Page 9 - SpringBoard_CloseReading_Workshop_Grade6_Flipbook

Close Reading of informational/literary nonfiction Texts (continued)
senility: physical or mental weakness that comes with old age
bum: a tramp, vagabond, hobo
implement: to carry out or put into effect
ACTIvITy 3
Independent Practice
The text passage that follows is from the opening pages of a book called Travels with Charley, written by well-known American author John Steinbeck. In 1960, Steinbeck traveled over 10,000 miles across the United States in a camper, accompanied only by his French poodle named Charley. Travels with Charley tells the story of that journey.
First Reading: First Impressions
Read the passage silently to yourself. As you read, think about the meanings of the underlined words. Look at the definitions in the right margin, and also use your knowledge of the words and context clues to help you make meaning of the text.
Travels with
1 WhenIwasveryyoungandtheurgetobesomeplaceelsewasonme,Iwasassuredby mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age I was assured that greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked. Four hoarse blasts of a ship’s whistle still raise the hair on my
neck and set my feet to tapping. The sound of a jet, an engine warming up, even the clopping of shod hooves on pavement brings on the ancient shudder, the dry mouth and vacant eye, the hot palms and the churn of stomach high up under the rib cage. In other words, I don’t improve; in further words, once a bum always a bum. I fear the disease is incurable. I set this matter down not to instruct others but to inform myself.
2 When the virus of restlessness begins to take possession of a wayward man, and the road away from Here seems broad and straight and sweet, the victim must first
find himself a good and sufficient reason for going. This to the practical bum is not difficult. He has a built-in garden of reasons to choose from. Next he must plan his trip in time and space, choose a direction and a destination. And last he must implement the journey. How to go, what to take, how long to stay. This part of the process is invariable and immortal. I set it down only so that newcomers to bumdom, like teen-agers in new- hatched sin, will not think they invented it.
From
Charley
by John Steinbeck
8
SpringBoard® English Language Arts Grade 6
autobiography
© 2017 College Board. All rights reserved.