Page 89 - SpringBoard_ELD_Grade8_Flipbook

ACTIVITY 2.3
My Notes
Interpret the Text using Close Reading
Learning Targets
• Read closely and annotate the text to find a character’s changing ideas. PI.8.6b • Apply understanding of how novels are structured to comprehending the text.
PII.8.1
Read and annotate
Read The Giver excerpt and annotate the text as you read.
■ Use the My Notes area to write questions or ideas you have about the story. ■ Underline the points Jonas makes in favor of choices.
■ Put stars next to the reasons Jonas gives against choices.
■ Circle unknown words and phrases.
The Giver
by Lois Lowry
Jonas lives in a utopian world controlled by the Elders. There is no war, hunger, violence, or suffering. However, there is also no music, art, color, or strong emotions—and no privacy or personal choice. Everyone accepts this way of life and does not question it, because it is all they have ever known. Now age 12, Jonas has been assigned a special career in his community: He will become the “Receiver of Memory,” training for his role under the man who has held that position for years and is now “The Giver.”
Through his mind, the Giver shares with Jonas the memories of what life was like in earlier times, before “Sameness.” Jonas begins to feel emotions and see things he has never experienced. Through the Giver, Jonas has learned about and seen color for the first time, and he is starting to see bits of it in his daily life.
1 Days went by, and weeks. Jonas learned, through the memories, the names
of colors; and now he began to see them all, in his ordinary life (though he knew it was ordinary no longer, and would never be again). But they didn’t last. There would be a glimpse of green— the landscaped lawn around the Central Plaza; a bush on the riverbank. The bright orange of pumpkins being trucked in from the agricultural fields beyond the community boundary— seen in an instant, the flash of brilliant color, but gone again, returning to their flat and hueless shade.
2 The Giver told him that it would be a very long time before he had the colors to keep.
3 “But I want them!” Jonas said angrily. “It isn’t fair that nothing has color!”
4 “Not fair?” The Giver looked at Jonas curiously. “Explain what you mean.”
from
66 SpringBoard® English Language Development grade 8
Novel Excerpt
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