DRAWING CONCLUSIONS RIP VAN WINKLE

Mary Ellen Page

2000

Rip Van Winkle

There are a variety of activities that you can do with the story of Rip Van Winkle

Practice with new vocabulary

Word definition Figuring meaning through context Old shack, keg of wine on his back, accusingly Discuss story and its implications Have students find 18 irregular verbs in the past tense (Reward those who find all of them in ten minutes) became had began got heard told hit was awoke lay saw took wore thought found said were went

Work on any other grammar points that you feel need to be covered Relate story to others of this type Cultural aspects of the story American Revolution, period, events, the Dutch playing ninepins, Washington Irving, map work (Catskill Mts.), Dutch in New Amsterdam, clothing of the period, clothing 20 yrs. later, architecture, TYPES OF TESTING usual written tests of TRUE-FALSE, multiple choice, matching, essay oral summary reenactment, dramatization using new vocabulary in context, create sentences

Skim Reading Techniques Find a short story or create your own and give students individual copies. One that is quite good is Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle. Check this out at the following website: http://www.2020site.org/robbinhood/rip.html This version is a poem with pictures. The short story version is at http://www2.lhric.org/pst/shms/Rvw.htm . The pictures are quite good in both of them. However, you may want a simplified American English version. Check my version below. It is also good for cultural material and discussion. Show students how to increase their reading speed. Allow them to begin to read the story, and after about 1 minutes, tell them to stop. Ask them to indicate the point at which they stopped. Then show them how to improve their reading speed by moving down the page with their hand, a ruler, or a pencil as a guide. Have them set a pace of movement and force their eyes to move as fast. Now ask them to begin reading again, only this time using their hands or the object to force their eyes to move faster. Again allow them the same amount of time and ask them to stop. Everyone should have read more the second time. After everyone has finished the whole story and you have explained all the new vocabulary, teach them how to "skim" (read quickly for the highlights) to find the answers to questions you have already prepared. Ask the questions orally and have them find and write the answers. This can be a graded or non-graded exercise. Get students to focus on the six journalistic questions for finding information: who, what, why, when, where, and how. You may also create a game out of the final assignment for this activity by asking them to see who can find all of the irregular past tense verbs, or a series of antonyms, or anything that you would like to test. By doing a number of skim reading activities in class, you can enable your students to read faster and learn how to find material more quickly.