Tag Archive: White Man’s Burden

Common Core R.CCR.9 Explained

July 7, 2012

R.CCR.9–that’s the ninth College/Career Readiness anchor standard within the Reading strand of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for ELA / Literacy–reads as follows:

Analyze how two or more texts address similar themes or topics in order to build knowledge or to compare the approaches the authors take.

There are two key teacherly tasks in preparing to teach this standard.

Choosing multiple related texts

For R.CCR.9, texts can be related topically or thematically. Let’s look at a few examples of how this might look:

TOPICALLY LINKED, MULTI-GENRE

For example, when reading Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, my ninth grade students and I also examine Rudyard Kipling’s poem “The White Man’s Burden,” and this coming school year I’m going to add open letters to and from King Leopold II during Belgium’s imperial heyday (taken from The Human Record: Sources of Global History since 1500, by Andrea Overfield).

Altogether, these texts will consist of various genres, and some of them will contain starkly contrasting themes, but they will all topically deal with colonization and imperialism around the turn of the 20th century.

TOPICALLY LINKED ARTICLES

All right, so maybe their slogan is a bit over the top, but this is still my #1 resource for finding R.CCR.9 articles.

For finding multiple related articles about the news and issues of today, I haven’t found a better resource than The Week. This news magazine is totally free and totally awesome. I’ve heard it described as the Reader’s Digest version of the Wall Street Journal, and I can see why: every day, The Week posts articles that summarize the various takes on a given hot topic.

Some examples from today’s articles:

Basically, you could call R.CCR.9 the anchor standard proudly sponsored by TheWeek.com. (And no, they don’t pay me to say that; they should, but they don’t).

THEMATICALLY LINKED, MULTI-GENRE

But let’s say you’re interested in having students explore thematic relationships between texts. I did something like this last year when I taught John Knowles’ A Separate Peace. Our guiding question for our reading of the book was, “Is Gene evil, or did he simply do an evil thing?” This got us thinking and talking about the theme I wanted students to explore: are humans basically evil, or are they basically good people who do evil things?

Unfortunately, this unit fell right before winter break, so I did not have time to develop it as fully as I would have liked. However, if I had, here are some ideas of texts that could have linked thematically with our study of A Separate Peace:

  • Looking at the writings of various Enlightenment thinkers on human nature
  • Looking at an article or excerpts from Freud dealing with the id, ego, and superego
  • Studying a current events case that relates to our thematic driving question, such as the George Zimmerman / Trayvon Martin tragedy

Choosing the purpose of your text comparisons

The other half of this standard deals with two purposes for analyzing multiple texts: either to build knowledge or to compare the approaches authors take.

TO BUILD KNOWLEDGE

In the colonialism/imperialism example above, my purpose for analyzing all of these related texts has nothing to do with the authors’ approaches, but it has everything to do with helping my student build knowledge (remember, building knowledge is one of the six big “shifts”that the CCSS calls for).

I love that the CCSS makes the vital connection between reading multiple sources and building knowledge. This is the only way my students can truly understand the complexities and the dark underbelly of colonialism; they need to get elbow-deep in the grime of multiple, conflicting texts.

TO COMPARE AUTHORS’ APPROACHES

On the other hand, it’s also valuable to compare how different authors approach a given topic. This looks like a job for–insert superhero music–TheWeek.com! Because journalists provide such a wide array of tacks toward the same topic, articles are a great method for achieving this purpose.

I also fantasize about having my students read not only Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, but also Orwell’s 1984. It would be amazing to have students compare each author’s approach satirizing the direction that they saw their worlds moving toward.

Just get started

As I contemplate each anchor standard, I keep coming away with the strong impressions that, first, these are doable and valuable, and, second, they aren’t difficult to start trying.

That’s the key; just start.

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Common Core R.CCR.4 Explained

June 26, 2012

R.CCR.4–that’s the fourth college/career readiness anchor standard within the reading strand of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for ELA / Literacy–reads as follows:

Interpret words and phrases as they are used in a text, including determining technical, connotative, and figurative meanings, and analyze how specific word choices shape meaning or tone.

