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Macomb ISD
Unit 10.3 Power of the Individual The Crucible - Appendix
You can use TPS in many different areas of instruction, such as vocabulary,
content concepts, opinions, compare-and-contrast activities, sharing parts of
homework, summaries of text or visuals, connecting to background knowledge or
other classes, making predictions or inferences, and solving problems.
Procedure:
Directions
Every individual has power: the power to affect change in his
or her own life, the lives of friends and family, the
community, and the world. Using individual power can take
the form of changing your own or someone elses mind about
prejudice, campaigning for a worthy cause, or doing your
part in limiting the Greenhouse Effect.
Write about the theme: The Power of the Individual
Use examples from real life, from what you have read or
watched, or from your imagination. Your writing will be read
by interested adults.
Appendix #3
DIRECTIONS
Now you will be doing three things: revising your paper (which means to rethink
your ideas); polishing your paper (which means to edit and proofread); and
recopying your paper as neatly as possible.
Use the following checklist as you revise and edit the writing that you have done.
When you are finished revising, you must make a final copy of your paper. Then,
proofread your final copy to make sure that all of your revisions have been made.
Appendix #4
Rubric
Writing from Knowledge and Experience
Characteristic 6 5 4 3 2 1
s
Content and The writing is The writing is The writing is The writing is The writing is The writing is
Ideas exceptionally clear clear and generally clear somewhat clear only generally
and focused. Ideas focused. Ideas and focused. and focused. occasionally unclear and
and content are and content are Ideas and content Ideas and content clear and unfocused.
thoroughly well developed are developed are developed focused. Ideas Ideas and
developed with with relevant with relevant with limited or and content are content are
relevant details and details and details and partially underdeveloped not developed
examples where examples where examples where successful use of . or connected.
appropriate. appropriate. appropriate, examples and
although there details.
may be some
unevenness.
Organization The writers control The writers The response is There may be There may be There may be
over organization control over generally evidence of an little evidence no noticeable
and the connections organization and coherent, and its organizational of organizational
between ideas move the connections organization is structure, but it organizational structure.
the reader smoothly between ideas functional. may be artificial or structure.
and naturally effectively move ineffective.
through the text. the reader
through the text.
Style and Voice The writer shows a The writer shows The writers Vocabulary may Vocabulary may
mature command of a command of command of be basic. be limited.
language including language language,
precise word choice including precise including word
that results in a word choice. choice, supports
compelling piece of meaning.
writing.
Conventions Tight control over The language is Lapses in writing Incomplete Limited control Lack of
language use and well controlled, conventions are mastery of over over writing control over
mastery of writing and occasional not distracting. writing conventions writing
conventions lapses in writing conventions and may make the conventions
contribute to the conventions are language use may writing difficult may make the
effect of the hardly interfere with to understand. writing
response. noticeable. meaning some of difficult to
the time. understand.
Not ratable if: a) off topic b) illegible c) written in language other than English d) blank/refused to respond.
Appendix #5
The Alligator in the Fishbowl
This revision exercise is a brief summary of Michael Steinberg and
Sharon Thomass Strategy for Student-Led Response Groups
from Language Arts Journal of Michigan, Vol. 4, Number 2, pages
24-35.
Appendix #6
Quick Write Directions
What is it?
Quick Writes are most often used to develop fluency. In Quick Writes, students
write rapidly and without stopping in response to literature and for other types of
impromptu writing. Quick Writes, provide students with a means of quickly
representing their thinking. Rather than being concerned with correct spelling,
punctuation, and word usage, the student is more interested in simply responding
to the prompt in a personal way. Students reflect on what they know about a
topic, ramble on paper, generate words and ideas, and make connections among
the ideas. Young children often do Quick Writes in which they draw pictures and
add labels. Some students do a mixture of writing and drawing.
Students do Quick Writes for a variety of purposes:
Learning logs:
Immediately following a particular lesson, engaging activity, or
discussion, pause and allow students to reflect in their learning logs
or journals. Share responses.
Constructed response to literature:
--to activate prior knowledge
--to reflect on a theme of a story and how it relates to them
personally
--to describe a favorite character
Reflections on new learning:
--students write an explanation of what something means
--to define or explain a word on the word wall
1. The teacher selects a purpose for the students. This prompt should
be tied to a content area and elicit a personal response from the
student.
3. Quick Writes may be used several times in a day. They may provide a
nugget for a more extended piece of writing.
In the 1960s, folksinger Phil Ochs wrote a song called Outside of a Small Circle of
Friends with these lyrics:
The lyrics were a reminder of the murder of Kitty Genovese in 1964, an incident
that began a national debate about the responsibility of the average citizen to
come to the aid of people in danger. A young woman was brutally murdered in a
New York residential area while at least 38 people watched. Ever since,
professional students of human behavior and amateurs alike have attempted to
explain why no one was willing to become involved. In this selection, Loudon
Wainwright briefly records the feelings of some of those who saw Kitty Genovese
killed.
To judge from the bitter example given us by the good folks of a respectable
New York residential area, Samaritans are very scarce these days. .. . if the
reactions of the 38 witnesses to the murder of Catherine Genovese provide any
true reflection of a national attitude toward our neighbors, we are becoming a
callous, chickenhearted and immoral people.... An examination of the pitiful facts
of Miss Genoveses terminal experience makes very necessary the ugly personal
question each of us must ask: What would I have done?
The story is simple and brutal. As she arrived home in the early morning
darkness, Kitty Genovese, a decent, pretty young woman of 28, was stalked
through the streets close to her Kew Gardens apartment and stabbed again and
again by a man who had followed her home and who took almost a half hour to
kill her. During that bloody little eternity, . . . Kitty screamed and cried repeatedly
for help.... Oh, my God! she cried out at one point. He stabbed me! Please help
me! Someone help me ! Minutes later, before the murderer came back and
attacked her for the final time, she screamed, Im dying! Im dying!
The reason the murderers actions and his victims calls are so well
documented is that police were able to find 38 of Kittys neighbors who admitted
they witnessed the awful event. They heard the screams and most understood
her cry for help. Peeking out their windows, many saw enough of the killer to
provide a good description of his appearance and clothing. A few saw him strike
Kitty, and more saw her staggering down the sidewalk after she had been
stabbed twice and was looking for a place to hide. One especially sharp-eyed
person was able to report that the murderer was sucking his finger as he left the
scene; he had cut himself during the attack. Another witness has the awful
distinction of being the only person Kitty Genovese recognized in the audience
taking in her final moments. She looked at him and called to him by name. He did
not reply.
Appendix #7a
No one really helped Kitty at all. Only one person shouted at the killer (Let
that girl alone!), and the one phone call that was finally made to the police was
placed after the murderer had got in his car and driven off. For the most part the
witnesses, crouching in darkened windows like watchers of a Late Show, looked
on until the play had passed beyond their view. Then they went back to bed....
On the scene a few days after the killer had been caught and confessed,
Police Lieutenant Bernard Jacobs discussed the investigation. The word we kept
hearing from the witnesses later was involved, Jacobs said.... People told us
they just didnt want to get involved, Jacobs said to me. They dont want to be
questioned or have to go to court. He pointed to an apartment house directly
across the quiet street. They looked down at this thing, he went on, from four
different floors of that building. .... Its a nice neighborhood, isnt it? he went
on. Doesnt look like a jungle. Good, solid people. We dont expect anybody to
come out into the street and fight this kind of bum. All we want is a phone call.
We dont even need to know whos making it.
You know what this man told us after we caught him? Jacobs asked. He
said he figured nobody would do anything to help. He heard the windows go up
and saw the lights go on. He just retreated for a while and when things quieted
down, he came back to finish the job.
Later, in one of the apartment houses, a witness to part of Kitty Genoveses
murder talked. His comments . . . indicate the price in bad conscience he and his
neighbors are now paying. I feel terrible about it, he said. The thing keeps
coming back in my mind. You just dont want to get involved. They might have
picked me up as a suspect if Id bounced right out there. I was getting ready, but
my wife stopped me. She didnt want to be a heros widow. I woke up about the
third scream. I pulled the blind so hard it came off the window. The girl was on her
knees struggling to get up. I didnt know if she was drunk or what. 1 never saw
the man. She staggered a little when she walked, like she had a few drinks in her.
I forgot the screen was there and I almost put my head through it trying to get a
better look. I could see people with their heads out and hear windows going up
and down all along the street.
Every time I look out here now, he said, its like looking out at a
nightmare. How could so many of us have had the same idea that we didnt need
to do anything? But thats not all thats wrong. Now he sounded betrayed and he
told what was really eating him. Those 38 witnesses had, at least, talked to the
police after the murder. The man pointed to a nearby building. There are people
over there who saw everything, he said. And there hasnt been a peep out of
them yet. Not one peep.
http://staff.bcc.edu/jalexand/Reading-5-7--Wainright-The_Dying_Girl.htm
Appendix #7b
Appendix #8a
Macomb ELA Genre Units: Focus Question Rubric
Organization Student restates the Student restates the Students answer either
Restatement question in his/her own question in the answer. yes, no, or I agree
(Beginning) words. Events are retold in a without reference to the
Details in support Details support point. somewhat disconnected question.
(Middle) Response is written in a structure. Writing lacks sequence.
Conclusion (End) logical sequence that
makes connections.
Style/Voice Word choice is precise. Vocabulary is basic. Vocabulary is limited.
Uses quotes to Uses quotes effectively. May use quotations, but Quotations are not used.
support, Conclusion engages the reference is unclear. The conclusion is
Concludes with reader. Conclusion is partially ineffective or does not
prediction characters successful. exist.
feelings, opinions,
etc
Conventions/Presentation Presentation makes the Writing is readable. Writing may not be legible.
Writing is neat. writing inviting. Errors in conventions do Errors in conventions
Uses proper Writing shows control over not distract from meaning. distract from meaning.
conventions conventions.
Appendix 8b
Focus Question #1
What does the Phil Ochs song suggest about the bystanders?
Answer Plan
1. Restate the question.
2. Write several sentences that describe what the bystanders were doing.
3. Conclude with an opinion of the type of people the bystanders are.
Possible Answer
[1] In Phil Ochs song, Ochs describes what the bystanders may have
been doing while Kitty Genovese was being attacked. [2] Ochs states that
the bystanders were very aware of what was happening to the young
woman. After they have seen what is happening, they weigh their options
and choose not to inconvenience themselves. Justifying their decision by
rationalizing that most people do not care; they continue with their lives.
