Year 8 Library Skills Booklet

NAME:TEACHER:

Every library lesson, we will be reading a passage that relates to the novel Frankenstein.

There will also be a homework task for you to complete.

Reading 1 – Life in the Early 1900s

Reading 2 – Who Was Prometheus?

Reading 3 – Luigi Galvani

Reading 4 – The Year Without A Summer

Reading 5 – A Contemporary Review

Reading 1 – Life in the early 1800s

Pre-Reading Think-Pair-Share Activity

Complete the following three vocabulary windows.

The first is done for you as an example.

You need to fill in the remaining three boxes of the other two.

WORD

grim

WORD FUNCTION

adjective

DEFINITION

Unattractive or forbidding; harsh

WORD IN A SENTENCE

Few animals survived in the grim land.

WORD

squalor

WORD FUNCTION

DEFINITION

WORD IN A SENTENCE

WORD

slum

WORD FUNCTION

DEFINITION

WORD IN A SENTENCE

Just based on the three words above, make a comment about what life was like in the early 1800s in cities in England.

Notes from class discussion

Focussed Questions

Using your notes from the class discussion, answer these questions below:

1. In your own words, explain why many people turned to crime after moving to the cities.

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2. Why does a site about ‘Crime and Punishment’ need a section on living conditions?

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3. Evaluate the effectiveness of the attempt to make this web page look like a 19th Century piece of paper. Refer to specific details.

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4. Explain why this page does not use exclamation marks. Refer to the purpose and audience of the text in your answer.

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5. Using an example from the final paragraph, explain how and why commas to mark clauses are used.

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6. Based on this information, do you think Frankenstein would have been popular when it was published in 1818? Explain your answer.

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Extended Response

Imagine a 12 year old factory worker from 1816 is magically transported through time and meets you.

Write your own first person account of meeting this worker and describe his/her reactions to life in the present day.

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Homework – Mary Shelley research task

Research facts about Mary Shelley. Use the internet or library books. Some of these tasks require you to use the facts you learn to answer a question.

Born: ________________ Died: ______________

Father’s name and occupation: __________________________________

Mother’s name: ______________________________

How and when did Mary Shelley’s mother die? What is the connection between this and Victor Frankenstein?

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Describe what Mary’s upbringing would probably have been like.

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Who did Mary Shelley marry and why did the couple have to elope? (check the meaning of ‘elope’ if you do not know)

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Her husband was an important figure in his own right. Why?

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Do you think Mary Shelley would have experienced much of the negative side of life in early 1800s England portrayed in this week’s reading? Why or why not?

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Reading 2 – Who was Prometheus?

Pre-Reading Think-Pair-Share Activity

This picture is of a Greek myth.

What do you think is happening in this picture?

How are we supposed to feel about the people in the picture?

The Myth of Prometheus

Notes from class discussion

Focussed Questions

Using your notes from the class discussion, answer these questions below:

1. In your own words, explain Prometheus’ involvement in the war between the Olympian Gods and the Titans.

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2. Why did Epimetheus need his brother’s help when creating humans?

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3. Out of the options below, what form is this text? Explain your answer.

Diary entrynarrativeinformative articlePersuasive piece

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4. Find an example of a complex sentence that uses commas to mark the subordinate clause. Copy it out and underline the main clause and circle the subordinate clause.

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5. Explain how and why an ellipsis is used in this text.

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6. Explain how and why dashes are used in this text.

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Extended Response

Mary Shelley’s full title for Frankenstein is Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus.

Why did Shelley use Prometheus in her title? What is she trying to say about Science?

In your response, include the use of dashes; and commas to mark subordinate clauses.

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Homework – Prometheus and the Gift of Fire

Research and read the story of Prometheus giving humans fire.Use that story to answer these questions:

Why and how did he do give humans fire?

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What were the consequences for him?

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Compare Prometheus and Victor Frankenstein, considering their motives, actions and destinies.

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Reading 3 – Luigi Galvani

Pre-Reading Think-Pair-Share Activity

Look at this picture. It shows the frog leg experiments of Italian scientist Luigi Galvani, who lived from 1737 to 1798.

What do you think is happening in this experiment?

How does it connect to Frankenstein?

Note: This week there are 2 short readings

Reading 2a:

Reading 2b:

Notes from class discussion

Focussed Questions

Using your notes from the class discussion, answer these questions below:

1. Using diagrams, explain what happened in Galvani’s frog leg experiment.

2. In your own words, explain Galvani’s conclusion for why the legs moved and then explain Volta’s conclusion for why the legs moved. Use a suitable connective to link the two conclusions.

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3. How could you alter these readings to be more suitable and appealing for year 6 students? Consider sentence structure, layout and other factors.

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4. Explain why it is important to look at more than one source of information when doing research. Then explain how else you can check if a source is useful.

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5. Would you be allowed to do the frog leg experiment at school? Why or why not?

