29.3. "My First Free Summer," Julia Alvarez, RI2., W9.

What Are We Practicing

We're working on reading informational text and determining the central idea of such. (RI2.)
We're working on writing open-ended questions with clear answers, valid explanations, and relevant and sufficient text support. (W9.)

Rafael Trujillo, Dominican dictator,
was assassinated in 1961.

What Information Will Help Us Perform Our Task Well and Efficiently?

1. Always read the open-ended question first.
2. As soon as you're done, always ask yourself, "What was the WHO+WHAT+WHY of this reading?"
3. This is a piece of narrative nonfiction, so it makes sense to use the Five Fingers to analyze it.
4. The title of a story is nearly always symbolic..

The Text

This nonfiction narrative I first became interested in because of the role that the narrator's parents play in the story. They are probably doing interesting, exciting things while the narrator is dealing with her own childhood experiences. We will want to talk afterwards about how the values of parents are transmitted to children, even thought the open-ended question that I have written does not deal with this. Anyway, read Julia Alvarez's narrative essay, "My First Free Summer."

The Assignent:

Open-Ended Question (Complete in Criterion if available)

The title of the essay, "My First Free Summer," has two different meanings.

• How does the meaning of the title change from the beginning to the end of the piece?
• How does the title show the important lesson that the narrator learns at the climax?