Thursday 13 October 2016

Grade 8: Digging into Deeper Meaning

Digging into Deeper Meaning


  • What does literal and figurative mean?
  • How can I use context clues to interpret possible meanings of figurative language?
  • What meaning or feeling do music, colour and symbolism add to film?

  • What is the difference between theme and topic, or main idea, in a narrative?

Students explore a variety of texts to identify and interpret phrases that have a deeper meaning. Once we understand the main idea of text we will explore how to develop theme statements using a cooperative snowball activity. Students will work together to generate support for their themes and write a well developed paragraph. We will also explore a variety of poems and write many different types of poems in stations. We'll select our best piece, polish it and integrate images in the finished product.

Students are reading and viewing "The Fantastic Flying Books of Morris Lessmore".

See the handout below:


Students worked individually and in pairs to discuss the deeper meaning behind figurative language.

Today we watch the video and recorded ideas for the following questions:

  1. What effect does the music have on the mood or meaning in the film?
  2. What are some symbols in the film and their meaning?
  3. What meaning is given to the film when colour changes from black and white to colour?
Students discussed their findings and created 2 news paper headlines to represent the main idea of the story and the effectiveness of techniques.

We self-assessed the insightfulness of our ideas and the effectiveness of our support written on the back of our headlines.



Students are analyzing character traits and motivations.  We brainstormed a list of personality traits then examined how we might prove a character has this trait.  

We know to use a character's:

  • WORDS
  • ACTIONS
  • THOUGHTS
  • OPINONS OF OTHERS
as proof.  We realized we may have to make inferences to determine a personality trait.

Students examined Morris's Life logo and explained what the colours and objects might represent about Morris's personality.




We will design our own life logos to describe our traits and motivations.  


Students use Google Draw to create their own life logo.  See Mrs. Anderson's example below:



Next, students write to explain their traits and motivations using life experiences.  

Finally, students choose a presentation format to share their ideas:



LA 7 Fantastic Fiction: Flashback and "Knife"

Fantastic Fiction What are the elements of fiction? How do I identify conflict and explain how it is developed and resolved? ...