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Extended Response

In the box below, make bullet points of facts from this week’s readings and then your thoughts.

Facts from Reading 2a

Facts from Reading 2b

My thoughts on how this information connects to Frankenstein

Using your facts above, synthesise the information into one cohesive passage that covers all of the essential information but does not exceed 180 words.

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Homework

Imagine that your Science teacher has asked you to recreate Galvani’s experiment in a Science lesson.

She or he has strictly told you to ensure that no harm comes to any animals or humans.

Using either diagrams or words – or a combination or both – explain how you would recreate the experiment.

Do you think it is important to recreate Galvani’s experiment in today’s world? Why or why not?

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Reading 4 – The Year Without A Summer

Pre-Reading Think-Pair-Share Activity

Imagine there is a summer where the weather is so dreadful that you would prefer to stay indoors.

How might you feel?

What would you do?

The Year Without a Summer, and How It Spawned Frankenstein

By Keith Veronese

Source: http://io9.gizmodo.com/5885668/the-year-without-a-summer-and-how-it-spawned-frankenstein

The summer of 1816 brought unseasonably cold temperatures to the Northeastern United States, Canada, and Europe. Damaged crops and impeded trade caused widespread famine, leading to skyrocketing food prices, and the deaths of thousands.

What caused this deadly cold snap? And how exactly did this terrible time give us both Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and the invention of the bicycle? Let's take a look at the strange facts of the Year Without a Summer.

The Reason for the SeasonThe Summer of 1816 is known for abnormally low temperatures across parts of North America and Europe, along with wild temperature swings that killed many crops.

The absence of the Summer of 1816 is now tied to the April 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora (pictured), a volcano within a chain of islands in Indonesia. The eruption rated a category 7 on the Volcano Explosivity Index (VEI) - to put the eruption in perspective, the 2010 Icelandic eruption of Eyjafjallajokull (which caused large scale disruption to air travel) rated a category 4, and the VEI scale only goes to 8.

Several other strong volcanic eruptions took place in the four previous years, including four separate VEI category 4 eruptions between 1812 and 1814. These five eruptions tossed a significant amount of ash into the atmosphere – particulates causing light from the sun to bounce back and decrease the temperature of parts of the Earth.

People 4,000 kilometers away heard the eruption of Mount Tambora, with the areas close to 1000 kilometers away covered in a centimeter of ash. Close to 12,000 people, nearly the entire population of the Tambora province, died immediately after the explosion due to lava flows, tsunamis, and rocks sent flying through the sky.

Famine and skyrocketing food pricesThe unusual temperatures, lack of vegetation, and transport problems led to a famine spanning the Northern Hemisphere, indirectly killing an estimated 80,000 people. Prices for staple foods like corn and grain skyrocketed, while oats escalated to eight times their normal price, leading to a sell off of livestock in the Fall of 1816. Food prices stayed at an elevated rate until a recovery in the Summer of 1817. Resourceful individuals in Germany resorted to using straw and sawdust to make bread and survive the Summer and following Fall.

Creativity abounds!An inability to feed livestock and the high price of oats (the preferred food of horses!) led Karl Drais, a German inventor, to create a method of horseless transportation, the laufmaschine. Drais' "running machine" is a prototype for the modern bicycle that lacks pedals and relies on the rider to start off with a trot and then ride once sufficient speed is obtained (see picture opposite).

Literature also benefited alongside agriculture and transportation, with the dreary Summer of 1816 blamed for the conditions in Switzerland. These conditions led Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, and John William Polidori to spend much of a summer vacation in Switzerland indoors, entertaining each other with a contest to write the scariest story of all. The unseasonal weather conditions, along with this dare, led to the creation of Shelley's Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus — as well as Polidori's novella The Vampyre, probably the first prominent piece of vampiric fiction, and Byron's long-form poem, The Darkness.

An unusual sequence of eventsThe large amount of volcanic debris swirling around in the air during the year 1816 yielded phenomenal agricultural damage and mass migrations. Human ingenuity prevailed as well, giving insight as to what might just occur if humanity is faced with an atmosphere shielding event like an asteroid collision, another series of strong volcanic eruptions, or a nuclear winter.

Notes from class discussion

Focussed Questions

Using your notes from the class discussion, answer these questions below:

1. In your own words, explain the cause of the year without a summer.

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2. In your own words, explain the effects of the eruption.

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3. Out of the options below, what form is this text? Explain your answer.

Diary entrynarrativeinformative articlePersuasive piece

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4. How might readers be expected to respond to the questions in paragraph 2? Why did Veronese use them?

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5. Using the three examples of bracket use in the fourth paragraph, explain how and why brackets are used.

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6. How would you describe the tone of the final paragraph? What does Veronese want us to think?

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7. Mary Shelley has reported that a dream/nightmare partly inspired Frankenstein. Why does this reading not mention this fact?

Why is it important to find information from a variety of sources?