This standard ties closely into one of the “Six Shifts” of the CCSS (“Academic Vocabulary”), so, at least in the eyes of those who formulated the Shifts, this one’s important. Let’s break it down.

1. What are the technical (or denotative), connotative, and figurative meanings of words and phrases in a text?

Fahrenheit 451Every time students or teachers read a text, we subconsciously answer these questions, but when students read grade-level appropriate complex texts (as defined by the CCSS’ complex text formula), these questions become more than subconscious. I’ve written elsewhere about how Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 contains an overabundance of figurative language ripe for R.CCR.4 picking, but what about questions of technical (denotative) meaning versus connotative meaning?

First of all, students can easily learn the meaning of denotation and connotation. Denotation is the technical or literal primary meaning of the word; connotation is the idea or feeling that a word invokes for a person. For instance, Hiroshima, denotatively, is a city in Japan. Connotatively, however, the word Hiroshima changes based on your personal perspective. Though it might seem at first glance that connotation is outside of the control of the author, there are ways that the author can shape connotation for her readers. For example, consider these two sentences:

1. The megalomaniacal dictator dreamed of the day when his crimes against humanity would merit inclusion in lists of the greatest evils of the past centuries: the Holocaust, Rwanda, child sex trafficking, Hiroshima…

2. The Enola Gay flew the most important mission of World War II; because of its heroic attack on Hiroshima, countless American lives were saved.

In both sentences, the denotation of the word Hiroshima has not changed. However, since Sentence 1 lists Hiroshima with horrible crimes against humanity while Sentence 2 associates Hiroshima with words like important, heroic, and lives saved, the authors create starkly different connotations for the word. This is what we want students to be able to discern. In a given sentence, we can ask:

  • What does this word literally mean? What is its denotation?
  • What feelings and ideas does this word invoke? What is its connotation?
  • How does the author use the words around our target word shape its connotation?

R.CCR.4 Common Core State Standards in reading2. How do specific word choices shape meaning or tone?

This second part of R.CCR.4 is closely linked with our discussion of the word Hiroshima, but let’s look at another example to illustrate it.

Consider Rudyard Kipling‘s “The White Man’s Burden,” which I use to introduce students to ideas we explore in our study of Things Fall Apart. When we read this poem, the main thing I want students to detect is Kipling’s tone when he refers to white colonial subjects. After I finish an initial out loud reading, I ask students to quickly write down their first reactions to specific lines in the poem (Where were you surprised, confused, impressed, etc.?), and then I ask them to talk to their partners about a specific line that they responded to (these are “text-based answers” that Shift #4, W.CCR.9, and SL.CCR.4 call for). These activities allow students to enter into the difficult poem; now we are ready to began looking explicitly for specific word choices that shape tone.

Tone is the author’s attitude toward his subject, and to help my students detect Kipling’s attitude toward the white man’s “burden,” in our next reading I ask students to underline every word that Kipling uses to refer to the people within white imperial holdings. After this second reading, we quickly create a class list of references.

Here are some of the words Kipling uses:

  • burden (ll. 1, 9, 17…)
  • captive’s (l. 4)
  • fluttered folk (l. 6)
  • wild (l. 6)
  • new-caught (l. 7)
  • sullen peoples (l. 7)
  • half-devil (l. 8)
  • half-child (l. 8)
Once we complete our list, it’s time for discussion in table groups and as a class:
  • Taken together, what do these word choices indicate about Kipling’s attitude toward colonial subjects?
  • What adjectives would you use to describe Kipling’s tone toward colonial subjects?
  • If such a poem were written about you and your people, how might you respond?
Once I feel that this discussion has prepared us to begin considering Achebe’s motivations in writing Things Fall Apart, I ask students to write how Kipling’s word choice shapes his tone. In this response, they will be expected to cite textual evidence.

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