Instructor Directions
Analyzing Perspective Through Character Monologues
Subject Area: ELA (7th Grade)
| Driving Question / Scenario | How does perspective shape our understanding of an event? How does an author develop and contrast the perspectives of different characters in a text? How can we use monologues to piece together the various perspectives and use them to better understand the main events of the story? Students will only be reading 1-2 character’s perspectives in the novel The Watch that Ends the Night by Alan Wolfe. The book is broken up into sections and is told through various character's perspectives and voices. |
| Project Summary | Students will create and record character monologues based on a character in Alan Wolfe's The Watch that Ends the Night. Students will analyze a particular character’s attitude toward and interpretation of various events and other characters in a story. Students will analyze what their character does, says, and thinks throughout a text in order to determine how the author has developed and communicated his/her unique perspective. Students will then present in collaboration stations and will analyze and connect other characters and their perspectives to their own. The purpose of the project and the presentation is to enable students to make connections to other characters and perspectives and ultimately to deepen the understanding of the plot and characters. |
| Estimated Time | 180-240 minutes, or 3-4 class periods |
| Materials / Resources |
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| Standards | RL.7.6 Analyze how an author develops and contrasts the perspectives of different characters in a text.RL.7.3 Analyze how particular elements of a story or drama interact.RL.7.1 1: Cite several pieces of textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text. |
| Project Outline | |
| Ask | I will begin by asking students what they know about the Titanic and what they know about social classes. I’ll also ask them how an event looks different depending on one’s viewpoint. I will then ask students to think about an event in their life and write about it from their perspective. Next, I will ask students to write about it from another person’s perspective such as their parents, sibling, friend, etc. The guiding question will be: How does perspective shape our understanding of an event? |
| Imagine | I will ask students to imagine that they are on the Titanic living as their character. I’ll have them converse with others in the class as though they are their character each day of the unit so that they truly embody the character and become actors/actresses as a way to prepare for the monologue. |
| Plan | Once students have finished reading their assigned portions of the novel, they will begin using the project rubric to write a rough draft of their assigned character’s monologue. Students will refer back to their organizer to include direct examples of their character’s physical, social, and psychological characteristics. |
| Create | Students will use the technology above to record their monologue. Students will include a related background using the green screen to help create a setting based on the novel and their character (social class, fate, environment, situation, etc) |
| Improve | After viewing their classmates’ monologue presentations, students will leave feedback to each presenter using the rubric. Then, students will assess their own project using the rubric and will list at least three ways they could have improved their own monologue presentation. |
| Closure / Student Reflections | Students will close out the unit by participating in a socratic seminar discussion based on the following questions:
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| Possible Modifications / Extensions | Modification: Students could “guess” the character’s names using the monologues in order to promote discussion about the various interactions these characters have throughout the novel. Extension: After the seminar discussion, students could put their thoughts in writing. Students could write an essay analyzing the perspectives in the novel, or students could create a poem or other creative writing piece on the theme of “perspective”. Students can also physically connect to one another through the monologues with a piece of yarn or string. In the end, each character, or student should be connected with multiple characters so that the end result is a web. |
Pre/Post Test
- Which of the following are tools that all writer’s use to craft perspective and create a story?
- Sensory details and charts
- Figurative language and photographs
- Sensory details and dialogue
- Dialogue and interviews
- What year did the Titanic sink?
- 1910
- 1925
- 1927
- 1912
3. Which explanation of early 1900s social classes below is correct?
- 1st class was considered to be the lowest class, or the poorest social class.
- 3rd class was considered to be the middle class.
- 1st class was considered the highest class, or the richest social class
- There were no social classes in the early 1900s.
