The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street

1. The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street By Rod Sterling

2. Before Reading: Connect to Your Life • Label the next available page in your LNb, “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.” • Describe what happens to you when you think that danger is near. How do you react to fear? Write 3-5 sentences to explain. You may want to give a specific example, if you have had one.

3. Before Reading: Understanding Vocabulary • Word analogies compare two pairs of words. • The relationship in the first pair of words is always the same as the relationship in the second pair of words. • SADNESS: SORROW :: antagonism: dislike • This is read, “Sadness is to sorrow as antagonism is to dislike.” • Sadness and sorrow are synonyms. Therefore, antagonism and dislike are also synonyms.

4. Before Reading: Understanding Vocabulary • FLUSTERED: CALM :: charming: rude • Flustered is to calm as charming is to rude. • Flustered and calm are antonyms, so charming and rude must also be antonyms.

5. Before Reading: Understanding Vocabulary • Copy and complete the analogies below in your LNb. Use the words in the word bank. • Word bank: intense, optimistic, contorted, legitimate, defiant • TWISTED: _____________:: solo: alone • BOIL: FREEZE :: _____________: cooperative • IMPROVEMENT: _____________ :: disappointment: hopeless • SKYSCRAPER: TALL :: law: ______________ • ________________: MILD :: prisoner: captor

6. Reading 1: Understanding Characteristics of Teleplays • Teleplay: a play written for television • Similar to drama scripts • Contains stage directions • Explain settings • Describe actions of characters • Give suggestions to director • Describe props, lighting, sound effects • Different from a drama script because teleplays include CAMERA directions as well. • Use the the stage and camera directions to help you visualize what a performance of the drama might look like.

7. Group Discussion Questions • What event startles the people on Maple Street? • What problems do people notice as they try to go about their business? • How do different people try to explain the cause of the problems they encounter? • Why do people begin to panic? • What are the neighbors afraid of? What should they really fear?

8. Reading 2: Author’s Purpose • An active reader can recognize the author’s purpose in literature by carefully evaluating the language, tone, and the way information can be presented. • There are 4 basic purposes that an author may intend for his or her readers: • To entertain • To inform • To express an opinion • To persuade

9. Author’s Purpose cont. • To determine an author’s purpose: • Look for direct or implied statements of purpose. • Analyze how the author presents the information. • Clarify the language and tone of the work. • Monitor your own reaction to the piece. • Evaluate how well the purpose is achieved.

10. Author’s Purpose cont. • Read the excerpt from the story and determine the author’s purpose. • Narrator: The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices– to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy. A thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own for the children… and the children yet unborn, (a pause) and the pity of it is… that these things cannot be confined to… The Twilight Zone!

11. Reading 3: Theme • Theme is the moral or message in an author’s work. • Theme is often a thought about life or human nature that the author wants to share. • Clues to a story’s theme can be found in the title, the setting, the plot, and the way characters are shown and how they change.