[3] Ochs is suggesting that the bystanders were too self-centered to be
bothered with someone elses problems.
Appendix #9
Focus Question # 2
Why does Wainright include the comments by the police officer and
witness in his account of this murder?
Answer Plan
1. Introduce the topic in one sentence.
2. Write several sentences providing details to support your point.
3. Conclude your answer by stating your opinion in one sentence.
Possible Answer
[1] Wainright includes many quotes from a police officer who
investigated the murder and from a bystander who witnessed the murder.
[2] The officer stated that people repeatedly said that they did not want to
get involved, but they only had to make an anonymous phone call. He
also said that the murderer knew that no one would do anything, so he
came back. One witness said he was haunted by the memory, but at the
time he did not want to get involved. He was even more frustrated,
though, by the people in the building across the street who did not even
talk to the police. [3] The author included this information to point out the
consequences of not wanting to get involved, both for the victim and the
witnesses.
Appendix # 10
Genre: Informational Text
Definition:
Informational text is designed primarily to explain, argue or describe rather
than to entertain. (from Harris, et al. The Literacy Dictionary, IRA, 1995)
The main function of expository text is to present the reader information
about theories, predictions, persons, facts, dates, specifications,
generalizations, limitations, and conclusions. (Michael F. Graves and Wayne
H. Slater. Research on Expository Text: Implications for Teachers in
Childrens Comprehension of Text, K. Denise Muth, editor, IRA, 1989.)
Purpose:
To acquire information
To satisfy curiosity
To understand our world more fully
To understand new concepts and expand vocabulary
To make connections to our lives and learning
To write good nonfiction
To have fun
(from Stephanie Harvey. Nonfiction Matters, Stenhouse, 1998)
Form and Features:
Informational text uses a number of forms of organization including:
Sequence of events
Description by categories
Process description
Comparison/contrast
Problem and solution
Cause and effect
Informational text
gives information,
gives necessary explanations to understand the information,
shows what is and is not important, and
often uses narrative(story) elements to make it interesting.
(from Barbara Reed and Elaine Weber. Expository Text: What Is A Teacher To Do?
ABC Publishing, 1990.)
Informational text may have some or all of the following features:
Table of contents and index
Photographs and realistic, accurate illustrations
Captions to describe photographs, illustrations, etc.
Maps and diagrams
Glossary (words with definitions)
Footnotes
Bibliographies
Appendix #11a
Informational Text Bookmark Informational Text Bookmark Inform
Gives facts or information on a specific Gives facts or information on a specific Gives facts
topic or event topic or event
Name: Name: Name:
List the page number and a brief reminder List the page number and a brief reminder List the pag
of the genre characteristics you find as you of the genre characteristics you find as you of the genr
read. read. read.
p. p. p.
p. p. p.
p. p. p.
p. p. p.
Organized by sequence, problem/solution, Organized by sequence, problem/solution, Organized
cause/effect, compare/contrast, cause/effect, compare/contrast, cause/effec
p. p. p.
p. p. p.
p. p. p.
p. p. p.
Features include: index/contents, Features include: index/contents, Features in
photographs/captions, maps/diagrams, photographs/captions, maps/diagrams, photograph
p. p. p.
p. p. p.
p. p. p.
p. p. p.
Copyright 2005, MacombISD All Rights Reserved. Copyright 2005, MacombISD All Rights Reserved. Copyrigh
Appendix #11b
Appendix #7b
Think Aloud
The Literacy Dictionary (Harris and Hodges, 10995, IRA) defines a think aloud as 1. oral verbalization, 2. in
literacy instruction a metacognitive technique or strategy in which the teacher verbalizes aloud while reading a
selection orally, thus modeling the process of comprehension (Davey, 1983).
Put another way, a think aloud is making thinking public. A teacher models what an expert would be thinking
as s/he were reading, visualizing, listening; or preparing to write, speak or visually represent. The goal of
thinking aloud is to graphically show students what they might do to understand what they are reading, viewing
or listening to, as well as, plan for writing or speaking.
Following is an example of a think aloud for figuring out the meaning of an unfamiliar word in context:
Its important while we read to be able to figure out the meaning of an unfamiliar word. When I come to a
word I dont know the meaning of, I read the words and sentences around that word to try to figure out what the
word might mean.
The other day I was reading this great mystery, The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin. I read the following
paragraph with lots of challenging words:
Sam Westing was not murdered, but one of his heirs was guilty guilty of some offense against a relentless
man. And that heir was in danger. From his grave Westing would stalk his enemy and through his heirs he
would wreak his revenge.
It was a paragraph about Sam Westing who had just died and left a challenge behind to find his killer(s). I knew
most of the words. I knew relentless meant that Sam Westing never gave up until he got what he wanted. I
knew that stalk his enemy meant that even after death, Sam Westing would somehow go after and find his
enemy. But I wasnt sure what wreak his revenge meant. I knew that revenge meant Sam Westing would get
even with his enemy, so I figured that wreak must be a stronger way to say, get his revenge.
Ive heard the word wreak before, and now Ill keep it in my mind and may be able to
use it in writing sometime. I will know it when I see it in print.
Appendix #12
ELA High School Unit10.1 Appendix Macomb Intermediate School
District 2006
How to Summarize
Summaries contain the most important facts in an article. Usually summaries are less
than one third the length of the article being summarized.
1. Identify the material you are summarizing, giving the author, title, and any
relevant publishing information.
2. Present the most important facts and the conclusion found in the article.
The source for this information is Pickett, Nell Ann and Ann Laster. Technical English. New
York: Harper Collins College Publishers, 1996.
Appendix #13
ELA High School Unit10.1 Appendix Macomb Intermediate School
District 2006
Summary Self-Evaluation
When you have completed your summary rough draft, use the
questions:
"The Performance," a new short story by Arthur Miller, appears in this week's magazine and here online (see Fiction). In 1996,
Miller wrote this essay for The New Yorker, in which he reflects on the changing politics surrounding his play "The Crucible,"
which he wrote in 1952, and which is now in revival on Broadway, at the Virginia Theatre.
As I watched "The Crucible" taking shape as a movie over much of the past year, the sheer depth of time that it
represents for me kept returning to mind. As those powerful actors blossomed on the screen, and the children
and the horses, the crowds and the wagons, I thought again about how I came to cook all this up nearly fifty
years ago, in an America almost nobody I know seems to remember clearly. In a way, there is a biting irony in
this film's having been made by a Hollywood studio, something unimaginable in the fifties. But there they are
Daniel Day-Lewis (John Proctor) scything his sea-bordered field, Joan Allen (Elizabeth) lying pregnant in
the frigid jail, Winona Ryder (Abigail) stealing her minister-uncle's money, majestic Paul Scofield (Judge
Danforth) and his righteous empathy with the Devil-possessed children, and all of them looking as inevitable
as rain.
I remember those yearsthey formed "The Crucible" 's skeletonbut I have lost the dead weight of the fear I
had then. Fear doesn't travel well; just as it can warp judgment, its absence can diminish memory's truth. What
terrifies one generation is likely to bring only a puzzled smile to the next. I remember how in 1964, only
twenty years after the war, Harold Clurman, the director of "Incident at Vichy," showed the cast a film of a
Hitler speech, hoping to give them a sense of the Nazi period in which my play took place. They watched as
Hitler, facing a vast stadium full of adoring people, went up on his toes in ecstasy, hands clasped under his
chin, a sublimely self-gratified grin on his face, his body swiveling rather cutely, and they giggled at his
overacting.
Likewise, films of Senator Joseph McCarthy are rather unsettlingif you remember the fear he once spread.
Buzzing his truculent sidewalk brawler's snarl through the hairs in his nose, squinting through his cat's eyes
and sneering like a villain, he comes across now as nearly comical, a self-aware performer keeping a straight
face as he does his juicy threat-shtick.
McCarthy's power to stir fears of creeping Communism was not entirely based on illusion, of course; the
paranoid, real or pretended, always secretes its pearl around a grain of fact. From being our wartime ally, the
Soviet Union rapidly became an expanding empire. In 1949, Mao Zedong took power in China. Western
Europe also seemed ready to become Redespecially Italy, where the Communist Party was the largest
outside Russia, and was growing. Capitalism, in the opinion of many, myself included, had nothing more to
say, its final poisoned bloom having been Italian and German Fascism. McCarthybrash and ill-mannered but
to many authentic and trueboiled it all down to what anyone could understand: we had "lost China" and
would soon lose Europe as well, because the State Departmentstaffed, of course, under Democratic
Presidentswas full of treasonous pro-Soviet intellectuals. It was as simple as that.
If our losing China seemed the equivalent of a flea's losing an elephant, it was still a phraseand a conviction
that one did not dare to question; to do so was to risk drawing suspicion on oneself. Indeed, the State
Department proceeded to hound and fire the officers who knew China, its language, and its opaque culturea
move that suggested the practitioners of sympathetic magic who wring the neck of a doll in order to make a
distant enemy's head drop off. There was magic all around; the politics of alien conspiracy soon dominated
political discourse and bid fair to wipe out any other issue. How could one deal with such enormities in a play?
"The Crucible" was an act of desperation. Much of my desperation branched out, I suppose, from a typical
Depression-era traumathe blow struck on the mind by the rise of European Fascism and the brutal anti-
Semitism it had brought to power. But by 1950, when I began to think of writing about the hunt for Reds in
America, I was motivated in some great part by the paralysis that had set in among many liberals who, despite
their discomfort with the inquisitors' violations of civil rights, were fearful, and with good reason, of being
identified as covert Communists if they should protest too strongly.
In any play, however trivial, there has to be a still point of moral reference against which to gauge the action.
In our lives, in the late nineteen-forties and early nineteen-fifties, no such point existed anymore. The left could
not look straight at the Soviet Union's abrogations of human rights. The anti-Communist liberals could not
acknowledge the violations of those rights by congressional committees. The far right, meanwhile, was licking
up all the cream. The days of "J'accuse" were gone, for anyone needs to feel right to declare someone else
wrong. Gradually, all the old political and moral reality had melted like a Dal watch. Nobody but a fanatic, it
seemed, could really say all that he believed.
President Truman was among the first to have to deal with the dilemma, and his way of resolving itof having
to trim his sails before the howling gale on the rightturned out to be momentous. At first, he was outraged at
the allegation of widespread Communist infiltration of the government and called the charge of "coddling
Communists" a red herring dragged in by the Republicans to bring down the Democrats. But such was the
gathering power of raw belief in the great Soviet plot that Truman soon felt it necessary to institute loyalty
boards of his own.
