Plot,+Conflict,+and+Setting

toc =Author Cards=

[|Author Research] For teachingbooks.net the user id is lakeviewacademy and the password is lvalions =Exploring Fiction= • Where does the story take place? (country, place, specific location) • When does it take place? (time of day, time of year, or time in history) • What effect does the setting have on the characters, events, or mood of the story? • Who are the main characters and the minor characters in this story? • What do you learn about the characters through their physical appearance,thoughts, and speech? What do you learn from the comments of other characters, or from the narrator? • In what ways does each character react to other people or events?What do these reactions reveal about him or her? • What reasons might he or she have had for reacting that way? • In what ways does each character change over the course of the story? • What happens in the story? Use a Story Map or Sequence Chain to record events. • What conflicts develop? Which are internal, and which are external—between two people, between people and society, between people and nature? • What is the main conflict? • How is the main conflict resolved? = = =The School Play= [|Gary Soto] - more about the author
 * Examine Setting**
 * Analyze Characters**
 * Examine Plot**

The Fateful Journey of the Donner Party The High Sierras // The Donner party is the name given to a group of emigrants, including the families of George Donner and his brother Jacob, who became trapped in the Sierra Nevada mountains during the winter of 1846-47. Nearly half of the party died, and some resorted to eating their dead in an effort to survive. The experience has become legendary as the most spectacular episode in the record of Western migration. //

At the start of spring in the year 1846 an appealing advertisement appeared in the Springfield, Illinois, //Gazette//. Westward ho, it declared. ''Who wants to go to California without costing them anything? As many as eight young men of good character who can drive an ox team will be accommodated. Come, boys, you can have as much land as you want without costing you anything.'' The notice was signed G. Donner, George Donner, leader of what was to become the most famous of all the hundreds of wagon trains to start for the far west, the tragic, now nearly mythic Donner Party.

Like many thousands before them, the Donners had every reason to look forward to their journey when they started out from Springfield, Illinois, in April of 1846. Countless wagon trains made the 2000-mile trek from Illinois to Oregon and California in the 1840s. Most people suffered various hardships along the way but managed to get over the Sierras and on to California in good health. Several other families joined up with the Donners at Independence, Missouri, in May. George Donner, age 60, and his friend James F. Reed, age 46, were chosen as the leaders. (Donner was officially elected "captain.") Most everything went smoothly until they decided to take Hastings' Cut-off, a supposed shortcut. Ironically, this "shortcut" would cause disastrous delays and hardships as the party had to hack a trail through the rough Wasatch Mountains in Utah and then cross an 80-mile desert west of the Great Salt Lake. The journey normally took about six months, from April to September. The Donners would not reach the Sierras until the end of October. http://www.vw.vccs.edu/vwhansd/HIS121/Donner.html http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/donner/index.html (click maps)

=[|All Summer in a Day]= about Venus [|story summary] [|Ray Bradbury] more about the author

Science Fiction: a story about the imaginary world in which the characters live based on real or possible scientific discoveries and inventions; setting is usually in the distant future

inferences: guesses based on clues in the story and your personal knowledge