Reading Focus: Create a Synthesis Page to Track Emotional Journeys

Last class we worked on analyzing and taking notes on character's emotions. Today we are going to work on looking back at our notes and synthesizing (combining individual things or ideas into a greater, coherent whole) all the individual pieces of evidence and your different inferences about the character's emotions and creating new understandings and claims.

* Here is my example:

A synthesis page could be a web, map, chart, comic, diagram, list, or any combination of words and illustrations to help you notice patterns and make sense of the focus and evidence. Be creative. Also, use this as a way to help you explore your ideas about the text and develop ideas you will most likely write your next reading response on.

What to include on your synthesis page:

• focus: stated as an inquiry question such as "How has Vince's emotions changed throughout the story?", sentence, or title
• textual evidence: relevant quotations that best support the focus
• your thoughts (I think... because...), inferences (this shows that...), questions (Why... How...), connections (This reminds me of ... because...)
• illustrations or colors to help you organize your thinking and notice patterns

After you have created a synthesis page, state your new understandings; these are the the very beginning drafts of claims/thesis statements.

Here are some sentence starters for writing claims about character emotions:

1. _______ is feeling many things such as
2. The dominant emotion is… but the more subtle emotion is…
3. The explicit emotion is… but the implicit emotion is…
4. Although the character might be projecting… she might really be feeling…
5. Throughout the story, the character’s emotions change...
6. The character feels .... at first; later, he/she begins to feel ... because... 

Task: 

1. Go back to your independent reading book and track notes on characters emotions. Go back and find important evidence that supports the emotions and write notes on post-its or in the margins.

2. On a blank sheet of paper, create a synthesis page for character's emotions. Then, list new understandings.