The Red hunt, led by the House Committee on Un-American Activities and by McCarthy, was becoming the
dominating fixation of the American psyche. It reached Hollywood when the studios, after first resisting,
agreed to submit artists' names to the House Committee for "clearing" before employing them. This unleashed
a veritable holy terror among actors, directors, and others, from Party members to those who had had the
merest brush with a front organization.
The Soviet plot was the hub of a great wheel of causation; the plot justified the crushing of all nuance, all the
shadings that a realistic judgment of reality requires. Even worse was the feeling that our sensitivity to this
onslaught on our liberties was passing from usindeed, from me. In "Timebends," my autobiography, I
recalled the time I'd written a screenplay ("The Hook") about union corruption on the Brooklyn waterfront.
Harry Cohn, the head of Columbia Pictures, did something that would once have been considered unthinkable:
he showed my script to the F.B.I. Cohn then asked me to take the gangsters in my script, who were threatening
and murdering their opponents, and simply change them to Communists. When I declined to commit this
idiocy (Joe Ryan, the head of the longshoremen's union, was soon to go to Sing Sing for racketeering), I got a
wire from Cohn saying, "The minute we try to make the script pro-American you pull out." By thenit was
1951I had come to accept this terribly serious insanity as routine, but there was an element of the marvelous
in it which I longed to put on the stage.
In those years, our thought processes were becoming so magical, so paranoid, that to imagine writing a play
about this environment was like trying to pick one's teeth with a ball of wool: I lacked the tools to illuminate
miasma. Yet I kept being drawn back to it.
I had read about the witchcraft trials in college, but it was not until I read a book published in 1867a two-
volume, thousand-page study by Charles W. Upham, who was then the mayor of Salemthat I knew I had to
write about the period. Upham had not only written a broad and thorough investigation of what was even then
an almost lost chapter of Salem's past but opened up to me the details of personal relationships among many
participants in the tragedy.
I visited Salem for the first time on a dismal spring day in 1952; it was a sidetracked town then, with
abandoned factories and vacant stores. In the gloomy courthouse there I read the transcripts of the witchcraft
trials of 1692, as taken down in a primitive shorthand by ministers who were spelling each other. But there was
one entry in Upham in which the thousands of pieces I had come across were jogged into place. It was from a
report written by the Reverend Samuel Parris, who was one of the chief instigators of the witch-hunt. "During
the examination of Elizabeth Procter, Abigail Williams and Ann Putnam"the two were "afflicted" teen-age
accusers, and Abigail was Parris's niece"both made offer to strike at said Procter; but when Abigail's hand
came near, it opened, whereas it was made up into a fist before, and came down exceeding lightly as it drew
near to said Procter, and at length, with open and extended fingers, touched Procter's hood very lightly.
Immediately Abigail cried out her fingers, her fingers, her fingers burned. . . ."
In this remarkably observed gesture of a troubled young girl, I believed, a play became possible. Elizabeth
Proctor had been the orphaned Abigail's mistress, and they had lived together in the same small house until
Elizabeth fired the girl. By this time, I was sure, John Proctor had bedded Abigail, who had to be dismissed
most likely to appease Elizabeth. There was bad blood between the two women now. That Abigail started, in
effect, to condemn Elizabeth to death with her touch, then stopped her hand, then went through with it, was
quite suddenly the human center of all this turmoil.
All this I understood. I had not approached the witchcraft out of nowhere, or from purely social and political
considerations. My own marriage of twelve years was teetering and I knew more than I wished to know about
ELA High School Unit10.1 Appendix Macomb Intermediate School
District 2006
where the blame lay. That John Proctor the sinner might overturn his paralyzing personal guilt and become the
Appendix #15d
most forthright voice against the madness around him was a reassurance to me, and, I suppose, an inspiration:
it demonstrated that a clear moral outcry could still spring even from an ambiguously unblemished soul.
Moving crabwise across the profusion of evidence, I sensed that I had at last found something of myself in it,
and a play began to accumulate around this man.
But as the dramatic form became visible, one problem remained unyielding: so many practices of the Salem
trials were similar to those employed by the congressional committees that I could easily be accused of
skewing history for a mere partisan purpose. Inevitably, it was no sooner known that my new play was about
Salem than I had to confront the charge that such an analogy was speciousthat there never were any witches
but there certainly are Communists. In the seventeenth century, however, the existence of witches was never
questioned by the loftiest minds in Europe and America; and even lawyers of the highest eminence, like Sir
Edward Coke, a veritable hero of liberty for defending the common law against the king's arbitrary power,
believed that witches had to be prosecuted mercilessly. Of course, there were no Communists in 1692, but it
was literally worth your life to deny witches or their powers, given the exhortation in the Bible, "Thou shalt not
suffer a witch to live." There had to be witches in the world or the Bible lied. Indeed, the very structure of evil
depended on Lucifer's plotting against God. (And the irony is that klatches of Luciferians exist all over the
country today, there may even be more of them now than there are Communists.)
As with most humans, panic sleeps in one unlighted corner of my soul. When I walked at night along the
empty, wet streets of Salem in the week that I spent there, I could easily work myself into imagining my terror
before a gaggle of young girls flying down the road screaming that somebody's "familiar spirit" was chasing
them. This anxiety-laden leap backward over nearly three centuries may have been helped along by a particular
Upham footnote. At a certain point, the high court of the province made the fatal decision to admit, for the first
time, the use of "spectral evidence" as proof of guilt. Spectral evidence, so aptly named, meant that if I swore
that you had sent out your "familiar spirit" to choke, tickle, or poison me or my cattle, or to control my
thoughts and actions, I could get you hanged unless you confessed to having had contact with the Devil. After
all, only the Devil could lend such powers of invisible transport to confederates, in his everlasting plot to bring
down Christianity.
Naturally, the best proof of the sincerity of your confession was your naming others whom you had seen in the
Devil's companyan invitation to private vengeance, but made official by the seal of the theocratic state. It
was as though the court had grown tired of thinking and had invited in the instincts: spectral evidencethat
poisoned cloud of paranoid fantasymade a kind of lunatic sense to them, as it did in plot-ridden 1952, when
so often the question was not the acts of an accused but the thoughts and intentions in his alienated mind.
The breathtaking circularity of the process had a kind of poetic tightness. Not everybody was accused, after all,
so there must be some reason why you were. By denying that there is any reason whatsoever for you to be
accused, you are implying, by virtue of a surprisingly small logical leap, that mere chance picked you out,
which in turn implies that the Devil might not really be at work in the village or, God forbid, even exist.
Therefore, the investigation itself is either mistaken or a fraud. You would have to be a crypto-Luciferian to say
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thatnot a great idea if you wanted to go back to your farm.
The more I read into the Salem panic, the more it touched off corresponding images of common experiences in
Appendix #15e
the fifties: the old friend of a blacklisted person crossing the street to avoid being seen talking to him; the
overnight conversions of former leftists into born-again patriots; and so on. Apparently, certain processes are
universal. When Gentiles in Hitler's Germany, for example, saw their Jewish neighbors being trucked off, or
farmers in Soviet Ukraine saw the Kulaks vanishing before their eyes, the common reaction, even among those
unsympathetic to Nazism or Communism, was quite naturally to turn away in fear of being identified with the
condemned. As I learned from non-Jewish refugees, however, there was often a despairing pity mixed with
"Well, they must have done something." Few of us can easily surrender our belief that society must somehow
make sense. The thought that the state has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people is
intolerable. And so the evidence has to be internally denied.
I was also drawn into writing "The Crucible" by the chance it gave me to use a new languagethat of
seventeenth-century New England. That plain, craggy English was liberating in a strangely sensuous way, with
its swings from an almost legalistic precision to a wonderful metaphoric richness. "The Lord doth terrible
things amongst us, by lengthening the chain of the roaring lion in an extraordinary manner, so that the Devil is
come down in great wrath," Deodat Lawson, one of the great witch-hunting preachers, said in a sermon.
Lawson rallied his congregation for what was to be nothing less than a religious war against the Evil One
"Arm, arm, arm!"and his concealed anti-Christian accomplices.
But it was not yet my language, and among other strategies to make it mine I enlisted the help of a former
University of Michigan classmate, the Greek-American scholar and poet Kimon Friar. (He later translated
Kazantzakis.) The problem was not to imitate the archaic speech but to try to create a new echo of it which
would flow freely off American actors' tongues. As in the film, nearly fifty years later, the actors in the first
production grabbed the language and ran with it as happily as if it were their customary speech.
"The Crucible" took me about a year to write. With its five sets and a cast of twenty-one, it never occurred to
me that it would take a brave man to produce it on Broadway, especially given the prevailing climate, but
Kermit Bloomgarden never faltered. Well before the play opened, a strange tension had begun to build. Only
two years earlier, the "Death of a Salesman" touring company had played to a thin crowd in Peoria, Illinois,
having been boycotted nearly to death by the American Legion and the Jaycees. Before that, the Catholic War
Veterans had prevailed upon the Army not to allow its theatrical groups to perform, first, "All My Sons," and
then any play of mine, in occupied Europe. The Dramatists Guild refused to protest attacks on a new play by
Sean O'Casey, a self-declared Communist, which forced its producer to cancel his option. I knew of two
suicides by actors depressed by upcoming investigation, and every day seemed to bring news of people exiling
themselves to Europe: Charlie Chaplin, the director Joseph Losey, Jules Dassin, the harmonica virtuoso Larry
Adler, Donald Ogden Stewart, one of the most sought-after screenwriters in Hollywood, and Sam Wanamaker,
who would lead the successful campaign to rebuild the Old Globe Theatre on the Thames.
On opening night, January 22, 1953, I knew that the atmosphere would be pretty hostile. The coldness of the
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crowd was not a surprise; Broadway audiences were not famous for loving history lessons, which is what they
made of the play. It seems to me entirely appropriate that on the day the play opened, a newspaper headline
read "ALL 13 REDS GUILTY"a story about American Communists who faced prison for "conspiring to teach
and advocate the duty and necessity of forcible overthrow of government." Meanwhile, the remoteness of the
production was guaranteed by the director, Jed Harris, who insisted that this was a classic requiring the actors
Appendix #15f
to face front, never each other. The critics were not swept away. "Arthur Miller is a problem playwright in both
senses of the word," wrote Walter Kerr of the Herald Tribune, who called the play "a step backward into
mechanical parable." The Times was not much kinder, saying, "There is too much excitement and not enough
emotion in 'The Crucible.' " But the play's future would turn out quite differently.
