Literary Analysis Of Nick Otten's 'Beyond The Yellow Highlighter'

When students use their skills to analyze literature, they must annotate to look for the main plot points or literary devices, locate the theme of the novel, and determine if the novel is an allegory. Even though analyzing a book is often confused with summarizing a book, they are entirely different things. While summarizing a book is just writing a few sentences about the most important points in the plot, analyzing a book requires you to look deeper into the story and find what the author’s purpose is. One technique students can use when to analyze literature is annotating. Annotating is a process in which students highlight or make a note of any literary device in the book, important plot points, or connections between the plot/characters to the real world.

The Norton Field Guide to Writing covers topics about writing and composing. Several of which I was already familiar with. In chapter 2, Bullock and Weinberg express how “Many readers find it helps to annotate as they read…” (16). I have become very familiar with annotating over the years. I often use this writing method to help me understand and summarize text I come across.

In chapter five, by Cris Tovani, “Why Am I Reading This” explains how educators need to establish a clear reading instructional plan. In order to accomplish understanding students need to concentrate on main ideas from the readings. Tovani explains that it is vital for teachers to model how students should hold their thinking or slow down their reading. Throughout the chapters she gives examples as question strategies, highlighting text, or summarizing key points. As this will benefit students in their reading assignment. Tovani also explains throughout the chapter that teachers should model thinking aloud. This strategy will benefit students on how to negotiate difficult text.

In the essay “How to Mark a Book” by Mortimer J. Adler, the author explains that “marking up a book is not an act of mutilation, but of love” (1). Adler points out that marking books keeps a reader vigilant to what they are actually reading (2). The author continues on to say owning a book is more than having it sit on a shelf; owning a book means for the reader to make it unique for him or herself, doing so will make reading that much more enjoyable for the reader. Adler also claims that writing small notes or comments as you read helps readers to summarize what they’ve just read, even days later. He says that writing in books allows the brain to store that information deeper into the long term memory making it easier to come back to (2).

Analyzing is one effective reading strategy a reader can use. This method is most effective by thinking about the writer’s arranged ideas. For example, viewing the developed topics and the structure of the paragraph is a way of analyzing. Annotating is beneficial to the reader who is analyzing the text. When using annotating, a reader

Adler gives examples of different ways one can still actively read and make annotations while getting around writing in a book when he suggests, “How about using a scratch pad slightly smaller than the page-size of the book...and then insert these sheets permanently inside the front and back covers of the book” (Adler 19). By offering other ways to make annotations, Adler makes the point that there is no excuse to not actively read. Another way he creates an encouraging tone is by pointing out the flaws of people who do not own books in more than a physical way by using words such as “deluded” (Adler 17) to steer them away from passive reading. Adler’s use of logos also makes the tone persuasive. He explains why writing is necessary by mentioning “the physical act of writing, with your own hand, brings words and sentences more sharply before your mind and preserves them better in your memory” (Adler 18). By providing a fact, Adler provides reason for his ideas to effectively reach out to his audience. One other strategy Adler uses to keep a consistent tone is enumerating devices for marking a book. If Adler would have summarized them in paragraph form, it would have made the tone more informative than persuasive. With listing, he gives off the impression that one should consider trying many different

Between Shades of Gray takes place in 1941, when fifteen-year-old Lina and her family are precipitously taken away from their home in Lithuania by the Soviet Union and transported to a Siberian labor camp. The long and horrific train ride to Siberia is pervaded with barbarity, and once the prisoners arrive, they are only faced with more cruelty. Lina, a gifted artist, records her experience in drawings kept hidden from the cruel guards, as she documents her struggles to keep faith in humanity.

[ ] In order to build on the children’s understanding and content knowledge, lesson one’s purpose is to engage the children through making a prediction based on the text, pictures, and title. Lesson two builds on the language and literacy by continuing with using the mentor text, “Fancy Nancy” and using the rich academic language associated with the central focus of predictions. For example, each lesson has a distinct objective in which the activities are built on but all three lessons build on each other by incorporating similar academic language and literacy. The children start out in a whole group setting and are actively engaged through discussions and sharing activities. The children are then scaffolded into independent reading and activities to assess their understanding of the content objectives. They then use their prior knowledge and rich vocabulary to successfully complete the objective of each lesson through verbal discussions, independent work, and physical movement. In lesson one, the children are actively engaged through participating in a gallery walk. This gallery walk is done with the children’s table groups and encourages community and social interactions. During this activity, the children will work together to activate their prior knowledge of predictions and record through writing what they

Annotating fiction means “to add critical or explanatory notes to a text” (Encarta). Specifically, it requires you to do the following types of things:

The narrator is given a sense of oppression from the beginning of the story by keeping a hidden diary from her husband as “a relief to her mind.” Throughout the story her true thoughts are hidden from the readers and her husband, which gives the story a symbolic perspective.

To be an active reader is to be able to express yourself in the book one reads. Mortimer J. Adler argues in his article, “How to Mark a Book”, that to be an active reader, the reader needs to actually write in their book; but also to fully claim ownership of their book. According to Adler, there are plenty of ways one can mark in a book; underlining, vertical lines at the margin, asterisk, numbers in the margin, circling or highlighting, writing in the margin at the bottom or top, etc. One does not initially understand what they are reading, until they feel like they are having a conversation with the author. Adler emphasizes marking in a book keeps the reader mentally awake, helps their thoughts become more alive, and also remember later what

In the story The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman she writes of a woman severely oppressed in her marriage. The women in the story is an open mind individual. John; her husband is a psychologist and thinks that his wife has a mental disorder because of all the free thinking and puts her through the rest cure. Through analysis of the story, we can see that this story displays a creepy tone in order to depict a serious matter at a time when women’s oppression was at large and feminist protest was in full swing to put a stop to it. The writer uses literary devices such as foreshadowing, symbolism, and irony in order to show the reader how the main character has to overcome her oppression through insanity.

In the story, The Yellow Wallpaper the author Charlotte Perkins Gilman brings to life the tale of a woman suffering from post partem depression. Her husband is a physician and makes the mistake of keeping her closed off from the world. (John) thinks that the right thing to do is to keep her alone in an unfamiliar room. In this room, there is a bed that is nailed down to the floor and a yellow wallpaper that at first, she despises. However, she eventually becomes obsessed with it and goes completely insane. How can she differentiate between what is real and what is not? It mostly comes down to her amount of freedom and self-expression. The mental strains placed on the narrator are ultimately what drives her to the point of insanity.

Graff and Birkenstein argue in chapter 14 that instead of asking, "What is the author trying to say?" ask students to provoke discussions by asking questions such as "What is motivating the writer's arugment?" in order to better approach reading. Because of this, discussions tended to be "far livelier" and helped students identify a response to an argument. When we are not able to find what the writer is responding to, we have to infer with clues the writer provides in their text. This is important because usually a writer assumes that a reader is familiar with what they are trying to say. So when we try to figure out what is motivating these writers, we have to ask ourselves if the author is responding to an argument. Doing this can help us

Both essays focus on children's ability to blend visual drawings and writing and how they interact with one another. In some classrooms young children are being urged to see drawing and writing separately rather than as a unified system of meaning making. Thomas Newkirk makes us think about how pictures relate to language in written texts, and Alexie Sherman explains how he had the help from comic books (graphic novels) and watching his dad's passion for reading help (sponsor) him want to learn how to read. They both believe that visual images communicate meaning. Its not just about the design and creativity but also about how culture and meaning are reflected, communicated and altered by images. This is visual literacy, it involves all the