Page 3 - SpringBoard_CloseReading_Workshop_Grade6_Flipbook

Close Reading of informational/literary nonfiction Texts (continued)
compartment: a separate section
passive: taking no active part
frame: structure that encloses
consciousness: awareness
indefinite: undecided; unknown
by Robert M. Pirsig from Chapter 1
You see things vacationing on a motorcycle in a way that is completely different from any other. In a car you’re always in a compartment, and because you’re used to it you don’t realize that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You’re a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame.
On a cycle the frame is gone. You’re completely in contact with it all. You’re in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming. That concrete whizzing by five inches below your foot is the real thing, the same stuff you walk on, it’s right there, so blurred you can’t focus on it, yet you can put your foot down and touch it anytime, and the whole thing, the whole experience, is never removed from immediate consciousness.
Chris and I are traveling to Montana with some friends riding up ahead, and maybe headed farther than that. Plans are deliberately indefinite, more to travel than to arrive anywhere. We are just vacationing. Secondary roads are preferred. Paved county roads are the best, state highways are next. Freeways are the worst. We want to make good time, but for us now this is measured with emphasis on “good” rather than “time”
and when you make that shift in emphasis the whole approach changes. Twisting hilly roads are long in terms of seconds but are much more enjoyable on a cycle where you
ACTIvITy 1
Guided Practice
You will read the text in this activity at least three times, focusing on a different purpose for each reading.
First Reading: First Impressions
Read the following passage silently. Your focus for this first reading is on understanding the meaning of the passage. As you read, practice diffusing
the words you may not know by replacing unfamiliar words with synonyms or definitions for the underlined words. Use the definitions and synonyms to the right of the paragraphs to help your understanding.
From
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
Maintenance
bank: tilt in making a turn bank into turns and don’t get swung from side to side in any compartment. Roads with little traffic are more enjoyable, as well as safer. Roads free of drive-ins and billboards
are better, roads where groves and meadows and orchards and lawns come almost to the shoulder, where kids wave to you when you ride by, where people look from their porches to see who it is, where when you stop to ask directions or information the answer tends to be longer than you want rather than short, where people ask where you’re from and how long you’ve been riding.
2 SpringBoard® English Language Arts Grade 6
autobiography
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