these descriptions? Now that Dillard has become a more experience writer, she herself avoids these pitfalls fairly well. (Q9) Describe what is meant by being stunned into stillness drawing on evidence from paragraph 10. As transcending, and as divine as some memories are, the fact of the matter is, they unfortunately dont last. Describe what is meant by being "stunned into stillness" drawing on evidence from paragraph 10. 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