Lesson Title: The Glorious Whitewasher

By: Deidrien Booth

Burning Question:

How can I use a portion of the novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer to help students learn about work and getting out of it while seeing a connection between the character of Tom and themselves?

Objective/Introduction:

Students will explore their feelings about chores they don’t like, then read chapter 2 to see how Twain dramatizes Tom and his feelings toward work and how he figures out how he gets what he wants.

 Context:

This lesson monitors Tom’s behavior as he figures out how to manipulate others.  It brings a connection to students with some mischief from their own lives.

Materials:

• Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, chapter 2: “The Glorious Whitewasher”
• Reader Response Log

 

Time Span:

1 day

 

Procedure:

1.                  Begin students with the quick-write: Tell about a time you had to do a chore you didn’t want to do.  What was it?  Could someone else have done it instead of you?  Did you finish it?  Were you paid to do it?  Is it something you have to do regularly, or was it just a one-time chore?

2.                  Pass out copies of Reader Response Logs (RRL).

3.                  Read chapter 2 of the novel “The Glorious Whitewasher” aloud as students follow.  At the quotations, pause and encourage students to respond on RRL.  Encourage students to begin their responses using provided sentence starters.

4.                  At the end of the story, have students chose one of their responses to expand and further reflect.  Ask them to develop this in a paragraph.

 

Rationale:

This strategy teaches learning from the text through thinking on paper.  In order to keep students from retelling the plot, it is imperative that they begin their sentences with the sentence starters.  It allows students to make a connection with Tom and see his mischievous nature.  In addition, it allows a teacher to use a portion of the novel and expose students to Twain and his characters.

 

 

 

Extensions:

The essay can be developed into a multi-paragraph paper or it can remain a shorter piece.  The reader information can be used in a protocol like Socratic Seminar as a group activity, or they can even work in  smaller groups. 

 

Resources:

• Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Puffin Classics). London: Puffin Books, 2008, chapter 2: “The Glorious Whitewasher.”
• Olson, C. B.. The Reading/Writing Connection: Strategies for Teaching and Learning in the Secondary Classroom. Boston: Pearson Education, Inc., 2003.
• The NEH Big Read  lesson plan , “Culture and History,” focuses on the whitewashing story: http://www.neabigread.org/books/theadventuresoftomsawyer/teachersguide02.php

 

 

 

·       Reader Response Log

Chapter 2: “The Glorious Whitewash”

Note Taking: What the Text Says	Note Making: What the Text Means to Me
Soon the free boys would come tripping along on all sorts of delicious expeditions, and they would make a world of fun for him for having to work—the very thought of it burnt him like fire.
Like it?  Well, I don’t see why I oughtn’t to like it.  Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?
Yes, she’s awful particular about this fence; it’s got to be done very careful; I reckon there ain’t one boy in a thousand, maybe two thousand, that can do it the way it’s got to be done.
Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all.  He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it—namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain.

 

Begin your sentences with any of the following:

I wonder . . . I began to think of I like the idea . . . I know the feeling . . .

I noticed . . . I was surprised . . . If I had been . . . I was reminded of . . .