Aim: How does a writer create effects through the connotations of words and images?
Do Now: THINK/SHARE
What if life had a RESET button?
It’s a terrible thing to drop your grandmother’s prized china vase on the kitchen floor. And did you really have to be so mean to your sibling yesterday? At one time or another, we’ve all done or said something that makes us cringe with regret. We wish we could turn back the clock by a minute or a day and just do the whole thing over.
Based on your understanding of the aforementioned,
share a time when you did or said something that you regret, and explain why you felt that way.
My response for the do now was: When I saw the question “What if life had a reset button?”, I thought about a lot of disagreements but most importantly the day of the SHSAT. That was a very important day for the 8th graders. Lots of people have been preparing for this test for a long time, including me. When the test started I rushed to finish the math section while double checking before moving onto the ELA portion, but I got distracted and procrastinated before moving on to the next section of the test. I fiddled with my fingers and wasted an hour. Yup, an entire hour, doing nothing. I ended up receiving a bad score, but Staten Island Technical High School offered me the discovery program to help me get in. I was super grateful, but procrastinating would be my biggest regret.
Here are some responses from my peers: Oscar’s regret was the spelling bee, Mohammed R’s regret was his recent fight with his friends, and Andy states he has no regrets.
Ms. Peterson’s response was: When she was a kid, her and her cousin Kelly were going to ship themselves in a box as a surprise. Later, Ms. Peterson was making a tuna and mayonnaise sandwich but Kelly was disgusted by it. Here is the moment where Ms. Peterson regretted, she grabbed her cousin by the neck and pushed her head underwater until her face turned purple.
Denotation and Connotation
After we discussed the do now, we were given a mini lesson explaining the importance of reading the words in a pair of parenthesis. Then we proceeded to learn the definitions of denotations and connotations.
Denotations - the dictionary definition of the word
Connotations - the definition associated with emotions
Then we looked at some sentences and Ms. Peterson shared her screen to show a video with a more in depth definition with some questions where the teams could earn points.
For example the words curious vs nosy, they have different tones since nosy is more of a connotation.
Teamwork
After going over the video and some examples, we were put into breakout rooms with our teammates. We discussed connotations from ‘Speak” and and how to make the quote neutral.
Here is what my teammates and I wrote:
CONNOTATION and DENOTATION in Speak
Consider the following sentence from Speak:
“I dive into the stream of fourth-period lunch students and swim down the hall to the cafeteria.”
What connotations do the images of diving into and swimming through other students have here?
It has a negative connotation because it’s very chaotic and has words like dive into the stream of students as if they’re wild animals. You get an imagery of swimming down the hall as very rough and students pushing each other.
Now rewrite the sentence, trying to keep the same denotative meaning but changing the connotations to make them neutral.
I walked through the hallway to get to fourth period lunch.
Now consider what is conveyed by Anderson’s diction (particularly the verbs) in this sentence. “I ditch my tray and bolt for the door.”
Based on the verbs, what inferences might you draw about the speaker’s feelings at this moment?
It has a negative connotation because ditching the tray and bolting for the door might symbolize being embarrassed, rushed or frightened.
Now revise Anderson’s sentence to be more neutral.
I put my tray down and ran for the door.
Class Discussion
After finishing the teamwork, we get back into the main room and share our responses to earn team points. Then we read an excerpt from Marigolds written by Eugenia Collier and annotated.
Here is the excerpt:
“When I think of the home town of my youth, all that I seem to remember is dust—the brown, crumbly dust of late summer—arid, sterile dust that gets into the eyes and makes them water, gets into the throat and between the toes of bare brown feet. I don’t know why I should remember only the dust. Surely there must have been lush green lawns and paved streets under leafy shade trees somewhere in town; but memory is an abstract painting—it does not present things as they are, but rather as they feel. And so, when I think of that time and that place, I remember only the dry September of the dirt roads and grassless yards of the shantytown where I lived. And one other thing I remember, another incongruency of memory—a brilliant splash of sunny yellow against the dust—Miss Lottie’s marigolds.”
Homework
Read the short story “Marigolds” by Eugenia Collier and annotate while reading it. We should use the annotations rubric as a guide for what to execute.
My Reflection
From this lesson I have reflected on my past and my regrets. The lesson has provided me with a lot more knowledge and I learned about connotations and denotations. I learned it to add more to my knowledge of English and to prepare myself for the future. I will use what I learned for further assessments or when I annotate passages.
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