Aim: How can we develop our close reading skills through an analysis of Katherine Brush’s “The Birthday Party”?
Notes:
Today, we started off the discussion on the question of how we can close read in order to understand what we are reading. So what attributes to Close Reading? How can we closely read and observe the text? We made a list of qualities or activities you can do to show that you understand what you’re reading:
Taking down annotations or thoughts you have while you are reading
Asking questions
Highlighting important details or something you would like to keep in mind
Take notes of different literary devices
Provide short summaries at the end of a section
The main way to show that you are paying attention to the passage is if you annotate, you have to look for the clues, like a detective.
We then observed an example of text and annotation.
For example, the annotator jot down the perspective the text is written in and what their thoughts on certain vocabulary would have meant. They underlined, circled, and asked questions about the text, showing that they are actively reading it.
If you need more help with close reading or annotating here are some videos:
Then we were given lines from The Birthday Party by Katherine Brush to annotate ourselves, we had to note down things we find striking or something that stands out to us as we were reading.
“The man had a round, self-satisfied face, with glasses on it; the woman was fadingly pretty, in a big hat.”
The first thing I annotated on this line was the word fadingly. What does the author mean by fadingly pretty? Maybe it means that she’s super pretty, but age has reached her and her youth is behind her.
After that, we were given a small quiz
The question:
How can the husband be characterized?
The answer I chose was “Joyful and boisterous.”
How can the wife be characterized?
The answer I chose was “No longer young, self-conscious, but still an attractive quality.”
The word self-satisfaction used to describe the husband tells us that he is feeling satisfied with himself and things he has done, there can be a certain arrogance in how he appears and his tone. The word fadingly is used to describe the wife and how her beauty begins to fade and even though she looks pretty, she doesn’t look as vibrant and bright compared to her youth.
Then we were given another section of the passage to annotate:
The question I asked while reading this passage is, What surprise could she have? Is it a good or a bad surprise? Since the passage is called The Birthday Party, how come there are so few people at this party? Will there be a plot twist towards the end of the story?
After reading this passage, I would have just expected it to be a regular birthday party. There seems to be nothing special about their environment, everything just seems normal. So what could the plot possibly be? Is this all there is to this story?
If you want to continue reading the story here is a link to a pdf:
https://jerrywbrown.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/The-Birthday-Party-Brush-Katherine.pdf
Reflection:
Throughout the lesson, we learned one of the most helpful and valuable skills a reader can have and that is annotating. Annotating can be different for everyone, but you are only annotating for yourself. As long as you understand your own annotations, then that shows that you are actively paying attention to the text or passage. Annotations are there to help guide you and read through the passage, as well as adding your own thoughts to it. Even though I already know the basics of annotating, just today, I found out that your annotations are not made for someone else to read. I was a bit taken aback by this fact because I remembered when teachers would check our annotations and comment on how we are annotating. I usually don’t annotate while I’m reading but sometimes I would put post-it notes on my favorite sections or markdown my favorite lines. Something just as simple as that can count as annotations as well. You don’t need to create extravagant markings or highlight every other sentence in the passage for it to be annotated correctly. I will continue developing my skills of annotating and close reading as I get more comfortable with the different ways to annotate. In the future, I will annotate my books by writing down questions and continue underlining or marking my favorite parts of a passage.
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