ENGLISH 9 – QUARTER 2

Learning Activity Sheet

Name: ____________________________________ Date: ________________

Grade & Section: ____________________________ Adviser: ______________

WEEK 1: Making Connection

WEEK 1: DAY 1

Reading comprehension is a viable skill to develop in improving communication. All other macro skills like writing and
speaking greatly benefit from what you gain in reading. One relevant skill you need to hone is making connections. How
you are able to relate yourself to the materials you are exposed to affects your understanding of their contents and
themes.
In this lesson, you will learn how to make connections between texts to particular issues, concerns, and dispositions in
life.
Let us read the poem below. Reflect if this relates to you and the world, you live in by answering the questions that
follow.

WEEKS

Learning Task 1:

Answer the questions below about the poem entitled “Crossing The Bar” by Alfred Lord Tennyson.

1. What do sunset and evening star symbolizes?

2. Who is the entity referred to by the word Pilot in Stanza 4?

3. What does crossing the bar means?

4. Can you relate to the meaning of the poem based on your personal experiences? How?

5. Can you associate this with other people’s experiences? Explain.

WEEK 1: DAY 2

Directions: Read and study the following.

MAKING CONNECTIONS

You might have not noticed, but your previous experiences, knowledge, emotions, and understanding affect what and
how you learn (Harvey & Goudvis, 2000). Called the schema, your background knowledge and experiences actually help
you make sense and meaning of the material you are exposed to. Learning how to access these prior knowledge,
experiences, emotions, and opinions can help you make a connection to the text to help you understand concepts
better.
Keene and Zimmerman (1997, as cited in Kardash, 2004) concluded that students like you comprehend better when you
make different kinds of connections. These three (3) connections include the following:
 text-to-self,
 text-to-text, and
 text-to-world.

WEEK 1: DAY 3

Directions: Read and Study the following below.

MAKING ANNOTATION

The best way to remember and associate your experiences with those presented in any text is by annotating.
Annotating is to make marks on the text. It is not simply highlighting appealing words or sentences; though you will
most likely end up highlighting the entire selection. It is a purposeful strategy to help you comprehend what you are
reading on a deeper level than if you were to just read it straight through. It is an excellent way to deconstruct the text
into meaningful pieces for better understanding. Its main goal is to make connections between what you already know
—about practically anything—and the world around you.

There are four (4) major benefits of annotating (Azevedo, 2017).

A. It makes you more engaged in the material.
B. It slows your reading that helps you to focus on details and have better retention and comprehension.
C. It helps you process what you are reading.
D. It records textual evidence for later reference. You may even note your questions for further research.

Azevedo (2017) added that the following annotation strategies may be used:
 Circle any unfamiliar words, then look them up, and write down the definition.
 Use question marks to indicate areas of uncertainty.
 Use stars to indicate anything that seems important such as themes, symbols, foreshadowing, etc.
 Use exclamation points to indicate something dramatic or a key turning point.
 Circle (or mark somehow) character names any time they are introduced for the first time.
 Keep a list somewhere, maybe on the inside cover, of all the characters and their traits. Add to this list as new
characters are introduced or as you learn more about existing characters.
 Write your notes in the margins (best method), on sticky-notes (decent method), or in a separate notebook
(least favorable method).
 Paraphrase or summarize each chapter after you finish reading it. You only need a few sentences to do this.
Write them down at the beginning or end of the chapter.
 Write down any questions you have about the text – either questions you are willing to wait to find out the
answer as you read further, or questions you want to bring up to your teacher in class the next day.
 Use a color-coded system if that type of thing appeals to you.
 Give each chapter a title. So after you finish reading each chapter, go back to its title page and give it a title.

WEEK 1: DAY 4

Directions: Read and study the following.

To make it more engaging and interesting, you may also use illustrated annotations which use images to
represent concepts and elements. The creation of illustrations may help you synthesize information and, at the same
time, may help increase creativity and engagement while reading. They make annotating texts a more hands-on
experience and learning a more meaningful and personal (Gehr, 2019).
Below is an example of how a student used simple symbols and/or annotations to note significant elements from the
poem Crossing the Bar by Alfred Lord Tennyson.