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Extended Response

How might Shelley’s experience of ‘The Year Without a Summer’, in particular being trapped inside due to bad weather, impacted on the mood or tone of Frankenstein?

Use examples of plot, character and/or themes from Frankenstein in your answer.

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Homework

Watch the following youtube video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhSI-GYV5qQ

In the box below, make bullet points of facts from Reading 3 and facts from the youtube video

Facts from Reading 3 – ‘The Year Without a Summer, and How It Spawned Frankenstein’

Facts from the youtube video

Using the facts above, synthesise the information into one cohesive passage that covers all of the essential information but does not exceed 180 words.

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Reading 5 – A Contemporary Review

Pre-Reading Think-Pair-Share Activity

Complete the following four vocabulary windows.

WORD

vivified

(past tense of vivify)

WORD FUNCTION

DEFINITION

WORD IN A SENTENCE

WORD

render

WORD FUNCTION

DEFINITION

WORD IN A SENTENCE

WORD

eloquence

WORD FUNCTION

DEFINITION

WORD IN A SENTENCE

WORD

dereliction

WORD FUNCTION

DEFINITION

WORD IN A SENTENCE

Extract from Knight’s Quarterly Review, August 1824 – anonymous writer

The most unskilful thing in the book is the extreme ugliness of the being whom Frankenstein creates. It is not natural, that to save himself additional trouble from the minuteness of the parts, he should create a giant. He must have known the vast danger of forming one of such bodily power, whose mind it would take a considerable time to mould into humanity. Besides, though it is highly natural that the features which had been chosen individually as perfect, and which appeared so even when conjoined in the lifeless figure, should, on their being vivified, have an incongruous and unearthly aspect; yet, it is not at all probable, that one with Frankenstein's science should have formed a creature of such "appalling hideousness." It is utterly inconceivable also, that he should have let the monster (as he is somewhat unfairly called) escape; -- one of the thoughts which must, one would imagine, have been uppermost in his mind during his labours, would have been the instructing his creature intellectually as he had formed him physically.

In the account which the creature gives of his instruction by means of watching the polished cottagers, the hastiness of the composition is the most apparent. Indeed, nothing would require such extreme trouble and carefulness as a correct representation of the mind of one who had (from whatever circumstances) reached maturity without any acquired knowledge. Those things which, from having been known to us before the period to which our remembrances reach, appear to be part of our innate consciousness, would be perfect novelty to such a being. Not only speech would be non-existent but even sight would be imperfect in him. In short, it would require much thought and some physical knowledge, joined (as I before said) to the greatest care, to render such a description at once full and accurate. In Frankenstein what there is of it is sufficiently interesting in itself, but it suggests so frequently how much more it might be wrought out, that it brings strongly into view its own imperfectness.

For my own part, I confess that my interest in the book is entirely on the side of the monster. His eloquence and persuasion, of which Frankenstein complains, are so because they are truth. The justice is indisputably on his side, and his sufferings are, to me, touching to the last degree. Are there any sufferings, indeed, so severe as those which arise from the sensation of dereliction, or, (as in this case) of isolation? Even the slightest tinge of those feelings, arising as they often do from trivial circumstances, as from passing a solitary evening in a lone and distant situation -- even these, are bitter to a severe degree. What it must be, then, -- what is it to feel oneself alone in the world! Fellow-feeling is the deepest of all the needs which Nature has implanted within us. The impulses which lead us to the physical preservation of our life are scarcely stronger than those which impel us to communion with our fellows. Alas! then to have no fellows! -- to be, with feelings of kindliness and beneficence, the object of scorn and hate to every one whose eyes lighted on us! -- to be repaid with blows and wounds for the very benefits we confer! -- The poor monster always, for these reasons, touched me to the heart. Frankenstein ought to have reflected on the means of giving happiness to the being of his creation, before he did create him. Instead of that, he heaps on him all sorts of abuse and contumely for his ugliness, which was directly his work, and for his crimes to which his neglect gave rise.

Notes from class discussion

Focussed Questions

Using your notes from the class discussion, answer these questions below:

1. How can you tell that this text is from the 1800s? Consider such aspects as the paragraph and sentence lengths.

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2. What is the purpose of the italics in the last paragraph?

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3. Why has the author used exclamation marks in the last paragraph?

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4. Why does the author think it is inconceivable that the monster would be so ugly?

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5. What is the author’s problem with the fact that the monster escapes? Do you agree with this problem?

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6. Is it strange that the monster, shortly after being created, can walk, see and talk? Why or why not?

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Extended Response

Should we feel sorry for the monster in Frankenstein?

Use evidence from the novel in your response.

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Homework

Did I request thee, Maker, from my clayTo mould me man? Did I solicit theeFrom darkness to promote me? ----

The lines above appear on the title page of Frankenstein.

From what other work of fiction are these lines taken?

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What do these lines mean?

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Why might the monster in Frankenstein be asking these questions?

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What is Shelley trying to say about ‘playing ‘God’?

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