Ms. Lee I really think you have enough material to successfully teach the first few weeks of the 1st 9 weeks. I would prefer to teach this short story, but if you need it here it is...and if you need more short story lessons email me and I can develop more material.
“All Summer in a Day” by Ray Bradbury
Study Guide
Directions: Answer the questions in complete sentences using the RACE strategy. Remember to use details from the text. Please use your own sheet of notebook paper.
R-Restate (the Question)
A-Answer (the Question)
C-Cite (Give page(s) # & “Quote” information from the story)
E-Explain/Expand (Answer the question “So what?” & “What does that mean?”)
- How does Ray Bradbury emphasize what 7 years of rain must seem like?
- List ways that Margot is different from the other children.
- Why don’t Margot’s parents return her to Earth?
- How did the children know that the sun was coming out?
- Why do the children lock Margot in the closet?
- How does Margot react to the children locking her in the closet? Why does she react this way?
- How does Ray Bradbury describe the setting of the sun coming out?
- What is the central idea or theme of “All Summer in a Day”?
- What does the author use to present an effective setting?
- Repetition of sound
- Dialogue / Conversation
- Mention of familiar places
- Vivid adjectives
10 . What special knowledge or lesson did the children learn when they returned to let Margot out of the closet?
11. Compare and Contrast Activity
Compare and Contrast Margot from the short story "All Summer in One Day" by Ray Bradbury to the other children in her class
Compare and Contrast Margot from the short story "All Summer in One Day" by Ray Bradbury to the other children in her class
You will find below some other ideas that you can incorporate into this story…remember only choose activities you feel comfortable…
Detailed Description of Activities
Pre-Reading Activities
- Building Background Knowledge: About Author, Historical Events and Historical Perspective, 45 minutes
- The teacher will distribute a worksheet with questions to be answered with partners. Using the computer lab, the students will complete a web scavenger hunt to explore the life of Ray Bradbury and how his writing was affected by the Cold War era. (see student materials for website links at end) These interesting websites will generate interest in Ray Bradbury’s life, ideas and perhaps other stories.
Pre-Reading Activities
- Preteaching Vocabulary, 10 minutes
- Using the definition plus rich context procedure, introduce the following vocabulary words: surged, resilient, apparatus, and immense. Have the words and context available on an overhead, review and discuss. Hand out a worksheet to complete with a partner. (see student materials) The worksheet will use the vocabulary words in both the context-relationship procedure.
- Building Background Knowledge About the Story, 10 minutes
- Pair up with a partner and read the Preview (see student materials) of “All Summer in a Day.” This will offer students the opportunity to begin to think about the story, its characters and read a brief summary up to the climax. The critical thinking questions at the end of the preview give the students something to think about as they read the text.
During-Reading Activities
- Reading to Students, 15 minutes
- Teacher reads the story out loud to students or you can play the story on the CD, while they listen and follow along. Read to students. The reading level of this story is very appropriate for this age group and should not be difficult for them to tackle. Having the first reading of this powerful story be out loud to the students will allow the initial impact of the ending to be experienced by all of the students at the same time.
Post-Reading Activities
- Questioning/Discussion, 10 minutes
- Students will have some powerful feelings immediately following this story. This will be an opportune time for them to discuss their reactions to the story and make personal connections that they may have to these or other similar character issues.
- Questioning/Classwork
- Students will complete a worksheet with the comprehension questions that require them to use the higher order thinking skills of understanding and analyzing. (see student materials)
Post-Reading Activities
- Artistic, Graphic, and Non-Verbal Activities 45 minutes
- Students will choose a partner and complete a think pair share activity in which they record their collective prior knowledge about the planet Venus on the Inspiration® graphic organizer (see student materials). The teacher will give each student an important piece of information to present orally to the class about the planet Venus. The students will have to take that information and create at least one original simile and one original metaphor using that information. The students will complete their Venusian Travel Guide worksheet (see student materials) as each student presents the information needed for each topic area.
- Writing, as Classwork
- Students may need the lab for this two links are provided…Students will work independently to locate inaccuracies within the short story. Students will be responsible for listing five inaccuracies from “All Summer in a Day” and write a full paragraph as to whether or not it would be feasible to colonize Venus and if so, what you would need in order to do so.