About a year later, a new production, one with younger, less accomplished actors, working in the Martinique
Hotel ballroom, played with the fervor that the script and the times required, and "The Crucible" became a hit.
The play stumbled into history, and today, I am told, it is one of the most heavily demanded trade-fiction
paperbacks in this country; the Bantam and Penguin editions have sold more than six million copies. I don't
think there has been a week in the past forty-odd years when it hasn't been on a stage somewhere in the world.
Nor is the new screen version the first. Jean-Paul Sartre, in his Marxist phase, wrote a French film adaptation
that blamed the tragedy on the rich landowners conspiring to persecute the poor. (In truth, most of those who
were hanged in Salem were people of substance, and two or three were very large landowners.)
It is only a slight exaggeration to say that, especially in Latin America, "The Crucible" starts getting produced
wherever a political coup appears imminent, or a dictatorial regime has just been overthrown. From Argentina
to Chile to Greece, Czechoslovakia, China, and a dozen other places, the play seems to present the same
primeval structure of human sacrifice to the furies of fanaticism and paranoia that goes on repeating itself
forever as though imbedded in the brain of social man.
I am not sure what "The Crucible" is telling people now, but I know that its paranoid center is still pumping out
the same darkly attractive warning that it did in the fifties. For some, the play seems to be about the dilemma
of relying on the testimony of small children accusing adults of sexual abuse, something I'd not have dreamed
of forty years ago. For others, it may simply be a fascination with the outbreak of paranoia that suffuses the
playthe blind panic that, in our age, often seems to sit at the dim edges of consciousness. Certainly its
political implications are the central issue for many people; the Salem interrogations turn out to be eerily exact
models of those yet to come in Stalin's Russia, Pinochet's Chile, Mao's China, and other regimes. (Nien Cheng,
the author of "Life and Death in Shanghai," has told me that she could hardly believe that a non-Chinese
someone who had not experienced the Cultural Revolutionhad written the play.) But below its concerns with
justice the play evokes a lethal brew of illicit sexuality, fear of the supernatural, and political manipulation, a
combination not unfamiliar these days. The film, by reaching the broad American audience as no play ever can,
may well unearth still other connections to those buried public terrors that Salem first announced on this
continent.
One thing moresomething wonderful in the old sense of that word. I recall the weeks I spent reading
testimony by the tome, commentaries, broadsides, confessions, and accusations. And always the crucial
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damning event was the signing of one's name in "the Devil's book." This Faustian agreement to hand over one's
soul to the dreaded Lord of Darkness was the ultimate insult to God. But what were these new inductees
supposed to have done once they'd signed on? Nobody seems even to have thought to ask. But, of course,
actions are as irrelevant during cultural and religious wars as they are in nightmares. The thing at issue is
buried intentionsthe secret allegiances of the alienated heart, always the main threat to the theocratic mind,
as well as its immemorial quarry. www.newyorker.com/printables/archive/020422fr_archive02
Appendix #15g
Focus Question #3
What parallels did Miller see between the Salem witch trials and the Senate hearings?
Answer Plan
1. Introduce the answer by restating the question.
2. Write several sentences showing the parallels between the two events.
3. Conclude with your opinion about the similarities between the events.
Possible Answer
[1] Arthur Miller saw a number of parallels between the Salem witch trials and the Senate
hearings during the Red Scare. [2] Miller saw liberals become paralyzed when they saw
civil rights being violated and feared that they would be accused, just as the Puritans
became fearful of speaking out. The Red Scare, like the witch trials, dominated peoples
minds. Just as Proctor spoke out against the accusations, Miller believed that individuals
could still speak out. Also, people could be excused from the accusations by naming
others during the Red Scare, just as the accused in Salem could escape the consequences
by naming others. [3] Those who wield power can use similar tactics to try to intimidate
others, but people need to use their individual powers to fight back.
Appendix #17
A drama tells a story, usually of human conflict, through dialogue and action.
Drama
Definition:
A story in dramatic form, typically emphasizing conflict in key characters and
written to be performed by actors (from Harris, et al. The Literacy Dictionary, IRA,
1995)
three necessary elements in drama: (1) a story (2) told in action (3) by
characters who impersonate the characters of the story (Thrall and Hibbert, A
Handbook to Literature, Odyssey Press,1960)
Purpose:
To entertain
To provoke thought and emotion
To present a visual and aural experience for the audience
Form and Features:
Dramas/plays consist of two parts: spoken dialogue and stage directions:
Stage directions describe setting, lighting, movement of characters and
props, intonation of dialogue, costumes.
Setting for each scene is given in italics at the beginning of the text for that
scene.
Stage directions are usually in italics and square brackets at the appropriate
place in the script.
Stage directions begin with a capital letter and end with a period, even if not
complete sentences.
Lines and sections are sometimes numbered on the left-hand side of the
page so references can be made, like definitions.
There is usually at least one antagonist and one protagonist.
Characters names are listed at the beginning of the drama/play, usually in the
order of their appearance. This listing often includes brief information including:
age, appearance, role in the play, and/or relationship to other characters in the
play.
Conflict, the tension that exists between the forces in the characters life, is
important in drama and can be in four forms:
- Person against self
- Person against person
- Person against nature
- Person against society
Dramatic structure has been compared to the tying and untying of a knot. The
structure of dramatic conflict includes the following:
Exposition creates the tone, introduces the setting and some of the characters and gives
background
Rising Action or Complication sets the action in motion, continues through stages of Conflict
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to the Climax.
Falling Action stresses the activity of the forces opposing the hero as the action moves to the
Denouement or resolution
Dramas may include flashbacks and/or soliloquies
Appendix #19
List the page number and a brief reminder List the page number and a brief reminder List the page number and a brief reminder
of the genre characteristics you find as you of the genre characteristics you find as you of the genre characteristics you find as you
read. read. read.
Structure includes Exposition, Rising Action, Structure includes Exposition, Rising Action, Structure includes Exposition, Rising Action,
Climax and Denouement find examples. Climax and Denouement find examples. Climax and Denouement find examples.
p. p. p.
p. p. p.
p. p. p.
p. p. p.
Find examples of stage directions: Find examples of stage directions: Find examples of stage directions:
descriptions of setting, lighting, movement, descriptions of setting, lighting, movement, descriptions of setting, lighting, movement,
p. p. p.
p. p. p.
p. p. p.
p. p. p.
Copyright 2005, MacombISD All Rights Reserved. Copyright 2005, MacombISD All Rights Reserved. Copyright 2005, MacombISD All Rights Reserved.
Appendix #20
ELA High School Unit10.1 Appendix Macomb Intermediate School District 2006
Focus Question #4
Answer Plan
storyline.
Possible Answer
Appendix #21
Name:
Entrance Ticket
Day 16
Name:
Appendix #22
The sample is a completed bookmark for the character of Reverend Samuel Parris
from The Crucible. It is designed only as a model for teachers. When modeling for
students, use only information gained in the beginning of the work. (Showing them
the finished product will ruin the ending of the story!)
Encourage students to use the backs of these bookmarks to draw illustrations of key
scenes from the story, record unfamiliar vocabulary words, or information about
less significant characters (those with only a handful of lines, limited impact on the
story, or who lack development).
Appendix 23a
(Martha Corey)
(Ruth Putnam)
Appendix 23b
Character Name
Occupation: _______________________________________
Physical Description:_______________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
Background Info:
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________________
Personality:
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________
Action(s) Taken:
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________
Use of Power:
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________________
End Result:
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________
Misc. Info:
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
Appendix 23c
__________________________________________________
Character Name
Occupation: _______________________________________
Physical Description:_______________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
Background Info:
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________________
Action(s) Taken:
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________
Use of Power:
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________________
End Result:
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________
Misc. Info:
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
Occupation:
_Reverend_____________________________
Physical Description:_middle
40s____________________
Answer Plan
Possible Answer:
Answer Plan
Possible Answer:
Appendix #25
Focus Question #7
Answer Plan
Possible Answer:
[1] John Proctor sees himself differently from the way most people in
Salem see him. [2] Proctor is a farmer in his 30s. He is considered a
powerful man who does not allow himself to be swayed by the
expectations of others. [3] Proctor has committed the sin of adultery.
He acted in a way that is not only morally wrong according to his
religion, but wrong according to his own standards of decency.
Because others do not know of his crime, they still hold him in high
regard. He sees himself as a fraud and is weighed down by his moral
failures. [4] Self image is powerful. What we think of ourselves affects
our attitude, choices, and how we allow others to treat us.
Appendix #26
Focus Question #8
Answer Plan
Possible Answer:
Answer Plan:
Possible answer:
[1] At the end of Act One, Tituba, Abigail, and Betty confess. [2]
Tituba. a slave from Barbados, works for Parris and is deeply devoted
to his daughter, Betty. [3] Hales arrival marks the beginning of the
chain of events leading to the confessions. He questions the girls
about their activities in the woods, and Abigail blames Tituba for their
wicked actions. This gets the focus off of Abigail and onto the person
who is normally blamed for things in the Parris household. [4] Tituba
confesses because she has no other choice. Parris threatens to kill
Tituba if she doesnt confess. Also, the Putnams provide her with the
names of others she can say she saw with the devil. [5] After seeing
how grateful and forgiving Hale (and the rest of the community) is to
Tituba for confessing, Abigail realizes that this is the perfect way to
gain power (she gets to name names) and get out of explaining Bettys
illness. Betty follows Abigails lead and confesses to signing her name
in the devils book. [6] Since so many women were named, I predict
the next act will revolve around bringing these women to trial.
Appendix # 28
Vocabulary In Context Strategy
Procedures:
Is Elizabeth right to continue to mistrust John even though his affair with Abigail has been over for seven
months? Or is John right in believing that by now Elizabeth should have forgiven and forgotten his
affair with Abigail and come to trust him again? Choose to support either Elizabeths or Johns
viewpoint in your answer.
Answer Plan
1. Choose which characters viewpoint you will support and introduce the answer by restating the question.
2. Write several sentences in support of your answer.
3. Conclude with a sentence or two describing what either Elizabeth or John could do to heal their
marriage.
