Page 183 - SpringBoard_ELD_Grade8_Flipbook

ACTIVITY 2.3
My notes
Interpret the Text using Close Reading
Learning Targets
• Apply understanding of how essays are structured to comprehend the text.
• Use general academic words and domain-specific words to create some
precision while speaking and writing.
• Explain how phrasing or different common words with similar meanings produce different effects on the audience.
Read and annotate
Read the comedic essay independently or as a group. Annotate the text as you read.
■ Use the My Notes area to write any questions or ideas you have about the story. ■ Underline any comedic juxtapositions you find.
■ Circle unknown words and phrases.
I’ve got a few pet peeves about sea creatures
by Dave Barry
1 Pets are good, because they teach children important lessons about life, the main
one being that, sooner or later, life kicks the bucket.
2 With me, it was sooner. When I was a boy, my dad, who worked in New York City, would periodically bring home a turtle in a little plastic tank that had a little plastic island with a little plastic palm tree, as is so often found in natural turtle habitats. I was excited about having a pet, and I’d give the turtle a fun pet name like Scooter. But my excitement was not shared by Scooter, who, despite residing in a tropical paradise, never did anything except mope around.
3 Actually, he didn’t even mope “around”: He moped in one place without moving,
or even blinking, for days on end, displaying basically the same vital signs as an ashtray. Eventually I would realize—it wasn’t easy to tell—that Scooter had passed on to that
Big Pond in the Sky, and I’d bury him in the garden, where he’d decompose and become food for the zucchini, which in turn would be eaten by my dad, who would in turn go to New York City, where, compelled by powerful instincts that even he did not understand, he would buy me another moping death turtle. And so the cycle of life would repeat.
4 I say all this to explain why I recently bought fish for my 4-year-old daughter, Sophie. My wife and I realized how badly she wanted an animal when she found a
beetle on the patio and declared that it was a pet, named Marvin. She put Marvin into
a Tupperware container, where, under Sophie’s loving care and feeding, he thrived for maybe nine seconds before expiring like a little six-legged parking meter. Fortunately, we
Essay
160 SpringBoard® English Language Development grade 8
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