ESSAY STRUCTURE
Lesson Goals: To identify the parts of an organized paper and paragraph. To gain
appreciation and insight into living life with disabilities. To use and
practice the past tense including the past progressive and past perfect and
past simple. Increase familiarity with modal verbs. Analyzing descriptive
themes. Expressing ideas and opinions about a short story. Improving test
taking ability and performance. Encouraging creativity and working on skills to
promote emotional intelligence. HOTS
Tasks
2) If you only had three days to see what
would you choose to see???
Talk about Modals and the difference between
(would, could, should)
3) Who is Helen Keller? Talk about the author
vs. narrator
4) Read the first paragraph. Identify and
discuss parts of a paragraph.
6) Identify and label ; Main
Sentence, Topic Sentence and supporting statements, Closing
statement. (highlighted)
7) Make a list of the
descriptive words/adjectives that Ms. Keller uses in her paper. Learn
three new description words and give a definition to those adjectives using
your own words.
Ex.
incredulous - unbelievable
feverish - passionate
listless - nonchalant/ laidback
5) If you were to interview Mrs. Keller, what
questions would you ask her?
6) Writing: Write a paragraph using the
paragraph structure we learned about. Answer one of the below questions
Choose a meaningful line in her Essay and explain
in writing why that quote is meaningful to you?
If you had only three days to see what would
you see?
Justify your choice and do not forget
paragraph structure!
Three
Days to See
as published
in Atlantic Monthly, (January, 1933)
Transcription
"Three Days to See"
by Helen Keller
I
Sometimes
I have thought it would be an excellent rule to live each day as if we should
die to-morrow. Such an attitude would emphasize sharply the values of life. We
should live each day with a gentleness, a vigor, and a keenness of appreciation,
which are often, lost when time stretches before us in the constant panorama of
more days and months and years to come. There are those, of course, who would
adopt the epicurean motto of 'Eat, drink, and be merry,' but most people would
be chastened by the certainty of impending death.
Most of us, however, take life for granted. We know that one day we must die, but usually we picture
that day as far in the future. When we are in buoyant health, death is all but
unimaginable. We seldom think of it. The days stretch out in an endless vista.
So we go about our petty tasks, hardly aware of our listless attitude toward
life.
I have often thought it would be a
blessing if each human being were stricken blind and deaf for a few days at
some time during his early adult life. Darkness would make him more
appreciative of sight; silence would teach him the joys of sound.
Now and then I have tested my
seeing friends to discover what they see. Recently a very good friend who
had just returned from a long walk in the woods, visited me, and I asked her
what she had observed. "Nothing in particular," she replied. I might
have been incredulous had I not been accustomed to such responses, for long ago
I became convinced that the seeing see little.
How was it possible, I asked myself,
to walk for an hour through the woods and see nothing worthy of note? I who
cannot see find hundreds of things to interest me through mere touch. I
feel the delicate symmetry of a leaf. I pass my hands lovingly about the smooth
skin of a silver birch, or the rough, shaggy bark of a pine. In spring I touch
the branches of trees hopefully in search of a bud, the first sign of awakening
Nature after her winter's sleep. I feel the delightful, velvety texture of a
flower, and discover its remarkable convolutions; and something of the miracle
of Nature is revealed to me. Occasionally, if I am very fortunate, I place my
hand gently on a small tree and feel the happy quiver of a bird in full song. I
am delighted to have the cool waters of a brook rush through my open fingers.
To me a lush carpet of pine needles or spongy grass is more welcome than the
most luxurious Persian rug. To me the pageant of seasons is a thrilling and
unending drama, the action of which streams through my finger tips.
At times my heart cries out with longing to see
all these things. If I can get so much pleasure from mere touch, how much more
beauty must be revealed by sight. Yet, those who have eyes apparently see
little. The panorama of color and action which fills the world is taken for granted.
It is human, perhaps, to appreciate little that which have and to long for that
which we have not, but it is a great pity that in the world of light the gift
of sight is used only as a mere convenience rather than as a means of adding
fullness to life.
II
Perhaps I can best illustrate by imagining what
I should most like to see if I was given the use of my eyes, say, for just
three days. And while I am imagining, suppose you, too, set your mind to work
on the problem of how to work on the problem of how you would use your own eyes
if you had only three days to see. If with the oncoming darkness if the
third night you knew that the sun would never rise for you again, how would you
spend those three intervening days? What would you most want to let your
gaze rest upon?
I, naturally, should want most to
see the things which have become dear to me through my years of darkness.
You, too, would want to let your eyes rest long on the things that have become
dear to you so that you could take the memory of them with you into the night
that loomed before you.
If, by some miracle, I were granted
three seeing days, to be followed by a relapse into darkness, I should divide
the period into three parts.
On the first day, I should want to see the
people whose kindness and gentleness and companionship have made my life worth
living. First I should like to gaze long upon the face
of my dear teacher, Mrs. Ann Sullivan Macy, who came to me when I was a child
and opened the outer world to me. I should like to see in her eyes that
strength of character which has enabled her to stand firm in the face of
difficulties, and that compassion for all humanity which she has revealed to me
so often. Oh, the things that I should see if I had the power of sight for
just three days!
The first day would be a busy one. I should
call to me all my dear friends and look long into their faces, imprinting upon
my mind the outward evidence of the beauty that is within them. I should let my
eyes rest, too, on the face of a baby, so that I could catch a vision of the
eager, innocent beauty which precedes the individuals consciousness of the
conflicts which life develops. And I should like to look into the loyal,
trusting eyes of my dogs - the grave, canny little Scottie, Darkie, and the stalwart,
understanding Great Dane, Helga, whose warm, tender, and playful friendships
are so comforting to me.