[1] Elizabeth should not be expected to fully trust John within seven months of the end of his affair with
Abigail. [2] First of all, seven months is not a sufficient length of time for Elizabeth to regain her trust in John
after such a serious violation of their marriage vows. Second, John lied to Elizabeth about being alone with
Abigail, which arouses her suspicion that the affair may not be over as John has said. Finally, John confessed
to the affair only after Elizabeth had expressed her suspicion about his relationship with Abigail; one wonders
if the affair would have continued indefinitely had Elizabeth not been so perceptive. [3] John could further
the healing of their marriage by willingly telling the court about Abigails private confession that the girls
sickness had nothing to do with witchcraft. This would greatly ease Elizabeths fear that he still has feelings
for Abigail.
Appendix #30a
Focus Question #10b
Is Elizabeth right to continue to mistrust John even though his affair with Abigail has
been over for seven months? Or is John right in believing that by now Elizabeth should
have forgiven and forgotten his affair with Abigail and come to trust him again? Choose
to support either Elizabeths or Johns viewpoint in your answer.
Answer Plan
1. Choose which characters viewpoint you will support and introduce the
answer by restating the question.
2. Write several sentences in support of your answer.
3. Conclude with a sentence or two describing what either Elizabeth or
John could do to heal their marriage.
[1] John has the right to have regained Elizabeths trust after seven months since the end of his affair with
Abigail. [2] First of all, John has done everything he can to please Elizabeth since the affair ended a full seven
months ago; he even offers to buy her a heifer to make her life easier. Second, he only goes to Salem when he
has business there so as not to cause Elizabeth to worry that he may be going to see Abigail. Finally, he
confessed to the affair when Elizabeth expressed her suspicions about his relationship with Abigail; a lesser
man would have roared down her suspicions and ended the affair without his wifes knowledge that it really
happened. [3] Elizabeth could further the healing of their marriage by ceasing her relentless doubt and
judgment of Johns words, actions, and whereabouts.
Appendix #30a
Readers Theater #1 Act Two
Adapted from The Crucible by Arthur Miller
NARRATOR: __________________________
CHEEVER: __________________________
PROCTOR: __________________________
GILES: __________________________
HALE: __________________________
ELIZABETH: __________________________
HERRICK: __________________________
FRANCIS: __________________________
NARRATOR: Enter Marshal Herrick, a man in his early thirties, who is somewhat shamefaced at the
moment.
GILES: Its a pity, Ezekiel, that an honest tailor might have gone to Heaven must burn in Hell.
Youll burn for this, do you know it?
CHEEVER: You know yourself I must do as Im told. You surely know that, Giles. And Id as lief
youd not be sending me to Hell. I like not the sound of it, I tell you; I like not the sound
of it. Now believe me, Proctor, how heavy be the law, all its tonnage I do carry on my
back tonight. I have a warrant for your wife.
Appendix #31
PROCTOR: You said she were not charged!
CHEEVER: Mr. Proctor, I have little time. The court bid me search your house, but I like not to
search a house. So will you hand me any poppets that your wife may keep here?
PROCTOR: Poppets?
PROCTOR: No, nor this one either till tonight. What signifies a poppet?
CHEEVER: Why, a poppeta poppet may signifyNow, woman, will you please to come with me?
PROCTOR: Youll leave her out of sight and out of mind, Mister. Fetch Mary, Elizabeth.
CHEEVER: Why, they say it may signify that she (his eyes widen in astonished fear)Why, this, this
Appendix #31a
CHEEVER: Why, this go hard with her, Proctor, thisI had my doubts, Proctor, I had my doubts, but
heres calamity. You see it, sir, it is a needle!
CHEEVER: (wide eyed, trembling) The girl, the Williams girl, Abigail Williams, sir. She sat to dinner
in Reverend Parriss house tonight, and without work nor warnin she falls to the floor.
Like a struck beast, he says, and screamed a scream that a bull would weep to hear. And
he goes to save her, and, stuck two inches in the flesh of her belly, he draw a needle out.
And demandin of her how she come to be so stabbed, shetestify it were your wifes
familiar spirit pushed it in.
PROCTOR: Why, she done it herself! I hope youre not takin this for proof, Mister!
CHEEVER: Tis hard proof! I find here a poppet Goody Proctor keeps. I have found it, sir. And in
the belly of the poppet a needles stuck. I tell you true, Proctor, I never warranted to see
such proof of Hell, and I bid you obstruct me not, for I
NARRATOR: Enter Elizabeth with Mary Warren. Proctor, seeing Mary Warren, draws her by the arm
to Hale.
PROCTOR: Here now! Mary, how did this poppet come into my house?
MARY WARREN: (frightened for herself, her voice very small) What poppets that, sir?
MARY WARREN: WhyI made it in the court, sir, andgive it to Goody Proctor tonight.
Appendix #31b
HALE: Child, you are certain this be your natural memory? May it be, perhaps, that someone
conjures you even now to say this?
MARY WARREN: Conjures me? Why, no, sir, I am entirely myself, I think. Let you ask Susanna Walcott
she saw me sewin it in court. Ask Abby, Abby sat beside me when I made it.
PROCTOR: (to Hale, of Cheever) Bid him begone. Your mind is surely settled now. Bid him out, Mr.
Hale.
HALE: Abigail were stabbed tonight; a needle were found stuck into her belly
HALE: Aye.
ELIZABETH: (Her breath knocked out) Why! The girl is murder! She must be ripped out of the
world!
CHEEVER: Youve heard that, sir! Ripped out of the world! Herrick, you heard it!
PROCTOR: (snatching the warrant out of Cheevers hands) Out with you.
Appendix #31c
PROCTOR: If she is innocent! Why do you never wonder if Parris be innocent, or Abigail? Is the
accuser always holy now? Were they born this morning as clean as Gods fingers? Ill
tell you whats walking Salemvengeance is walking Salem. We are what we always
were in Salem, but now the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and
common vengeance writes the law! This warrants vengeance! Ill not give my wife to
vengeance!
HERRICK: I have nine men outside. You cannot keep her. The law binds me, John, I cannot budge.
HERRICK: I have nine men outside. You cannot keep her. The law binds me, John.
PROCTOR: Pontius Pilate! God will not let you wash your hands of this!
ELIZABETH: JohnI think I must go with them. Mary, there is bread enough for the morning; you
will bake, in the afternoon. Help Mr. Proctor as you were his daughteryou owe me
that, and much more. (To Proctor) When the children wake, speak nothing of witchcraft
it will frighten them.
PROCTOR: I will fall like an ocean on that court! Fear nothing, Elizabeth.
Appendix #31d
ELIZABETH: (with great fear) I will fear nothing. Tell the children I have gone to visit someone sick.
NARRATOR: She walks out the door, Herrick and Cheever behind her. For a moment, Proctor watches
from the doorway. The clank of chain is heard.
PROCTOR: Herrick! Herrick, dont chain her! Damn you, man, you will not chain her! Off with
them! Ill not have it! I will not have her chained!
GILES: And yet silent, minister? It is fraud, you know it is fraud! What keeps you, man?
HERRICK: In Gods name, John, I cannot help myself. I must chain them all. Now let you keep
inside this house till I am gone!
HALE: Charity, Proctor, charity. What I have heard in her favor, I will not fear to testify in
court. God help me, I cannot judge her guilty or innocentI know not. Only this
consider: the world goes mad, and it profit nothing you should lay the cause to the
vengeance of a little girl.
PROCTOR: You are a coward! Though you be ordained in Gods own tears, you are a coward now!
HALE: Proctor, I cannot think God be provoked so grandly by such a petty cause. The jails are
packedour greatest judges sit in Salem nowand hangins promised. Man, we must
look to cause proportionate. Were there murder done, perhaps, and never brought to
light? Abomination? Some secret blasphemy that stinks to Heaven? Think on cause,
man, and let you help me to discover it. For theres your way, believe it, there is your
only way, when such confusion strikes upon the world. (He goes to Giles and Francis)
Let you counsel among yourselves; think on your village and what may have drawn from
heaven such thundering wrath upon you all. I shall pray God open up our eyes.
PROCTOR: (He has been reached by Hales words) Leave me, Francis, leave me.
Appendix #31e
PROCTOR: Youre coming to the court with me, Mary. You will tell it in the court.
PROCTOR: You will tell the court how that poppet come here and who stuck the needle in.
MARY WARREN: Shell kill me for sayin that! Abbyll charge lechery on you, Mr. Proctor!
MARY WARREN: I have known it, sir. Shell ruin you with it, I know she will.
PROCTOR: (hesitating, and with deep hatred of himself) Good. Then her saintliness is done with.
We will slide together into our pit; you will tell the court what you know.
NARRATOR: Proctor strides and catches her, and she is repeating, I cannot, I cannot!
PROCTOR: My wife will never die for me! I will bring your guts into your mouth but that goodness
will not die for me!
PROCTOR: (grasping her by the throat as though he would strangle her) Make your peace with it!
Now Hell and Heaven grapple on our backs, and all our old pretense is ripped away
make your peace! Peace. It is a providence, and no great change; we are only what we
always were, but naked now. Aye, naked! And the wind, Gods icy wind, will blow!
MARY WARREN: she is over and over again sobbing) I cannot, I cannot, I cannot
Appendix #31f
Vocabulary in Context List
Appendix #32
Focus Question #11
Answer Plan
Possible Answer
[1] John Proctor fears the repercussions of his testimony that the girls are not really afflicted by
witchcraft. [2] Proctor wonders if what Abigail told him in private would be believed in a worldgone
daft with nonsense about witchcraft, especially considering Abigails recent rise to saint status in the
village. Proctor also fears that Elizabeth may be right, that Abigail wants Elizabeth dead so that she can
have Proctor to herself. If Proctor tells the truth then, he risks dashing Abigails dream of being with
him and risks her vengeance, of which he is now sure she is capable considering the lies she has told
thus far; he now realizes the very real possibility that Abigail may cry out Elizabeth for a witch. Proctor
also realizes that he risks the affair being revealed, which would be his ruinhe would, at best, be
shunned by the community and excommunicated from the church. It is also possible, though unlikely,
that Proctor still has feelings for Abigail and doesnt want to see her hurt. [3] Considering the hysteria
afloat in Salem, and taking into account Abigails strong feelings for Proctor along with her cunning,
unscrupulousness, and newfound power, it is unlikely that Proctor would be believed. It is unlikely that
Abigail would let such an affront pass unpunished. It is also unlikely that at this point, with dozens of
women imprisoned for witchcraft based on Abigail and the girls testimony, that the court would show a
readiness to believe Proctor and risk the utter embarrassment that such testimony would surely bring
about.
Appendix #33
Writing an Original Scene: Dialogue and Stage Directions
We learn about characters in dramas through what they say and how they say it.
