(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.

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.

(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?

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

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…

A few posts back, I mentioned using blinklist.com for research (THAT POST). I experimented with this with my students to see how well they would do with it.

I created an account and told the username and password to my students so they could all use it. They went home and used varioius databases and websites to research The Great Gatsby. I also taught them about tagging and how useful it would become for them in the future. After one week, here is what they created.

(Note: Some of these links require you to be logged into the Alabama Virtual Library.)

I am MrDavis this is on Blinklist.com

Lifehacker had a post about the Firefox 3 beta yesterday. I was so excited that I downloaded it immediately. The options on this version include one click bookmarking and tagging for your bookmarks. Though I will still use blinklist.com, I will definitely have to say that this option is very helpful for people doing research on the internet.

With this tagging feature, all you’d have to do is click bookmark and type something like “research,Fitzgerald,Gatsby” Or “research,Fitzgerald,bio” and the browser will categorize the sites you find for you for years of organized use. Pretty cool stuff!!!!