(To read more posts on my blog about The Great Gatsby CLICK HERE.)

Whenever I get to the passage in The Great Gatsby about him being the platonic conception of himself, I always pause here to discuss Plato’s cave analogy.  I think it is fitting to talk about how Plato’s analogy applies to the text as well as talking about the meaning of platonic.

So here is a claymation version of it.  I would love to hear your take on it.

This video was found on OPEN CULTURE.

I still have a few students who have a difficult time verbalizing deeper examples of symbolism. This pedagogical conundrum made me start thinking about levels of symbolic representation. If Bloom has levels of thinking, why can’t there be levels of symbolism.

I think pointing out examples of these levels may help some of the students understand how to explain them.

I realize that there is probably 982 (give or take a few) books already on this subject, but here is the list I came up with (the ones in BLUE were suggested by colleagues):

Types of Symbols

Aesthetic Symbolism- appearance of something contains symbolic qualities
Colors – Red for love
Yellow for decay or money
Green for money or jealousy
Texture- Sharpness of a thorn

Object Symbolism- an object is symbolic
The green light on Daisy’s dock serves as a beacon of hope just as with flame of the statue of Liberty.

Iconic-dealing with an icon
Cross, infinity symbol, a fist raised in the air, peace sign

Linguistic Symbolism- this involves the symbolism that innately occur in certain words. (Thanks, Candy)
NAMES- Dimsdale from The Scarlet Letter
DUPLICITY- “Put out the light, and then put out the light.” (Othello V, ii) (I know this last example is more metaphor than symbol, but they are kissing cousins)

Action/Event Symbolism- an action or event implies a subliminal symbolism
Tom’s violent/domineering personality is symbolized in the way he slams the windows in the first chapter of The Great Gatsby.
Starks will not let Janie let her hair down in public. This is symbolic of his control over her, which is fueled by his jealousy.

Cognitive Symbolism- thoughts that pop into the characters’ heads that represent internal struggle or emotional conflicts. (Thanks, Brigid)
Gatsby realizes that Daisy’s voice is full of money as he moves towards realizing that she picked Tom for reasons other than just a good option.

While looking for pictures to add to this post, I found the PDF of a list of color symbolism.

As always, please add any suggestions for this list in my comments.

I have been giving a lot of thought to my reading list for next year.  I know the major works I want to cover during the first semester, but I really want to add some amazing works to my list.  I would love any suggestions.  Also, I would love to know what YOU plan to teach next year.    Please leave any suggestions/lists in the comments below.

Here is my list thus far:                                            (p)= assigned paper
(I plan to teach the selections in this order.)
(I have listed some of the short stories I plan to teach, but I would love your suggestions from the American Lit 1900 to the present cannon.)

Winter Dreams
The Great Gatsby (P)
Of Mice and Men
Two Hurston short stories
Their Eyes were Watching God (P)
Wagner Matinee
Modernist Poetry
RESEARCH PAPER
Pinker’s The Language Instinct
The Things They Carried
A Raisin in the Sun
Sonny’s Blues
Catcher in the Rye
Big Fish

SUGGESTIONS FOR BOTH FICTION AND NONFICTION WOULD BE GREATLY APPRECIATED.

Here are my worksheets for quote IDs on The Great Gatsby. I hope find them useful. I used the same method as described in THIS post.

This sample of my handout for The Great Gatsby was designed for students at level 5, so they no longer need the scaffolding that is described below. To view the handout, just CLICK the picture.

I have been working on responding to quote IDs. Initially I found that they were leaving out important aspects of the selected passages, like the speaker or literary devices. So I decided to try to come up with an acronym to help them remember what all then needed in their responses.

Then, I found that, though the acronym was helping them to remember to touch on more of the aspects of the quotes, over 50% of them were overlooking the more inferential aspects of the passages. THEREFORE, I had to backtrack. Now I have learned that the following steps must be followed in order to make sure students are writing at the optimal level:

1. Teach them the following acronym to help them to learn what is involved in a complete quote ID.

Speaker- tell the speaker of the quote or passage
Event- tell what is going on where that quote occurs in the literature
Language & literary devices
Explain your examples from the text
Context- relate this passage to other parts of the piece or other pieces of literature.
Themes- relate this passage to the themes within the novel.

2. I do, we do, you do.

Show them how one is written. Allow them to construct a few with you. Then, let them try it on their own.

3. Then have the students respond to a list of passages in which you underline the parts you expect them to include in the responses.

4. Now, instead of underlining all of the important parts, put a number next to each passage showing how many important aspects they need to discuss.

Instead of writing a single number, you might want to write two numbers, such as 4 to 5. This will cut down on the number of students who approach you saying, “I cannot find five of them. Could you tell the last one?” It is one of those little psychological tricks that saves you time because they will try to find five, but they will settle for four if the bell rings.

5. The last step will have no training wheels. They will just get the passages along with your high standards. Because they have had a lot of practice, they will be well prepared.

As you progress through these steps, may also want to consider either raising the point value of the assignment or count off more for information that is left out of the students’ responses.

