Today's Guest Author: Alyssa
The Transfer Task was an assignment that asked the questions:
"What world issues are hidden in a text?"
"How do I use text to understand and evaluate the world issues in a story?"
Our goal was to identify a world issue in a piece of fiction in something we have read this year. Then, find a non-fiction article about the same world issue. Lastly, we would cite text evidence to make inferences that show how the two texts support each other.
The fiction text I used in this project was Beautiful Creatures by Kami Carcia and Margaret Stohl, a book about a boy, Ethan, who falls in love with a girl in his dreams, Lena, who comes to his town and is rendered a freak by the popular crowd in his highschool. The non-fiction text was an article from the Los Angeles Times titled, "Study Links Teen Bullying to Social Status." The world issue these texts both showed was bullying and excluding people in school.
Here's how I mapped out my connection between the texts:
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| *Correction: "Combating bullying in schools is targeting social hierarchies."* |
- Alyssa
Alyssa,
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing your work! I really like how you lined up the two boxes that show the clearest connection between your fiction reading and your nonfiction piece--the fact that bullying can occur when people are not following the same social norms that a group is used to.
as people get to know each other they tend to treat each other with less and less respect up until they become bullies. Only the friends of the bully are the ones that are "safe" from his/her bullying.
ReplyDeleteIn my book, Winter Girls, Laurie Halse Anderson illusttates the mindset of an anorexic teen. This fiction text follows Lia as she journeys through a path of self-destruction by bulimia and pain.In the nonfiction text "Beating Anorexia" by teeen ink talks of the thinking and poor self_image of many girls and boys that are obsessed with losing weight
ReplyDeleteIn class when we read the book X-15 by Jack Gantos, a short story that described the effect that peer pressure can have on a young teenager. Peer pressure is a big issue in our society today. I read the aritical, Dealing With Pear Pressure, by Mary L. Gavin and i could really see that the description of peer pressure really showed in the story, X-15. Dealing With Peer Pressure describes how your peers can make you feel safe in secure but they may be pressuring you negativly. In X-15, the main character thinks that the gang will make you feel safe but they really make you do bad things.
ReplyDeleteMy world issue from this assignment was teen violence and how it has increased rapidly these past few years. I related my nonfiction text to "Dragonfly Eyes", when 2 teens were about to be murdered but Savannah saved Claire when she realized that Claire had been the good one all along. My nonfiction text was from TIME Magazine, about a military general's daughter who commited suicide out of nowhere. The question of the story was "why exactly did she do this?" Several theories were that she could have been overwhelmed by the criticism towards her father, or a personal issue with her family. In Dragonfly Eyes, Savannah realized that Claire was a much better person than she had been all along, and Ana (the girl in my nonfiction text) had a mysterious reason in which she chose to die young because of. I know how big of an issue this is in the world right now, and it was easily relatable to my fiction text.
ReplyDeleteMy book was Just Listen by Sarah Dessen and one of the world issues hidden in the book was anorexia. I read a nonfiction article and found out that many people think they look fat because they keep comparing themselves to people on TV but what they don't know is that they edit the image on the TV to make the people skinnier. Also when people are really skinny, they eat and then throw up so they don't gain weight. I also found out there is no definite cure to anorexia, but there are steps you can take to overcome it.
ReplyDeleteMy book, Dreamland by Sarah Dessen was about a teenage girl in an abusive relationship with a boy. This is a world issue because millions of teens are in abusive relationships and sometimes their only escape is to end their life.
ReplyDeleteI read a non- fiction article about abusive partners and found out that both boys and girls can be abusive in a relationship, although the men aren't the ones who usually recieve the physical abusive, the girls are. This should end soon so that millions of lives can be saved.
As I was reading Wall-E there were a few issues that are simular to our world today. I couldn't find a non-fiction article but I know that obesity and the amount of trash found outside is an issue we have in our world. In the book, everyone turns back to a normal weight after eating healthy plants and exercising.
ReplyDeleteIn my book "Fat Cat", it displays a fat teen achieving two events in her life: Losing weight and winning the science fair and getting a scholarship from her science teacher. She does sometimes have to beat bullying because of her weight, but she pulls through it all.
ReplyDeleteIn my book Sasquatch had connected to the world issue of crime and robbery. It does so by one of the chacter named Buck once robbed a airplane and got a bunch of money and didn't get in trouble for stealing the money. And i can connect this issue to the issue in london with the riots. I connected these two by both did some things illegaly and some people got away with just like Buck in the book.
ReplyDeleteMy world issue was from the short story "Dragonfly Eyes" is about 2 girls that get taken hostage.I also found this article on line called the "10 Famous Hostage Situations". A few of them are Terry Anderson, who was imprisoned for 6 years. His captors were muslims who supported iran. One huge hostage was the Beslan School hostage crisis(or beslan massacre)which took 777 kids hostage. In Dragonfly Eyes the captor wants to kill the girls and then himself because he wants fame and that is what the captors are thinking in real life when they take someone hostage.
ReplyDelete"Hate List" by Jennifer Brown deals with the issue of how bullying can lead people to do things that could hurt other people. I read an article about a boy who ended his life because of being bullied and cyberbullied. Too many kids are the victims of bullying, some which may think that the only way out is to end their own life. There are so many things in life this boy had to look forward to. But, he died because of what? Kids who didn't like the way he looked? Because he doesn't like the same things as them? Bullying has to stop before too many lives are lost.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was reading the "Hate List" by Jennifer Brown it is about a boy named Nick who starts a school shooting. My world issue is on school shooting and how they can be stopped if people just think about what they will say or post. If bullies didnt exisist then school shootings would stop and teens would stop taking their livesn too.
ReplyDeleteMy world issue was suicide, and my fiction work was a book called "Tweak" by Nic Sheff. This book really impacted me and my perspective and I still think about it today, though I finished it over a month ago. Many times, the character contemplated suicide, and I wanted to see what thoughts he had, compared to an article I found called "Teens and Suicide". I found there are many thoughts people go through when they think about hurting themselves, and no two cases are alike. It was really interesting to see into somebody's world, and their thought process (in "Tweak") and an experts point of view ("Teens and Suicide")on the exact same subject.
ReplyDeletemy world issue is from a book named dragonfly eyes. in the book theres a huge hostage crisis with two girls named savanna and clarie in the story it shows a sign of bullying in the last page it says everyone will weep and secertly wonder if claire should have been taken instead of me
ReplyDelete