Post-Reading Activities
- Writing, 20 minutes
· The ending of this story leaves many readers upset, and wondering what happened next. This is a wonderful opportunity for students to re-write the story. Students will form new groups for this task, whose purpose will be to recreate the ending in a drama that can be presented to the class. Students will use the character discussion questions that they considered prior to reading this short story. The only requirement for the new ending is that it will be mutually agreeable by all of the students in the group.
· This requirement will enable students to utilize higher levels of thinking as they explore the critical issues that are involved with group dynamics.
- Drama, 25 minutes
· The purpose of this activity is two-fold. It will enable many students who need to be supported with multi-sensory kinesthetic movement to be out of their desks, and acting out the story ending. It will also enable students to being closure to the story with a new twist, possibly creating a more win-win situation for the characters in the story. This activity has the potential to change the direction of some social behavior in the future, making it a critical component of this lesson and an excellent final activity for this short story unit.
Student Materials
Character Education Discussion Questions
- In what ways is this a caring world? In what ways is it uncaring? When someone is uncaring, how does that affect friends, school and community? Use examples in your discussion.
- Would you give money to a stranger on the sidewalk who asked for spare change? Why or shy not? Would it make a difference if the person were, (a) a mother with child, (b) very old, (c) from a different culture? What does giving homey to a stranger have to do with caring anyway?
- Do you think your self-respect sometimes affects the way you make choices? In what way? Do you think the quality of your choices affects your self-respect? In what way?
- How often do you think about whether something is right or wrong before you decide to do it? Do you think you usually know right from wrong? How? What are your guidelines?
- Discuss a real or imagined experience in which you performed a random act of caring and a purposeful act of unkindness. How did you feel about yourself after each incident?
- Someone once said that when a person does something that’s wrong, “it gets on your conscience and you don’t realize it until the fun is stopped, and then you realize, well, maybe I shouldn’t have done that.” Has that ever happened to you? What have you learned from it?
- Think about a time you may have been the victim of discrimination or intolerance? How about a time when you may have been the one doing the discriminating?
Ray Bradbury and the 1950's
Working in your small groups, click on the Ray Bradbury links to answer the following questions:www.raybradbury.com
http://www.spaceagecity.com/bradbury/
http://www.bradburymedia.co.uk/
http://raybradburyonline.com/
1. Where and when was Ray Bradbury born?
2. When and how did he begin his writing career?
3. In which genre does Ray Bradbury usually write?
4. What did Ray Bradbury create for Disney World?
5. What special honor did Bradbury receive in
6. Why do you think that Ray Bradbury depends on the use of similes and metaphors in his writing of Science Fiction?
Using Google’s search engine, explore the Internet for resources on the 1950's and McCarthyism. Answer as many of the following questions as possible. CITE ALL YOUR SOURCES. Be sure to carefully evaluate the sites you visit for validity and accuracy.
1. What was the House un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)?
What was it's purpose?
2. When and why did
3. Who were the "Unfriendly Ten"? Why were they called that?
4. Who was Joseph McCarthy? Why was “Mcarthyism” such an important part of the 1950’s culture?
5. What was the "Cold War"? When did it start? What kind of impact did it have on America?
Vocabulary Words
All vocabulary words will be presented as part of the Pre-Reading Activities
Surged
To rise suddenly to an excessive or abnormal value
The speed skater was solidly in fourth place when suddenly he surged ahead of the other three skaters and won the gold medal.
Immense
Incredibly huge, immeasurably large
Amanda stared up at the immense mountain and wondered how she would ever be able to climb to the top.
Context-Relationship Procedure Items:
Apparatus
Today was the telephone installers first day on the job. He looked at the complicated apparatus used to hook up the phone system and felt frustrated. The apparatus this company used was nothing like the apparatus he trained with and he was worried he would not know how to use it to hook up the phones with it.
Apparatus means:
_____sporting goods
____equipment you use to complete a job
____ Stuff you need for work
Resilient
The candidate had lost three elections in a row. He wanted to be President very badly; he was resilient and kept campaigning. He did not let the defeat dampen his efforts. He picked himself back up each time and ran again. Eventually, he won. Resilient is more than flexible. Being resilient is the ability to get back up and function after suffering a misfortune or a defeat.