If you have not used Google Maps to enhance your students’ understanding of the settings of the literature you are reading, you really should go and check it out.

Below I have some screen shots of my visit to West Egg from The Great Gatsby.

FIRST you have to do is type in where you want to go. You do not need an address. I just typed in New York and dragged the map until I saw the less fashionable West Egg glittering on my screen. (If Nick can describe it that way, so can I.)

SECOND, I zoomed in until I was able to see the names of the streets.

THIRD, (notice the red arrow on the second picture to your right) drag that little yellow man under the compass on the left side of the map to the street you want to visit. **Street view will only work for streets that turn BLUE when you drag that little yellow man. The green circle is where you will start.

FOURTH, use your arrow keys to move. Left and right turn you around. Up and down move you up or down the street. Double-click to zoom.

They actually have a street named Gatsby Ln. that winds its way to the point where Gatsby would have lived.

I have also done this with the book Copper Sun, by Sharon Draper, Of Mice and Men, by Steinbeck, and for William Carlos Williams’ “The Red Wheel Barrow.” (I happened upon a bookstore in Paris called The Red Wheel Barrow using street view while wasting time with this rather addictive technology. We happened to be studying it the poem the next day.)

I hope you’ll make use of this technology. I know here in Birmingham, Alabama we have had our streets photographed by the Google van, so we now have street view. You should check it out for your own city.

HERE is a link to other posts dealing with The Great Gatsby.

Below I have posted the top most trafficked posts of our first year. I would love to see that little map on the left fill up with hits from every state in America. Send it to every teacher you know from other states to see if we can. It would be a great way to start the new year.

BUT FIRST….Thank you to all of those who have written for Teacheng this year. I hope the coming year brings more writers with more great ideas. I cannot tell you how much it has meant to me to have authors from Canada to Florida and readers from around the world. Oh, and to the girl in the elevator during the NCTE who said she recognized me from the blog, that was really cool.

And, I would like to give a special thanks to Kevin. As soon as I told him my idea, he posted the idea on his blog before I had even started. Had he not done that, I, the king of procrastinators, would have never done so.

Also I want to thank Natan Shar, who is a great friend, teacher and web designer ,who provided the web space and helped me get started.

(I am going to be kind of vague below in case my students are reading this.)
I am amazed at the parallels between The Great Gatsby and the short story, also penned by F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Winter Dreams.” Everything from the use of colors to characters and from events to themes align perfectly.

Though the story is quite different in plot, the essence of “Winter Dreams” is a perfect intro to The Great Gatsby.

Here is a list of a few items I found to be noteworthy similarities:

• The use of colors : pink, gold, etc.
• Unworthy youth seeks success and a girl out of his league
• Mentions bond business along side a series of books meant to teach financial success
• The casual use of the word marriage by female character
• The lack of care on her part toward the Dexter’s dreams of having her
• Common themes- I won’t ruin it…you’ve read it.
• First kiss scene
• Reality check on part of the main character

I love this story. I am sad I didn’t read it sooner.

Here are some guided reading questions for parts III through the end of “Winter Dreams.” They are meant to help the reader. I will add higher level thinking questions later.

• Why does Dexter plan to claim he is from Keeble?
• What makes Fitzgerald’s description of their first kiss so magical?
• What did the text claim that that kiss does? What do you think that means?
• What, according to the 1st paragraph in part 4, do the men like about or use to justify staying with Judy?
• Why is he glad Judy lied to him?
• How does she manipulate the relationship? (3rd paragraph on page 752 in part 4)
• What do the chain of statements from Judy about her feelings for Dexter seem to say when examined all together?
• What happens at the picnic Dexter went to with Judy?
• List two examples showing methods she uses to keep men around?
• What does Irene give up to marry Dexter?
• Write down one way he copes losing Judy.
• What is the strategy the text claims Judy never uses to manipulate Dexter?
• What does priggish mean?
• What do people tell Dexter about as he sits with Irene Scheerer?
• Do you think Dexter would be so obsessed with Judy if she had not both “beckoned and yawned at him”? Explain.
• Why is Irene unable to go to the club with Dexter?
• How does Dexter escape the club?
• How does the text say Judy contrasts with her house?
• What does Judy say she will be for Dexter if he will marry her?
• How long does their final relationship last?
• How does he regard the public’s view of the termination of his engagement with Irene?
• When does the story say Dexter would stop loving Judy?
• What happens soon after he plans to go East?
• Why does he “greet the war with relief”?
• What is Judy’s married name?
• How many times does she cheat on her husband?
• How does her husband treat her?
• What does he lose by learning of Judy’s marriage?

Screen grabs are AWESOME because they allow you to take a snapshot of a specified area of your screen. That is how I made the thumbnails for my post about using Wordle with Gatsby. Below are some options for both Mac and Windows users (I have divided them accordingly).

For Mac Users:

To select the whole screen:

You probably already know about this, but mac users can hold COMMAND + SHIFT +3 to take a picture of your whole screen. This picture will be saved to your desktop as a .png file. If you are sending it to someone, you may want to save it as a .jpeg.

