Connecting Across Texts

1. Connecting Across Texts

2. Connection Listen to these songs and try to find the connection between them: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GUnfLPpjLs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbc0ewKIRso So, what’s the connection? They are two different music styles, yet they both contain the same message. Many times articles can have the same message and cite different research or use different factual claims to get the message across.

3. TEACH Readers, today we are going to make connections between texts and support those ideas with textual evidence. To do this we have to be a detective and ask, “What is an idea that both articles/stories are trying to tell me?” If we find a common idea, then it helps support the factual claim we think both articles/stories are telling us. Let’s take a look at this first text (a poem):

4. Poem One – “The Ruin” by Jacob Polley What happened? Ruin already had root. Plague came, within and without. No one, however high, whatever wit, was spared. Here, wide open to the wind, is where breath was fought for, where men raved. Now birdsong embroiders space among the rubble of what stood. And the builders are broken down, bone by bone, mindless and muddled together in the bottomless muck. Half-recalled by these grim, rain-collecting courts, by this unshattered span of arch, this blush of broken slate, are those who twisted gold, empearled pins and gazed on heaps of gems that beat and sparked. Houses were here. Hot water sprang from wells and the walls held vaults of steam and banked beds of embers, like precious stones. Frost could get no grip. But all such days are gone. What walls and gables, wonders still of workmanship. Whoever's stronghold this was, havoc's jumbled it beyond all mending, uprooting towers, rusting together tools. What was built by strange smiths, skilled in stone, is burst, underdug, eaten down by age: weird bricks litter this wasteground. And what of the wrights and hammer-men, the mortar-mixers and heavers of slab? A long time laid off, fast in the earth, while their sons passed, and the sons of their sons knew no like work. But these walls withstood mosses and snows, the fall of kings, peace's indifferent wear by rain and rubbing kine. Magogs raised them. Their wit matched their might. Their great halls gawped. Their tile floors gleamed with muscle girls and monster fish. Here springs were housed, and happiness found haven among men making merry, their shadows merging, nimble as a change of mind, massive on the inner walls.

5. Stop and think… What was the poem about? Now read the second poem…

6. Poem Two – Author Unknown Archaeologists (Acrostic Poem) Artifacts of long ago they're ever searching outRelics in the Earth's soil layers interred ever so deepCurios from cultures past they're excavating outHistory is alive in the things buried so very deepAbroad and at home their trowels seeking outEnlightening the world with fragments of the deepOpening our eyes to the items they shovel out Lasting stories of past societies entombed down deepOngoing discoveries made with what they dig outGreat civilizations lie in quietness beneath the deepInteresting journals and facts these specialists put outSaving the ken of ancestries which are lodged deepTimes way back in eons past to-day bought outSurfacing from the ground out of a sleep most deep

7. Stop and think… What was the second poem about?

8. So now as a reader I ask myself: “What is the idea from both of these poems that I could support with text evidence?” Ancient buildings hold keys to the past. Text evidence from poem one: “Houses were here. Hot water sprang from wells and the walls held vaults of steam and banked beds of embers, like precious stones.” Text evidence from poem two: “History is alive in the things buried so very deep” and “Great civilizations lie in quietness beneath the deep.” Both of the pieces of text evidence point to the same idea: Ancient buildings hold keys to the past.

9. Now it’s your turn!First, in your textbook, turn to page 918 and read The First Emperor. Fill out the section of the chart for this selection after you read. Second, turn to page 924 and read Digging Up the Past. After you finish reading the second selection, fill in the second part of the chart.Last, Think about both selections. What ideas do the selections share? Write the connection in the bottom box called “synthesizing information.”Readers, as you continue reading your independent novels, think about connections you could make to other texts you’ve read.