Stave One

Grammar: 4 types of sentences Literary devices: similes, characterization Reading skill: summarizing

Stave 1

• Read for: – Tone – sarcasm – Images – fun ways of describing things – Stereotypes (broad, predictable characters)

Check Understanding

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Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Infer: character

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Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grind- stone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice.

External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he… Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, "My dear Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see me?" No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was o'clock, no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to such and such a place, of Scrooge. Even the blind men's dogs appeared to know him; and when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners into doorways …

Predict

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Once upon a time -- of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve -- old Scrooge sat busy in his counting-house.

Read – Pause, Predict

• Pause after each page: what’s going on?

• Predict after each change in scene: what will happen? (Adds enjoyment and memory) • Review, retell, re-read: if you’re lost, skim the page again, see if you can retell what happened, re-read it if you must. THEN go on.

Grammar: Types of Sentences

• Simple: doer, doing, done to • Compound: Two simple sentences FANBOYS or ; • Complex: Subordinate clause -A WHITE BUS • Compound-complex: at least 3 simple sentence: one joined with FANBOY or ;, the other with a subordinate clause

In a group, list as many important plot points as you can in this stave

• • • • • Marley is dead Scrooge is stingy Scrooge owns a business Scrooge is a practical man not given to believing in ghosts Scrooge has a nephew who invites him to Christmas; Scrooge declines rudely • • Scrooge meets a ghost, who says he is Marley The ghost predicts three more ghosts will visit Scrooge

Answering questions

• Use one or two specific examples from the story. • Restate the question in your answer (this makes you focus on the question).

• Answer all parts of the question in a sentence that makes sense all on its own.

Example

• #7, p. 18 Marley tells Scrooge he has a “chance and a hope” of escaping Marley’s fate. What is this chance and hope?

– Marley, Scrooge – P. 52 – Chance: opportunity; Hope: something better

Marley tells Scrooge he has a “chance and a hope” of escaping Marley’s fate. What is this chance and hope?

• Poor answers: • He might be able to avoid his fate.

• He has a chance to get away.

Better

• Scrooge has a chance to escape the same fate as Marley of being a ghost after he dies.

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Best

Marley explains to Scrooge that Marley is giving Scrooge a chance that Marley never had: to repent of his sins. Scrooge realizes the visits from the three ghosts are his chance to learn to change his ways, and his hope is that he will die peacefully instead of being haunted like Marley.