Resilient means:
____ Being able to adjust to change
____ Being enthusiastic
____ Wanting something with your whole heart
Preview for “All Summer in a Day”
Can you imagine what it might be like to have sunshine come for only one hour, once every seven years, with non-stop rain every single day for the entire seven years? Have you ever had a group turn against you, just for being who you are? Has anything ever happened to you that was so horrible that it left you changed, forever?
Margot and her family joined the community that relocated to the planet Venus five years ago. On Venus, it rains every day, and then after seven years, the sun shines for one hour, and then the rain returns. Although she did remember the warmth of the sunshine and could describe how the sun looked, no one believed her. Being rather sickly, she was already isolated from her classmates, but when she talked about the sun, they became hostile, and taunted her. She tried to convince them that she remembered, but they seemed to become more angry, and then…
Read on to find out whether the rain ever comes, how her classmates deal with their feelings of jealousy and what happens to Margot. As you read, think about what you would do if you had the opportunity to permanently alter the life of another human being, but it meant standing alone and going against everyone else to do it. What would you do?
“All summer in a Day” Comprehension Classwork
Why do you think Margot does not fit in?
Describe a time when you did not fit in? What happened? How did you feel?
How have the people on Venus adapted to the rainy climate?
How would you feel about living on a planet that had rain everyday? Which activities you would miss? Discuss how people might feel and behave if they could not spend anytime outside in the sunshine.
Every seven years when the Sun comes out the plant life on Venus changes. What happens? Be sure to use details and quotes from the story.
Venusian Travel Guide
Source of the Reading Selection, Additional Readings
Source of the Reading
http://www.intermed.it/bradbury/Allsummer.htm an online resource for reading the complete text of the story “all summer in a day” by Ray Bradbury, 1959.
Additional Readings
Bradbury, R. (1985). Dandelion Wine. New York
Bradbury, R. (1998). Driving Blind: Stories. New York : Avon Books.
Bradbury, R. (1990). The Illustrated Man. New York
Bradbury, R. (1998). I Sing the Body Electric and Other Stories. New York : Avon Books.
Bradbury, R. (1994). The Martian Chronicles. New York
Bradbury, R. (1993). The October Country. New York
Bradbury, R. (1998). Something Wicked This Way Comes. New York : Avon Books.
Bradbury, R. (1980). The Stories of Ray Bradbury. New York: Knopf.
Resource materials
Graves, M.F., & Graves , B. (2003). Scaffolding Reading Expeiences: Designs for Student Success. Massachusetts
Internet Resources
http://www.raybradbury.com/. The official Ray Bradbury website offers biographical information, links to other Ray Bradbury-related sites, articles about the author, and an overview of his career.
http://www.english.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/huac-main.html. Housed at this website is an overview of the House Un-American Activities Committee and links to additional pages about this group and its actions in the 1950s.
http://www.english.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/mccarthy-bio.html. Offers a short biography of Joseph McCarthy and his political career and actions.
http://www.qacps.k12.md.us/Comtek/Lessons/6-RLA-All_Summer/Venusian_Travel_Guide.doc This teacher created worksheet was designed to introduce students to the planet Venus and motivate.
http://library.thinkquest.org/3645/Planets/Venus.html This website is written for kids by kids and discusses the planet Venus.
http://www.solarviews.com/eng/venus.htm This website provides scientific facts and statistics about the planet Venus.
http://www.nineplanets.org/venus.html More scientific information about the planet Venus that one would ever think to ask.
http://pds.jpl.nasa,gov/planets/special/venus.htm A planet profile of Venus, complete with raw data.
http://www.brainpop.com/english/writing/similesandmetaphors/ Brain Pop is an educational website aimed at grades 4-8. It contains animated movies within the subject areas of English Science, Math, Social Studies, Health and Technology.
http://www.spaceagecity.com/bradbury/ This site provides information about one of America
http://www.bradburymedia.co.uk/ This site concentrates on Bradbury's work in the media - film, TV, radio.
http://raybradburyonline.com/ The goal of this site is to provide information about Ray Bradbury and his work to fans and anyone interested in or researching Ray and his work.