What characters say is revealed through dialogue, which is written conversation among characters.
How characters say it is revealed through stage directions, which describe characters tone of voice (i.e.
Abigail: with an indignant edge) and movement (i.e. He covers his face, ashamed).
If dialogue and stage directions are used effectively, characters should sound natural (for the time period) and
appear three-dimensional and fleshed out rather than flat.
Keeping in mind the character attributes of Abigail and Elizabeth that you have recorded on your character
bookmarks, as well as their individual motivations, write a scene depicting Elizabeths firing of Abigail.
You may continue Millers use of Puritan English, or you may use modern day English.
Example:
ELIZABETH, with brimming hostility: It is over, Abigail. I know everything. John confirmed it.
ELIZABETH, wildly: Shut it!Regaining her composureYou will leave this house within the hour.
Appendix #34
Focus Question #12
Why does Francis Nurse fear he has brought trouble to the 91 people who
signed their names to the document presented in court?
Answer Plan
1. Introduce the answer by restating the question.
2. Based on previous events of the play, write several sentences that predict possible
consequences that may come to these people.
3. Conclude with a personal observation of the way that witnesses have been
handled so far in the play.
Possible Answer
[1] Francis Nurse is distraught after Judge Danforth orders arrest warrants be drawn for all 91 people on
his list because he fears for the way these people will be treated. [2] Giles, John and Francis have spent
three days attempting to be heard by the courts. They have presented documents and evidence in an
attempt to clear their wives; each attempt has been seen as an attack upon the court. Based on Danforths
statement that a person is either with the court or against it, one might predict that the 91 people whose
names appear on that list will be treated as enemies of the court. They face possible jail time and the
possibility of being accused of witchcraft. [3] The witnesses have been treated unfairly because Judge
Danforth and the other members of the court did not even want to hear from them. Giles must force his
way into the court to be heard and the evidence he provides is quickly dismissed because it goes against
what the court has ruled previously.
Appendix 35
Focus Question #13
Discuss Marys inability to faint on demand for the members of the court.
Answer Plan
1. Introduce your answer by predicting why you think Mary could not faint.
2. Write a number of sentences to support your prediction.
3. Conclude by predicting the possible consequences of her inability to prove she was
simply pretending.
Possible Answer
[1] (Answers will vary.) It is possible that when the other girls were pretending and the
members of the court were looking on encouragingly, Mary was able to feed off the mood
in the room and go along with the other girls by pretending to faint. [2] Many spectators
came to the courts to witness the proceedings; this highly religious society believed in
witches and their ability to send their spirits. In the courtroom, there would have been
support for Mary and the other girls when they were pretending. In this situation, Mary is
on the defensive; she has lost her willing audience and the other participants for her
pretending. [3] Because Mary is unable to faint, it is possible that the judge will conclude
that she is lying now and the she is possibly under the influence of Satan.
Appendix #36
Focus Question #14
Why did John Proctor disclose his affair with Abigail?
Answer Plan
1. Restate the question.
2. Write a number of sentences that detail what John hoped to achieve by disclosing the
affair.
3. Conclude by giving your opinion of his decision.
Possible Answer
[1] John Proctor choose to disclose his affair with Abigail as a last resort. [2] The
evidence that Giles Corey, Francis Nurse, and Mary Warren had presented did not sway
Judge Danforth into believing that the girls were lying. John felt he had to destroy
Abigails credibility in order for Judge Danforth to see her as a liar and to give cause as to
why she would want to see his wife dead. [3] Because Danforth had discredited the other
testimony, and because he had already accused John Proctor of planning to overthrow the
court, John made a bad decision in choosing to disclose his affair.
Appendix #37
The Crucible Newspaper Assignment
Choose a newsworthy event from The Crucible in which a character uses his or her individual
power to make change. Write about this event as a newspaper journalist.
Journalists use an inverted pyramid style of writing. They generally start with the main
conclusion and get progressively more detailed, like so:
1. Conclusion
2. Supporting facts and information to support the conclusion
3. Background information and technical details
The inverted pyramid satisfies readers interest rationally. Articles written in the inverted
pyramid form have unique features. The most important information is at the top of the article;
therefore, the reader gets the main facts early, and can decide whether or not he/she wants to
continue reading. Information is generally organized into short paragraphs with the most
important facts/details appearing at the beginning of the article. A news paper article answers
the questions: Who, what, Where, When, Why, and How.
What to Do
Grading
o Up to 10 points will be earned if the first paragraph answers all of the 5 ws and h.
o Up to 10 points will be earned if each article is composed of at least three paragraphs.
o Up to 10 points will be earned for the inclusion of at least 3 relevant details.
o Up to 10 points will be earned for the correctness of the facts.
o Up to 10 points will be earned for organization and neatness.
o Up to 10 points will be earned for Grammar, Usage and Mechanics.
Appendix #38
Readers Theater #2 Act Four
Adapted from The Crucible by Arthur Miller
NARRATOR: ________________________
HALE: ________________________
DANFORTH: ________________________
PARRIS: ________________________
HERRICK: ________________________
ELIZABETH: ________________________
NARRATOR: Hale enters the courtroom to reveal that he cannot get Proctor and Nurse
to confess. Physically and emotionally exhausted, he has come to beg
Danforth to reconsider his decision to hang them today.
DANFORTH: (conciliatory) You misunderstand sir; I cannot pardon these when twelve are
already hanged for the same crime. It is not just.
HALE: The sun will rise in a few minutes. Excellency, I must have more time.
Appendix #39
DANFORTH: Now hear me, and beguile yourselves no more. I will not receive a single
plea for pardon or postponement. Them that will not confess will hang.
Twelve are already executed; the names of these seven are given out, and
the village expects to see them die this morning. Postponement now
speaks a floundering on my part; reprieve or pardon must cast doubt upon
the guild to them that died till now. While I speak Gods law I will not crack
its voice with whimpering. If retaliation is your fear, know this--I should
hang ten thousand that dared to rise against the law, and an ocean of salt
tears could not melt the resolution of the statutes. Now draw yourselves up
like men and help me, as you are bound by Heaven to do. Have you spoken
with them all, Mr. Hale?
HERRICK: He sits like some great bird; youd not know he lived except he will take
food from time to time.
DANFORTH: What think you, Mr. Parris? You have closer knowledge of this man; might
her presence soften him?
PARRIS: It is possible, sir. He have not laid eyes on her these three months. I should
summon her.
DANFORTH: Mr. Herrick, is Proctor yet adamant? Has he struck at you again?
DANFORTH: Fetch Goody Proctor to me. Then let you bring him up.
HALE: Excellency, if you postpone a week and publish to the town that you are
striving for their confessions, that speak mercy on your part, not faltering.
DANFORTH: Mr. Hale, as God have not empowered me like Joshua to stop this sun from
rising, so I cannot withhold from them the perfection of their punishment.
HALE: (Harder now) If you think God wills you to raise rebellion, Mr. Danforth, you
are mistaken!
HALE: Excellency, there are orphans wandering from house to house; abandoned
cattle bellow on the highroads, the stink of rotting crops hangs everywhere,
and no man knows when the harlots cry will end his lifeand you wonder
yet if rebellions spoke? Better you should marvel how they do not burn
your province!
DANFORTH: You baffle me, sir. Why have you returned here?
HALE: (Sarcastically) Why, it is all simple. I come to do the Devils work. I come to
counsel Christians they should belie themselves. (Here his sarcasm
collapses) There is blood on my head! Can you not see the blood on my
head?
PARRIS: Hush!
Appendix #39b
NARRATOR: When Herrick returns to the courtroom with Elizabeth, she enters with her
wrists linked by heavy chain, which Herrick now removes. Her clothes are
dirty; her face is pale and gaunt. Herrick leaves the room and Danforth
addresses her.
DANFORTH: Pray be at your ease, we come not for your life. We(Uncertain how to
plead because he is unaccustomed to it ) Mr. Hale will you speak with the
woman?
HALE: You know, do you not, that I have no connection with the court? I come of
my own, Good Proctor. I would save your husbands life for if he is taken I
count myself his murderer. Do you understand me?
HALE: Goody Proctor, I have gone this three month like our Lord into the
wilderness. I have sought a Christian way, for damnations doubled on a
minister who counsels men to lie.
HATHORNE: It is no lie, you cannot speak of lies.
Appendix #39c
HALE: Let you mistake your duty as I mistook my own. I came into this village like
a bridegroom to his beloved, bearing gifts of high religion; the very crowns
of holy law I brought, and what I touched with my bright confidence, it died;
and where I turned the eye of my great faith, blood flowed up. Beware,
Goody Proctor--cleave to no faith when faith brings blood. It is mistaken law
that leads you to sacrifice. Life woman, life is Gods most precious gift; no
principle, however glorious, may justify the taking of it. I beg you, woman,
prevail upon your husband to confess. Let him give his lie. Quail not before
Gods judgment in this, for it may well be God damns a liar less than he
that throws his life away for pride. Will you plead with him? I cannot think
he will listen to another.
HALE: (desperately) Woman, before the laws of God we are as swine! We cannot
read His will!
ELIZABETH: I cannot dispute with you, sir; I lack learning for it.
DANFORTH: Goody Proctor, you are not summoned here for disputation. Be there no
wifely tenderness within you? He will die with the sunrise. Your husband. Do
you understand it? Are you stone? I tell you true, woman, had I no other
proof of your unnatural life, your dry eyes now would be sufficient evidence
that you delivered up your soul to Hell. A very ape would weep at such
calamity! Have the devil dried up any tear of pity in you? Take her out. It
profit nothing she should speak to him.
DANFORTH: Will you plead for his confession or will you not?
Answer Plan
1. Introduce the answer by restating the question.
2. Write several sentences in which you provide examples of the result of
challenging the authorities. As often as possible, use the text to support your
claim.
3. Conclude by predicting what you think will happen.
Possible Answer
[1] People in Salem are well aware of the consequences of displaying any
dissatisfaction with the court. [2] From the beginning it was clear that citizens
should do as they were told. In Act One, Parris told Tituba to confess or he would
take her out and whip her to death. In Act Three, Danforth has left no room for
contention by saying a person is either with this court or he must be counted
against it, there be no road between. In response, Hale wonders whether every
defense is an attack upon the court. Danforth also orders Francis Nurses
petitioners summoned for questioning. [3] In such a threatening atmosphere it is
unlikely that anyone left in Salem will publicly express an opinion contrary to
Danforths.