On that busy first day I should also view the
small simple things of my home. I want to see the warm colors in the rugs under
my feet, the pictures on the walls, the intimate trifles that transform a house
into a home. My eyes would rest respectfully on the books in raised type which
I have read, but they would be more eagerly interested in the printed books
which seeing people can read, for during the long night of my life the books I
have read and those which have been read to me have built themselves into a
great shining lighthouse, revealing to me the deepest channels of human life
and the human spirit.
In the afternoon of that first seeing day, I
should take a long walk in the woods and intoxicate my eyes on the beauties of
the world of Nature, trying desperately to absorb in a few hours the vast
splendor which is constantly unfolding itself to those who can see. On the way
home from my woodland jaunt my path would lie near a farm so that I might see
the patient horses ploughing in the field (perhaps I should see only a
tractor!) and the serene content of men living close to the soil. And I should
pray for the glory of a colorful sunset.
When dusk had fallen, I should experience the
double delight of being able to see by artificial light, which the genius of
man has created to extend the power of his sight when Nature decrees
darkness.In the night of that first day of sight, I should not be able to
sleep, so full would be my mind of the memories of the day.
III
The next day - the second day of
sight - I should arise with the dawn and see the thrilling miracle by which
night is transformed into day. I should behold with awe the
magnificent panorama of light with which the sun awakens the sleeping earth.
This day I should devote to a hasty
glimpse of the world, past and present. I should want to see the pageant of
man's progress, the kaleidoscope of the ages. How can so much compressed into
one day? Through the museums, of course.
My next stop would be the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, for just as the Museum of Natural History reveals
the material aspects of the world, so does the Metropolitan show the myriad
facets of the human spirit. Throughout the history of humanity the urge to
artistic expression has been almost as powerful as the urge for food, shelter,
and procreation. And here, in the vast chambers of the Metropolitan Museum, is
unfolded before me the spirit of Egypt, Greece, and Rome, as expressed in their
art.
So on this, my second day of sight,
I should try to probe into the soul of man through his art. The things I knew
through touch I should now see. More splendid still, the whole magnificent
world of painting would be opened to me, from the Italian Primitives, with
their serene religious devotion, to the Moderns, with their feverish visions. I
should look deep into the canvases of Raphael, Leonardo Da Vinci, Titian,
Rembrandt. Oh, there is so much rich meaning and beauty in the art of the ages
for you who have eyes to see!
The evening of my second day of
sight I should spend at a theatre or at the movies. If I could see only
one play, I should know how to picture in my mind the action of a hundred plays
which I have read or had transferred to me through the medium of manual
alphabet. So, through the evening of my second imaginary day of sight, the
great figures of dramatic literature would crowd sleep from my eyes.
IV
The following morning, I should
again greet the dawn, anxious to discover new delights, for I am sure that, for
those who have eyes which really see, the dawn of each day must be a
perpetually new revelation of beauty.
This, according to the terms of my
imagined miracle, is to be my third and last day of sight. I shall have no time
to waste in regrets or longings; there is too much to see. The first day I
devoted to my friends, animate and inanimate. The second revealed to me the
history of man and Nature. To-day I shall spend in the workday world of the
present, amid the haunts of men going about the business of life. And where one
can find so many activities and conditions of men as in New York? So the city
becomes my destination.
My third day of sight is drawing to
an end. Perhaps there are many serious pursuits to which I should devote the
few remaining hours, but I am afraid that on the evening of that last day I
should run away to the theatre, to a hilariously funny play, so that I might
appreciate the overtones of comedy in the human spirit.
At midnight my temporary respite
from blindness would cease, and permanent night would close in on me again.
Naturally in those three short days I should not have seen all I wanted to see.
Only when darkness had again descended upon me should I realize how much I had
left unseen. But my mind would be so overcrowded with glorious memories that I
should have little time for regrets. Thereafter the touch of every object would
bring a glowing memory of how that object looked.
(I am sure that) if you actually faced
that fate (blindness) your eyes would open to things you had never seen before,
storing up memories for the long night ahead. You would use your eyes as never
before. Everything you saw would become dear to you. Your eyes would touch and
embrace every object that came within your range of vision. Then, at last, you
would really see, and a new world of beauty would open itself before you.
Use your eyes as if tomorrow you would be
stricken blind. And the same method can be applied to other senses. Hear the
music of voices, the song of a bird, the mighty strains of an orchestra, as if
you would be stricken deaf to-morrow. Touch each object you want to touch as if
tomorrow your tactile sense would fail. Smell the perfume of flowers, taste
with relish each morsel, as if tomorrow you could never smell and taste again.
Make the most of every sense; glory in all the facets of pleasure and beauty
which the world reveals to you through the several means of contact which Nature
provides. But of all the senses, I am sure that sight must be the most
delightful.
Author
Helen Keller
The
Story of My Life, first published in 1903, is Helen Keller's autobiography detailing
her early life, especially her experiences with Anne Sullivan.[1] Portions
of it were adapted by William Gibson for a 1957 Playhouse 90 production,
a 1959 Broadway play, a 1962 Hollywood feature film, and the
Indian film Black, which was directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali ft.
Amitabh Bachchan instead of Anne Sullivan.[2] The
book is dedicated to inventor Alexander Graham Bell. The dedication reads,
"To ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL Who has taught the deaf to speak and enabled the
listening ear to hear speech from the Atlantic to the Rockies, I dedicate this
Story of My Life."
Keller first began to write The
Story of My Life in 1902, when she was still a student at Radcliffe
College. It was first published in the Ladies Home Journal in
the same year as a series of installments. The following year, it was published
by Doubleday, Page & Co. as a book. The book was well received and Keller
wrote two more books, Midstream and My Later Life.[3]
MOVIE
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