Skip to Main Content

Lesson 1

We will analyze Chapters 5 and 6 through either a historical or biographical lens, working independently to analyze details and their effects on our understanding of the text.

Lesson Goals

  • Can I analyze how Alvarez’s perspective influences the position, purpose, and ideas in a text?

  • Can I recognize and interpret relationships among key details and ideas (characters and setting)?

  • Can I determine what aspects of the texts led me to the conclusion that I drew?

Texts

Core

  • Tradebook
    • In the Time of the Butterflies, Julia Alvarez, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2010

Materials

Tools

Editable Google Docs

Activity 1: Write

We will choose a lens and its prompt and a claim from the section 2 diagnostic as the focus of our additional practice.

Step 1

Choose whether to analyze the historical or biographical lens. You will use an Analyzing Relationships Tool to help search for evidence and make a statement about how the novel reflects either lens.

The Analyzing Relationships Tool supports and guides a process for identifying and analyzing how an author uses details in a text to create overall meaning. Using this tool usually begins with a guiding or text-specific question related to a literary element or device (e.g., setting, characterization, irony, figurative language). The tool can be used with both literary and informational texts, whenever you are analyzing the relationships among textual details.

Step 2

You will use the tool in the following way over the next few activities:

  1. Write down the guiding question in the space provided at the top. You might be assigned the guiding question by your teacher, it might come from a question set, or you might think of your own question. This question can help you focus your reading, or it might give your reading a specific purpose. It is often a question related to the writer’s techniques and use of elements and devices to create an effect or suggest an idea or theme.

  2. As you read the text, pay attention to details (words, phrases, sentences) that relate to the guiding question. Depending on how long the section of text is, you might find several examples. Write down the details that most strongly support the guiding question in the Attend to Details row.

  3. Think about and write down how the details you selected in reference to the guiding question are related in the Analyze Relationships row. What patterns, contrasts, or meaning are emerging for you? You might see connections, patterns, sharp contrasts, or the author’s use of literary devices emerging. Keep the guiding question in mind.

  4. Explain how those details work together to create an effect or suggest meaning for you as a reader, after you have identified the details and identified how they fit together or relate to one another. You might comment on how the details shed light on an idea, tone, mood, or other literary effect.

Step 3

Write down the guiding question for your chosen lens in the Guiding Question section of the Analyzing Relationships Tool.

  • Historical: How does In the Time of the Butterflies reflect the setting, events, and people who lived under the Trujillo regime?

  • Biographical: How are Julia Alvarez’s personal experiences reflected in In the Time of the Butterflies?

Activity 2: Red – Discuss – Write

We will work with a partner to find details that support our reading of the text through the lens we chose.

With a partner, discuss what the question is asking you to do.

Discuss one of the following guiding questions:

  1. What does it mean to analyze the text through the historical lens?

  2. What does it mean to analyze the text through the biographical lens?

Skim Chapters 5 and 6. Find details in the text related to the lens that you chose. Write your details in the Attend to Details spaces in your Analyzing Relationships Tool. Make sure to include page numbers.

Activity 3: Discuss – Write

We will analyze relationships among the key details.

With your partner, explain how your chosen details are related.

Write your explanation in the Analyze Relationships among the Key Details section of your Analyzing Relationships Tool.

In the final Explain Effects section, write a claim that analyzes the text from the lens you chose.

Activity 4: Write

In one or two sentences, we will explain the effects of the details on the text.

Explain the effects of the details on the text in relation to the guiding question. Respond to the following question:

  1. How do these details help you think about the text through the lens you have chosen?

In your Learning Log, write one to two sentences of analysis that explain the connections between the claim and the evidence.

Activity 5: Write

We will analyze the meaning of the details in the text in relation to our guiding questions.

Finally, write how the details, relationships, and effects deepen your understanding of the text.