Appendix #40
Readers Theater #3 Act Four
Adapted from The Crucible by Arthur Miller
NARRATOR: ________________________
DANFORTH: ________________________
REBECCA: ________________________
PROCTOR: ________________________
HALE: ________________________
PARRIS: ________________________
HERRICK: ________________________
ELIZABETH: ________________________
DANFORTH: Courage, man, courage--let her witness your good example that she may
come to God herself. Now hear it, Goody Nurse! Say on, Mr. Proctor. Did you
bind yourself to the Devils service?
DANFORTH: Now, woman, you surely see it profit nothing to keep this conspiracy any
further. Will you confess yourself with him?
DANFORTH: Did you ever see her sister, Mary Easty, with the Devil?
DANFORTH: Did you ever see Martha Corey with the Devil?
DANFORTH: Proctor, you mistake me, I am not empowered to trade your life for a lie.
You have most certainly seen some person with the Devil. Mr. Proctor, a
score of people have already testified they saw this woman with the Devil.
DANFORTH: Why must you say it! Why, you should rejoice to say it if your soul is truly
purged of any love for Hell!
PROCTOR: They think to go like saints. I like not to spoil their names.
DANFORTH: (Inquiring, incredulous) Mr. Proctor, do you think they go like saints?
Appendix #41a
PROCTOR: (Evading) This woman never thought she done the Devils work.
DANFORTH: Look you, sir. I think you mistake your duty here. It matters nothing what
she thought--she is convicted of the unnatural murder of children, and you
for sending your spirit out upon Mary Warren. Your soul alone is the issue
here, Mister, and you will prove its whiteness or you cannot live in a
Christian country. Will you tell me now what persons conspired with you in
the Devils company? To your knowledge was Rebecca Nurse ever--
PROCTOR: I speak my own sins; I cannot judge another. (Crying out with hatred) I
have no tongue for it.
NARRATOR: Proctor has given his confession and refused to incriminate Rebecca Nurse
or her sister, Mary Easty--the other to pillars of respectability scheduled to
hang with Proctor. Now, Danforth requests he sign the confession.
HALE: Excellency, it is enough he confess himself. Let him sign it, let him sign it.
PARRIS: (feverishly) It is a great service, sir. It is a weighty name; it will strike the
village that Proctor confess. I beg you, let him sign it. The sun is up,
Excellency.
DANFORTH: (with dissatisfaction) Come, then, sign you testimony. Give it to him, Mr.
Cheever. Come, man, sign it.
NARRATOR: His chest heaving with agonized breathing, Proctor signs the confession. As
Danforth reaches for it, Proctor snatches it away. A wild terror and
boundless anger rise in him. Danforth is perplexed by Proctors
unwillingness to turn over the signed confession.
PROCTOR: No,
PROCTOR: No, no. I have signed it. You have seen me. It is done! You have no need for
this.
PROCTOR: Damn the village! I confess to God, and God has seen my name on this! It
is enough!
PROCTOR: You came to save my soul, did you not? Here! I have confessed myself; it is
enough!
PROCTOR: I have confessed myself! Is there no good penitence but it be public? God
does not need my name nailed upon the church! God sees my name; God
knows how black my sins are! It is enough!
Appendix #41c
PROCTOR: You will not use me! I am not Sarah Good or Tituba, I am John Proctor! You
will not use me! It is no part of salvation that you should use me!
PROCTOR: I have three children--How may I teach them to walk like men in the world,
and I sold my friends?
PROCTOR: Beguile me not! I blacken all of them when this is nailed to the church the
very day they hang for silence.
DANFORTH: Mr. Proctor, I must have good and legal proof that you
PROCTOR: You are the high court, your word is good enough! Tell them I confessed
myself; say Proctor broke his knees and wept like a woman; say what you
will, but my name cannot--
PROCTOR: No it is not the same! What others say and what I sign to is not the same!
DANFORTH: Why? Do you mean to deny this confession when you are free?
PROCTOR: I mean to deny nothing!
DANFORTH: Then explain to me, Mr. Proctor, why you will not let--
NARRATOR: Backed into a corner, Proctor cries out with his whole soul.
Appendix #41d
DANFORTH: Is that document a lie? If it is a lie I will not accept it! What say you? I will
not deal in lies. Mister! You will give me your honest confession in my hand,
or I cannot keep you from the rope. Which way do you go, Mister?
NARRATOR: His breast heaving, his eyes staring, Proctor tears the paper and crumples
it, and he is weeping in fury, but erect.
DANFORTH: Marshal!
PROCTOR: I can. And theres your first marvel, that I can. You have made your magic
now, for now I do think I see some shred of goodness in John Proctor. Not
enough to weave a banner with, but white enough to keep it from such
dogs.
NARRATOR: Elizabeth is overcome with emotion. She rushes to him in a burst of terror
and weeps against his hand. He lifts her and kisses her passionately.
PROCTOR: Give them no tear! Tears pleasure them! Show honor, now, show a stony
heart and sink them with it!
DANFORTH: Hang the high over the town! Who weeps for these, weeps for corruption.
Appendix #41e
NARRATOR: As Proctor is lead out of the courtroom by Cheever, Elizabeth is left staring
at the empty doorway. Behind her stands Parris in deadly fear.
NARRATOR: They are startled by a drumroll from outside. Elizabeth jerks about toward
the window. In one last effort to prevent his fate Parris rushes to the door.
NARRATOR: Hale rushes to the door as Elizabeth goes to the window. From behind her
Hale beseeches her to stop the hanging.
HALE: Woman plead with him! Woman! It is pride, it is vanity. Be his helper-- What
profit him to bleed? Shall the dust praise him? Shall the worms declare his
truth? Go to him, take his shame away!
NARRATOR: As the drums reach a crescendo, Elizabeth collapses against the window
and uses the bars to support herself. She cries out.
ELIZABETH: (with a cry) He have his goodness now. God forbid I take if from him!
NARRATOR: Hale weeps in frantic prayer, the new sun pours in upon Elizabeths face,
and the drums rattle like bones in the morning air.
Appendix #41f
Focus Question #16
Both Parris and Hale ask Danforth to postpone the executions, but their reasons for
wanting a postponement are vastly different. What motivates each one?
Answer Plan
1. Introduce the answer by restating the question.
2. Write several sentences in which you assert Parriss reasons for wishing the executions
postponed.
3. Write a sentence or two where you reveal Hales motivation.
4. Conclude with a prediction about whether Danforth will oblige either one.
Possible Answer
[1] Parris wants Danforth to postpone the hangings of John Proctor and
Rebecca Nurse because he has a new understanding of the evidence and his
precarious predicament. [2] As long as Abigail controlled the magistrates, and
he didnt cross her, Parris knew he was safe. When he realized she wasnt the
angel she had pretended to be, he knew his enemies would use her lies to bring
him down. His request to postpone the executions has more to do with saving
his own reputation than it does with protecting the innocent. Hale, on the other
hand, wants more time to convince Proctor and maybe even Rebecca to lie to
save their lives and then atone for lying later. [3] Unfortunately, Danforth is so
full of himself that he cant believe he could make a mistake. He will never
back off. The executions will go on as planned.
Appendix #42
Appendix
Decision
Outcome:43Made: Danforth
Situation:
Situation: DECISIONS,
John Proctor
must must
decide DECISIONS,
decide
whether
Probable
Alternate
Probable
if hetowill DECISIONS
postpone
Outcome:
Outcome:
Decision:0
sign histhe
confession.
executions
Characters decisions determined the outcome of the play. For each
of Rebecca Nurse, Martha Corey and Proctor. situation below, write the
decision actually made by the character and summarize the outcome. Then suggest an alternate
decision the character could have made, andDECISIONS,
DECISIONS, summarize the probable outcome of the situation.
DECISIONS
Characters decisions have determined the outcome of the play. For each situation below, write the
decision actually made by the character and summarize the outcome. Then suggest an alternate
decision the character could have made, and summarize the probable outcome of that decision.
Appendix #43
Appendix #43
Focus Question #17
Is The Crucible still relevant?
Answer Plan
1. Introduce the answer by restating the Question.
2. Write several sentences giving details prove the plays relevance to today.
3. Conclude by comparing the events in the play to a twentieth, or twenty-first century
crucible.
Possible Answer
[1] The Crucible is still relevant today because of continuing religious and racial
persecution around the world. [2] One need only glance at newspaper headlines
screaming about Middle East massacres such as those in Israel and Lebanon to
understand the relevance of this play. In Rwanda the massacre of the Tutsis at the hands
of their Hutu countrymen is an indication that power, if unchecked, can result in chaos.
Similarly, the ethnic cleansing which Serbian forces attempted during the civil unrest in
Yugoslavia is further evidence. Culture clashes of all kinds exist in the world. [3]
Witness the racial profiling of blacks in Metro Detroit communities and even the
wariness of middle aged citizens when they encounter Emotional Hardcore or Skater
kids; and it is clear that the events Miller highlighted in his play could be or have been
reenacted in a variety of settings around the world.
Appendix #44
BIOPOEM
Select at least one character from the Major Character List and use your Character Bookmarks to assist in creating a
Biopoem. You must follow the format given. Type and illustrate your poem. Be prepared to present and post it in class
tomorrow.
Line 6: Who Who fears discovery, the Nurse Clan, and God
needs (three items)
Who gives shelter, support, and permission to conjure,
Line 7: Who Who would like surviving offspring, the protection of Parris and to
be rid of Rebecca
fears (three items)
Resident of Salem
Line 8: Who
Putnam
gives (three items)
Appendix #45
My Beloved Appendix # 46a
Boys
Imagine you are John
Proctor and you are given
the opportunity to draft a
letter to your children
before the magistrates call
you to the gibbet. This is
your opportunity to help
your children understand
the events that lead to your
death.
Your Loving
Father,
Ive been meaning to write for
some time to explain
For the purpose of summary and retelling you may want to include other
letter writing options. In each case, stress the importance of audience and
the use of individual power.
Options include, but are not limited to:
Now that you have read Arthur Millers The Crucible, your task is to choose the 20 (no
more, no fewer) most significant events of the play. The events must cover the play in its
entirety. After choosing your events, use a poster board to neatly and creatively record (in
chronological order) your events. Include illustrations or pictures for at least half (10) of
the events.
Hints:
First, go through the play from start to finish, making a preliminary list of events you deem
important. (You should end up with more than 20.) Next, go through your list looking for
opportunities to eliminate, combine, or change events. Continue this process until you have
your list narrowed down to 20 events.
