L4: Relate the setting of various titles to their main themes.

Notes and Resources:

Teaching the Classics Syllabus Section 3
Socratic List Questions 1d - 1j, 2d - 2f

At this stage, students will begin using “3-sentence quotations” to demonstrate their completion of daily reading assignments as well as their grasp of a story’s structure and themes. Each 3-sentence quotation includes:

1) A “setup sentence,” which describes the situation in which the quotation occurs and makes brief reference to the prompt or assignment,

2) A direct quotation from the story, enclosed in quotation marks and followed by a author/page-style citation at the end of the sentence but before final punctuation, and

3) A “follow-up” sentence, in which the student explains how the quotation answers the prompt or assignment.

The advantages of this formula are numerous: it requires close and thoughtful reading; it anticipates the proper procedure for handling textual evidence in essay writing; it produces relatively short assignments which nevertheless efficiently demonstrate the student’s mastery of the assignment; and it is extremely easy to grade. Students receive equal parts credit for:

1) Clean grammar/syntax/punctuation/spelling,

2) The conformity of their answer to the 3-sentence formula (Does the setup sentence situate the quotation? Is the quotation cited correctly? Does the follow-up sentence offer an interpretation of the text?), and

3) The plausibility of their interpretation based on the text chosen.