Mrs. Robison's Blog: Frankenstein Tone Unit

The team at my school decided to change the focus of the Frankenstein unit from an analysis of source material integration to a focus on understanding tone this year, so the curriculum is changing just slightly. I will update this post as the unit progresses. So far this year the students have read one novel with a focus on character and another while attending to theme. During this unit the assessments, annotations and assignments are all tied to tone. The unit began with a pre-test over tone using a portion of the letters at the very beginning of the text. On the second day of the unit, the students are using a pre-designed Quizlet notecard set with tone words selected by the team. Here is the link for that:

Link to Tone Words Quizlet
Here is the list of tone words that students are given to work from:

Accusatory

Amused

Apathetic

Apprehensive

Authoritative

Awed

Baffled

Bitter

Callous

Candid

Caustic

Ceremonial

Choleric

Clinical

Compassionate

Concerned

Condescension

Confident

Contemplative

Contemptuous

Conventional

Critical

Cynical

Derisive

Detached

Didactic

Disdainful

Disgusted

Disturbed

Earnest

Elated

Empathetic

Enraged

Enthusiastic

Erudite

Facetious

Factual

Fanciful

Flippant

Formal

Forthright

Gloomy

Haughty

Hopeful

Hopeless

Indignant

Foreboding

Inflammatory

Informative

Instructive

Intimate

Ironic

Irreverent

Irritated

Jovial

Judgmental

Learned

Lighthearted

Lyrical

Malicious

Melancholic

Mocking

Morose

Mournful

Nostalgic

Objective

Obsequious

Optimistic

Outraged

Passionate

Patronizing

Pessimistic

Proud

Questioning

Quizzical

Reflective

Reminiscent

Resigned

Restrained

Reverent

Ridiculing

Sarcastic

Sardonic

Satiric

Sentimental

Serious

Shocked

Sincere

Solemn

Somber

Sympathetic

Taunting

Threatening

Whimsical

Students will have this as a resource throughout the unit. Following the unit, students will be writing an argumentative essay focused on "monsters" of science - with this in mind, students watch a Science Channel special called The Prophets of Science Fiction: Mary Shelley.

There are annotation expectations for this unit. I will have to redo a sample of what annotations should look like based on these expectations, but here is the rubric that students will be held accountable to:

As we read the book, I model annotations often for students. Here are some notes on annotations from Chapter 1:

I like to check in with students and tailor annotation modeling to where they feel they need help. Also, as we progress, rather than just modeling myself, I have students share the work they have done and use their work as examples for the class. Here are some notes from Chapters 4-6.

Four times during the unit, we pause and work on speaking skills by having seed card discussions.
For each "Seed Card Discussion", students were asked to bring in a seed card to stimulate discussion of the themes/ideas/connections to modern life they saw within the text. A "Seed Card" is a card with another text/piece of art on the front that relates to the reading completed. Students were asked to bring one card with a thematic allusion, one card with a direct reference in a non-fiction text, one card with a stylistic reference, and another card with a direct reference in artwork. A different type of card was required for each discussion. The front of the card had the image/text, on the back students were required to have the passage that inspired this selection and four open-ended discussion questions designed to help their discussion partner understand the relationships they were seeing better.

I did the seed cards and ran the discussion for the letters, after that, students created the cards. The basic setup is to have two rows of desks facing each other. Students start with the card they brought and share it with the person across from them. After both kids have shared, one row moves one seat forward and THEN trades cards. I give SILENT time for the students (with their new cards and without looking on the back) to make connections between this card and the Frankenstein text - they have to quote the text - this is a literary discussion and this helps to keep it really rooted in the book.
The kids share and the original owner can add their ideas/thoughts/etc. on. The quote/questions on the back of the card are basically used as a sponge activity. If this kids have extra time they work through the questions on the back. I have the same row rotate again (they no longer have their card in their hands) they switch cards with their new buddy, look for a connection and share. This results in a really rich discussion of both the original text and the seed card. It also really helps them to get at some of the deeper meanings within the text.

After each discussion, I chose cards to "feature" on the Frankenstein bulletin board. Here are some
cards featured from the first half of the book:

One thing that I find myself constantly doing is readjusting my teaching based on my students' performance and struggles. In this unit students are given a pre, mid and post test on tone. They struggled on the pre-test to identify tone and to pick passages that related to the tone they selected, and, by default, they also struggled with analysis demonstrating their understanding of HOW tone is developed by an author. At the mid-point test it seemed that students were starting to understand tone and identifying the tone correctly. They also were doing much better on selecting passages to support their tone. However, they were still struggling significantly with analyzing HOW tone was created and which literary elements contributed to their selected tone. With this in mind I retaught and retaught and retaught. Here are some notes from reteaching the connection between tone and literary elements. For this we identified the tone as a class: we determined it was bitter, then we read through the passage and identified the main elements present that contributed to this tone. Here's to hoping that our post-scores see even more improvement: