1. The Pearl by John Steinbeck A novella based on an old Mexican folktale Symbolism Research Assignment

2. The Pearl Symbolism Research Assignment This activity is intended to help you begin to interpret some of the symbols in Steinbeck's novel, by first building background knowledge on topics relevant to the text. Your job is to go to your teacher's Blackboard site and click on the power point link "Symbolism Research Assignment." Click on the picture in each slide and that will lead you to an informative website. You will need to choose and create an appropriate "Thinking Map" for each website to gather information. Your Thinking Map should have a heading and the topic should be the title of that page. You should notate a minimum of 10 things for each topic and staple your Thinking Maps together. By building background knowledge on these relevant topics, you can see how the literal (real) topics can be symbolic. A symbol is a person, place, object or action that stands for something beyond itself. Pearl Scorpion Ocean Canoe Village Storm

3. Process 1. Locate the pictures of your topics on the following slides. 2. Click on each image. This will link you to information on those topics. 3. Read through the texts. 4. Pick the Thinking Map that would be most appropriate for your note-taking on the topic. 5. Take a minimum of 10 notes per topic. 6. Once you begin reading the novel, consider how the topics can be interpreted symbolically.

4. Images of symbols from The Pearl appear on the next few slides. Click on the slide and it will link you to an informative website to get information for your Thinking Map.

5. Scorpion

6. Pearl

7. Ocean

8. Canoe

9. Village

10. Storm

11. Acknowledgments Information, images and links for this activity are courtesy of the following websites: Images http://socrates.berkeley.edu:7001/Gallery/castellanos/thumbnails/orangemountains.jpg http://yogateacher.com/text/retreats/mxraja/frontpage.html http://www.desertusa.com/oct96/du_scorpion.html http://www1.istockphoto.com www.corbis.com http://pearlsandjade.com/akoya_pearl.asp www. magickcanoe.com http://www.hickerphoto.com/data/media/171/ocean_waves_photos_t1504.jpg http://palimpsest.typepad.com/photos/sun_moon_stars/twilight.jpg http://downtheroad.org/Publishing/1TheRoadnoEnd/Images_Filesb/a11Nicaragua/beachhouse.JPG http://sugarmtnfarm.com/blog/uploaded_images/NHRedRooster-791982.jpg http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NasaNews/ReleaseImages/20050111/02_thunderstorm_night.jpg http://www.bbc.co.uk/southyorkshire/teens/images/school_270.jpg http://www.pwcgov.org/ImgLibrary/small/002454.jpg Reference http://www.desertusa.com/oct96/du_scorpion.html http://www.pearl-guide.com/ http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/ocean/ http://www.canoe.ca/AllAboutCanoes/ http://www.buildinghistory.org/villages.shtml http://www.learner.org/interactives/weather/storms.html