Aim: How does a writer create effects through the connotations of words and images?
Do Now: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.
We started sharing our moments in life when we did or say something that we regret and explained the reasoning behind why we regret it. Zihan shared about his moment where he missed something, Justin shared a moment where something happened at his school, and also Ms. Peterson shared her moment from when she was a child.
Spirit reading: CONNOTATION and DENOTATION
We read about connotations, denotation, as well as the difference between them.
Denotation: The literal or primary meaning of a word
Connotation: The ideas or feelings that a word invokes
Denotation and connotation have a big part when it comes to ela and any part of life. When we communicate, we use denotation and connotation. While denotation is just the literal or primary meaning of a word, with connotation, we are able to express certain feelings about a subject when talking about it. For example, Some words have basically the same denotative meaning, but different connotations. For example, “Youthful” and “Childish” both describe the state of being similar to a child, but Youthful has a positive connotation (vibrant, lively, energetic) and Childish has a negative connotation (immature, juvenile, having the emotional maturity of a child). We watched a video to gain a deeper understanding of denotation and connotation, as well as practicing recognizing them. For example, mob vs crowd was one of the examples in the video. The word mob was a negative connotation and the word crowd was more of a positive connotation. The link is written below
(https://youtu.be/Bz9V1FfC6bA)
Teamwork:CONNOTATION and DENOTATION in Speak
We got into our breakout rooms with our group and worked together to come up with answers for the following questions
“I dive into the stream of fourth-period lunch students and swim down the hall to the cafeteria.”
1.What connotations do the images of diving into and swimming through other students have here?
Me and my group all agreed on that diving and swimming through other students had a negative connotation as it was as if the person was squeezing through the other students to get to the cafeteria.
2. Now rewrite the sentence, trying to keep the same denotative meaning but changing the connotations to make them.
We had many suggestions on answering this question and in the end we decided on ”I joined the other fourth period lunch students and walk down the hall to the cafeteria.”
“I ditch my tray and bolt for the door.”
1.Based on the verbs, what inferences might you draw about the speaker’s feelings at this moment?
We as a group all decided that it was clear that the person was embarrassed and wants to get out of where they were.
2.Now revise Anderson’s sentence to be more.
We decided to change the words that were making the sentence show that the person was embarrassed. The words were ditch and bolt as they both had a negative connotation and in the end we came up with “I put down my tray and head out the door”
Soon after everyone came back to the meeting and discussed the answers to the questions. In addition, we discussed the connection between our Do Now and the connotation and denotation. Our responses to the do now were using connotations as we used certain words to describe the situation. The certain words such as missing for example, had a negative connotation which let us know that it was a regretful moment.
Annotation: As you read, highlight/underline the text for examples of diction, syntax, and imagery that create the narrator’s voice. Be sure to annotate the connotative effect of word choices, and explain the inferences they lead you to make regarding the tone, character, or significance of the event.
“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.”
This text was about the hometown of the narrator and how she felt about it using negative connotations. In the end, the narrator used a positive imagery and connotations to show how she felt about some other thing in her hometown regardless of the negative feelings she felt when she remembers about her hometown.
Here I annotated examples of imagery, connotative effect of word choices, and etc, then Iexplained how the highlighted parts help me infer the certain tone and other things of that scene.
Reflection:
I learned a lot in this lesson, especially about denotation and connotation. I gained a deeper understanding of it during the lesson as well as learning how to use connotations. Learning about denotation and connotation are very important and very helpful because it can assist me in many ways in the future in not only writing, but also in conversations. For example, using words that have certain connotations to them in writing can help show different thoughts and feelings. It can also help us enhance our oral skills which are helpful during discussions and group work but also, later on in life. In conclusion, we learned and practiced many skills such as annotating, teamwork, and also learned about denotations and connotations.
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