Look for a common concept for your timeline, such as: character development, action,
displays of power.
Be sure that your illustrations and pictures convey an appropriate mood for your poster.
Appendix 47
Short Compare and Contrast Essay
o Explain that there are two ways to write the essay but don't go into any detail
on that yet.
o Explain that when comparing, students should mention differences but focus
on similarities. Conversely, when contrasting they should mention similarities
but focus on differences.
o List and model use of cue words
Similarities Differences (contrast):
(compare): on the other hand
too but
as well however
both unlike
also while
so too in contrast
is similar to although
besides yet
in addition
Paragraph 1: Opening paragraph gives background Paragraph 1: Opening paragraph names the two
information on the two subjects and includes a subjects provides some background and includes a
sentence which states that they are very similar, very sentence which states that they are very similar, very
different or have many important (or interesting) different or have many important (or interesting)
similarities and differences. similarities and differences.
Paragraph 2: Describes features of the first subject Paragraph 2: Discusses similarities only using
without referring to the second subject. compare cue words such as like, similar to, and also
for each comparison.
Paragraph 3: Opening sentence must contain a
transition showing you are comparing the second Paragraph 3: Opens with a sentence which must
subject to the first. (e.g. "Unlike (or similar to) contain a transition showing you are switching to
[subject #1], [ subject #2]...) Discuss all the features differences. (e.g. Despite all these similarities, [these
of subject #2 in relation to subject #1 using two subjects] differ in significant ways.) Then
compare/contrast cue words such as like, similar to, describes all the differences, using contrast cue words
also, unlike, on the other hand for each comparison. such as differs, unlike, and on the other hand for each
comparison.
Conclude: End with a personal statement, an
observation, a prediction, or another snappy clincher. Conclusion: End with a personal statement, a
prediction, or another snappy clincher.
Information for this guide was gleaned from About.
2006 About, Inc., A part of The New York Times Company. All rights reserved.
http://712educators.about.com/cs/writingessays/a/comparecontrast.htm
Appendix #48
Compare and Contrast Prewriting
Appendix #50a
4-Above 3-Meets 2-Approacing 1-Below Score
CATEGORY Standards Standards Standards Standards
Commitment The writer The writer successfully The writer attempts to The writer made no
(Voice) successfully uses uses one or two make the reader care attempt to make the
several reasons/appeals to try to about the topic, but is reader care about the
reasons/appeals to show why the reader not really successful. topic.
try to show why the should care or want to
reader should care or know more about the topic.
want to know more
about the topic.
Word Choice Writer uses vivid Writer uses vivid words Writer uses words that Writer uses a limited
words and phrases and phrases that linger or communicate clearly, vocabulary that does
that linger or draw draw pictures in the but the writing lacks not communicate
pictures in the reader's mind, but variety, punch or flair. strongly or capture the
reader's mind, and occasionally the words are reader's interest.
the choice and used inaccurately or seem Jargon or clichs may
placement of the overdone. be present and detract
words seems from the meaning.
accurate, natural and
not forced.
Flow & Rhythm All sentences sound Almost all sentences Most sentences sound The sentences are
(Sentence natural and are easy- sound natural and are natural and are easy- difficult to read aloud
Fluency) on-the-ear when read easy-on-the-ear when read on-the-ear when read because they sound
aloud. Each aloud, but 1 or 2 are stiff aloud, but several are awkward, are
sentence is clear and and awkward or difficult to stiff and awkward or distractingly repetitive,
has an obvious understand. are difficult to or difficult to
emphasis. understand. understand.
Sentence All sentences are Most sentences are well- Most sentences are Sentences lack
Structure well-constructed with constructed with varied well-constructed but structure and appear
(Sentence varied structure. structure. have a similar incomplete or
Fluency) structure. rambling.
Capitalization & Writer makes no Writer makes 1 or 2 errors Writer makes a few Writer makes several
Punctuation errors in in capitalization or errors in capitalization errors in capitalization
(Conventions) capitalization or punctuation, but the paper and/or punctuation and/or punctuation
punctuation, so the is still easy to read. that catch the reader's that catch the reader's
paper is attention and interrupt attention and greatly
exceptionally easy to the flow. interrupt the flow.
read.
Appendix #50b
Compare and Contrast Essay
Peer Review
Author:____________________________________
Date:_______________________________
Critic:_____________________________________ Hour:______________________________
Support for Relevant, telling, Supporting details Supporting details Supporting details
Topic quality details give the and information are and information are and information are
(Content) reader important relevant, but one key relevant, but several typically unclear or
information that goes issue or portion of the key issues or not related to the
beyond the obvious or storyline is portions of the topic.
predictable. unsupported. storyline are
unsupported.
Pattern selected: (Circle one and describe) Pattern I Pattern II
Identify one point you wish you had made or made more clearly in your paper.
Appendix #51
Comparison Chart
Concept/Element Play Movie
Example: the girls happens before the play starts part of the storyline
misbehaving in the seems like Tituba and the girls it seems they have gathered for
woods. were trying to cast spells the girls cast spells for certain
Abigail drank blood boys to like them
Bettys illness is not explained
we see Betty paralyzed by fear
when Parris catches them
Appendix #52
Appendix #53 Take a Stand
Paper Assignment and Timeline
For every generation in every country, every day there are issues upon
which an individual could take a stand. This assignment asks you to
think about what concerns you in your community, your state, your
country or the world. Choose an issue about which you feel strongly
and take a stand for or against it.
Appendix #53
Authentic Writing
Persuasive Essay Guidelines:
Take a Stand on a Controversial Issue
In persuasive writing, a writer takes a position for or against an issue and
writes to convince his reader to believe or do something. Advertisers use
persuasion to get consumers to purchase their product. In essays, the
same idea applies. An essay writer is trying to get the reader to accept a
point of view. In order to sway your reader, you need more than an
opinion. Often research is necessary.
Before you start, check the rubric to better understand how you will be
graded.
Introduction
Your introduction should have a hook to catch the readers
attention. You might consider
o Opening with a strong statement (By 2050, deaths due to cancer will
be eliminated.)
o Opening with a statistic (Americans and Canadians comprise only 5%
of the world population.)
o Opening with an Anecdote (Keep it short.)
o Opening with a question. (Have you ever wondered how long it will
be before the miracle of birth is replaced by designer children?)
o Opening with an unusual detail (Scientists believe that body hair will
be eliminated through genetic mutation within the next century.)
o Opening with a quotation (Martin Luther once said, Beneath the rule of men
entirely great, the pen is mightier than the sword.)
o Opening with an outrageous statement (In view of strained political
and economic relations with Middle Eastern leaders, gasoline
powered vehicle transportation has been outlawed in the United
States.)
Your introduction must also include a thesis statement. Your
thesis must
Appendix #54a
Body
The function of the body of your paper is to provide evidence
which supports the opinion you assert in your thesis statement.
The body should
Conclusion
Finish your essay by summarizing the most important details and
restate what it is you want the reader to do or believe
Appendix #54b
Persuasive
Essay
Peer Review
Ask at least one person to read your rough draft to see if he can follow your
argument. Ask your revision critic to consider the following questions:
1.
2.
3.
Argument 1.
Argument 2.
Argument 3.
Focus or The thesis statement names the The thesis statement names the topic The thesis statement outlines some The thesis statement does not
Thesis topic of the essay and outlines the of the essay. or all of the main points to be name the topic AND does not
main points to be discussed. discussed but does not name the preview what will be discussed.
Statement topic.
Support for Includes 3 or more pieces of Includes 3 or more pieces of Includes 2 pieces of evidence (facts, Includes 1 or fewer pieces of
Position evidence (facts, statistics, evidence (facts, statistics, examples, statistics, examples, real-life evidence (facts, statistics,
examples, real-life experiences) real-life experiences) that support the experiences) that support the examples, real-life
that support the position statement. position statement. position statement. experiences).
The writer anticipates the reader's
concerns, biases or arguments and
has provided at least 1 counter-
argument.
Evidence and All of the evidence and examples Most of the evidence and examples At least one of the pieces of evidence Evidence and examples are
Examples are specific, relevant and are specific, relevant and and examples is relevant and has an NOT relevant AND/OR are not
explanations are given that show explanations are given that show explanation that shows how that explained.
how each piece of evidence how each piece of evidence supports piece of evidence supports the
supports the author's position. the author's position. author's position.
Sequencing Arguments and support are Arguments and support are provided A few of the support details or Many of the support details or
provided in a logical order that in a fairly logical order that makes it arguments are not in an expected or arguments are not in an
makes it easy and interesting to reasonably easy to follow the logical order, distracting the reader expected or logical order,
follow the author's train of thought. author's train of thought. and making the essay seem a little distracting the reader and
confusing. making the essay seem very
confusing.
Appendix #56a
CATEGORY 4 - Above 3 - Meets
Standards Standards
Transitions A variety of thoughtful transitions Transitions show how ideas are
are used. They clearly show how connected, but there is little variety
ideas are connected
Sources All sources used for quotes, All sources used for quotes,
statistics and facts are credible statistics and facts are credible and
and cited correctly. most are cited correctly.
Appendix #56b
Focus Question #18
Considering the play and the film, which portrayal of the story best
addressed the concept of the power of the individual.
Answer Plan:
1. Restate the question.
2. Write several sentences stating the strengths and weaknesses of the play
with regard to addressing the power of the individual.
3. Write several sentences stating the strengths and weaknesses of the movie
with regard to addressing the power of the individual.
4. Offer a conclusive opinion stating which format did a better job of
addressing the power of the individual. Justify your opinion with concrete
support.
Possible Answer:
[1] Both the play and movie versions of The Crucible showcase the power
of the individual. [2] Through the play, the reader is able to see several
characters grapple with power and the responsibility that comes along with
it. For example, Millers portrayal of Mary Warren allows readers to follow
Marys struggle to overcome her newfound affection for attention and
power in order to tell the truth and do the right thing. We see her crumble
when faced with adversity; she ultimately fails to use her individual power
for good. Other characters who similarly fail are: Abigail (and the other girls
who testify), Parris, Hathorne, and Danforth. Hale seems poised to fail,
but preserves by admitting his faults and using his power to champion a
true course. [3] The film manages to remain true to much of Millers story,
showcasing many individual struggles with power and responsibility. We
see a tormented Mary Warren, caught between two powerful forces (Abigail
and Proctor), struggling to find her personal strength. [4] Answers will vary.
Appendix #57