To do this on a mac simply

1. double-click the picture on your desktop (that will open it in preview)
2. click file
3. save as
4. then select the file type as a jpeg

If you want to use preview to mark on it and add notations, save that .png file as a pdf and use the tool menu to mark away.

To select a specific area on the screen (like a menu):

Hold down COMMAND + SHIFT + 4 and follow the steps above if you want to change its format or manipulate it.

Here are some more options showcased by lifehacker in a post about screen grabs with leopard:

While you hold down Cmd+Shift+4, you can also hit the:

• Spacebar to drag the selected capture region around the screen.
• Shift key to vertically or horizontally lock the capture region.
• Option key to expand or reduce the size of the region proportionately.

To see the new keys in action, hit up the QuickTime video over at Macworld that demonstrates.

Use new screen region capture options in 10.5 [Macworld via MacUser]

For Windows Users:

There are a number of options for windows users. Since I am a mac guy, I went to LIFEHACKER, which happens to be my homepage, for some ideas. Therefore, I will showcase some of their posts for you to explore.

Take and Edit Screenshots with Flatstone Capture

See the rest of this post here.

Windows Only: Reader-recommended application FastStone Capture is lightweight and feature-rich screen capture tool. In addition to saving its captures in a multitude of formats (BMP, GIF, JPEG, PCX, PNG, TGA, TIFF and PDF), FastStone Capture can send any screenshot to your image editor of choice, printer, email client, open it in a Word or Powerpoint doc, or upload it to an FTP site. There’s no need to send the capture to an image editor for simple tasks however, since FastStone Capture’s built-in editor can easily handle simple annotations and editing tasks such as cropping, adding text, arrows, highlighting, watermarking or enhancements like drop shadows or frames. FastStone Capture is freeware, Windows only. Sharp eyed readers noticed that the new versions of FastStone Capture are no longer freeware, updated to link accurately to the handily portable freeware version. Thanks guys!

You could also use this Firefox extension discussed by Lifehacker:

Firefox extension ScreenGrab lets you save screenshots of web pages by what is visible in your browser window or, more importantly, by scrolling and stitching together the elusive whole page.

ScreenGrab joins the ranks of great, free screen grabbing tools like Snippy that are really nice to have around in a pinch. Of course, if you’re looking for a more full-featured screen grabbing app, nothing beats good ol’ SnagIt. ScreenGrab works wherever Firefox does, requires Java. — Adam Pash

Click here to download this Firefox ScreenGrab

Using SnagIt to capture a whole page on a website (which is pretty awesome!):

(Taken from this post on Lifehacker)
Not-free SnagIt captures screen shots of scrolling windows from top to bottom.
In Windows, the Alt-PrintScreen key combination copies a screen shot of the visible bit of an open application to your clipboard. But that’s just not enough. SnagIt will grab an image of an entire scrolling document from top to bottom - very useful for web pages that change often or might disappear at any moment. SnagIt can record videos of application usage and save them as AVI files (for you time-strapped and good-hearted computer tutors). It will even copy text to the clipboard when the usual Copy and Paste doesn’t work (like a list of files in Explorer.)

SnagIt’s free to try, and a license costs a steep 40 bucks. Handy for the oft-screen-capturing set. IE integration and Firefox extension available.

SnagIt Screen Capture [TechSmith]

I hope this is helpful. Let me know if you have any questions or have other ideas for screen shots.

To read more posts on my blog about The Great Gatsby CLICK HERE.

Below you will find wordles of each of the chapters in The Great Gatsby. In case you are not familiar with wordle.net, it takes texts and gives a visualization of the most frequently used words. The bigger the word, the more frequently it is used.

HERE is a link to other posts dealing with The Great Gatsby.

(To see a wordle for “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, click HERE.)

CLICK on the thumbnails to see a larger version.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Please let me know how you use these in lessons and writing assignments. I think other readers would appreciate it.

Ben Davis

This is a wordle based on the text of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” I have considered making it an assignment in which students have to pull contrasting words from the cloud and write a paper about them.

Click on the picture to see the picture.

Click HERE to see a wordle for THE GREAT GATSBY

Since most of our students have used/are using social networking sites to reveal a little about their characters, why not enourage them to do the same with characters in the literature they read. I recently had the idea of trying this with Gatsby, but this could obviously work with any piece whether your students have experience with these sites or not.

I would suggest asking one of your students to jot down all of the categories of his/her page to give you an up-to-date list of topics. Create a worksheet that requires the task of creating a profile for one or multiple characters. To make this work pedagogically, students must be able to back their answers. You may even decide to require textual examples.

ASSESSMENT OF CHARACTER

You can assess students’ knowledge of how well they understand the characters themselves by asking them to fill the profile with contemporary movies/music/literature. That way you know if the students are thoroughly understanding the characters.

CULTURAL/SETTING ASSESSMENT

For this method you can ask students to write the profile using their knowledge of the character’s cultural/historical background. This would require research, but would be great for introducing students to frontloading materials. Perhaps a webquest would be a good idea at this point.

ADAPTATION FOR MATH/LANGUAGE Read The Full Story…