Reflection Questions:

1. What lesson do you remember for this week?____________________________________.

2. How important is the lesson for this week in your daily lives?_______________________.
 ENGLISH 9 – QUARTER 2
Learning Activity Sheet

Name: ____________________________________ Date: ________________

Grade & Section: ____________________________ Adviser: ______________

WEEK 2: Making Connection

WEEK 2: DAY 1

Learning Task 2: Read the selection below and answer the questions that follow. Write your answer on a piece of paper.

1. On the eve of his death, what did Dr. King say about the opportunity that we have to do?
2. Even after his death, Dr. King has continued challenging the Americans to make America a better nation. What
evidence from the text supports this conclusion?
3. Based on this speech, what can you infer about economic and social justice in America?
4. Based on this proclamation, how could Americans support each other in bringing America closer to Dr. King's
"promised land" of equality and opportunity? Support your answer with evidence from the text.
5. In the last paragraph of the text, what did President Obama try to persuade people to do? Do you think this could also
be applied in the current situation of our country? Explain your answer.
WEEK 2: DAY 2

Learning Task 3:
Reread the selection in Learning Task 2. On a sheet of paper, copy and accomplish the Community Connection Reading
Response graphic organizer below.

WEEK 2: DAY 3

Learning Task 4:
Based on the text in Learning Task 2, make a Community Plan using the template below. Use a separate sheet for your
output.

WEEK 2: DAY 4

Reflection Questions:

1. What activity/task do you remember for this week?____________________________________.

2. How important is the lesson for this week in your daily lives?_______________________.
WEEK 3: DAY 1

Learning Task 1: read the story below. Draw/use annotation to take note important details.

THE GIFT OF MAGI

By: O. Henry

William Sydney Porter, also known as O. Henry, was born on September 11, 1862 in Greensboro, North Carolina, USA. He was an American writer
known for writing short stories about the lives of ordinary people. He died on June 5, 1910 in New York, New York.

One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one
and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks
burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della
counted it. One dollar and eighty- seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.
There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it.
Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles
predominating.
While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second, take a look at
the home. A furnished flat at $8 per week. It did not exactly provide a beggar description, but it certainly
had that word on the lookout for the mendicancy squad.
In the vestibule below was a letter-box into which no letter would go, and an electric button from which
no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name "Mr. James
Dillingham Young."
The "Dillingham" had been flung to the breeze during a former period of prosperity when its possessor
was being paid $30 per week. Now, when the income was shrunk to $20, though, they were thinking
seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming D. But whenever Mr. James Dillingham Young
came home and reached his flat above he was called "Jim" and greatly hugged by Mrs. James
Dillingham Young, already introduced to you as Della. Which is all very good.
Della finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood by the window and
looked out dully at a gray cat walking a gray fence in a gray backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas
Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving every penny she
could for months, with this result. Twenty dollars a week doesn't go far. Expenses had been greater than
she had calculated. They always are. Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Her Jim. Many a happy hour
she had spent planning for something nice for him. Something fine and rare and sterling--something
just a little bit near to being worthy of the honor of being owned by Jim.
There was a pier-glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have seen a pier-glass in an $8
flat. A very thin and very agile person may, by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of
longitudinal strips, obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks. Della, being slender, had mastered
the art.
Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass. her eyes were shining brilliantly, but
her face had lost its color within twenty seconds. Rapidly
she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length.
Now, there were two possessions of the James Dillingham Youngs in which they both took a mighty
pride. One was Jim's gold watch that had been his father's and his grandfather's. The other was Della's
hair. Had the queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the airshaft, Della would have let her hair hang out
the window some day to dry just to depreciate Her Majesty's jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been
the janitor, with all his treasures piled up in the basement, Jim would have pulled out his watch every
time he passed, just to see him pluck at his beard from envy.
So now Della's beautiful hair fell about her rippling and shining like a cascade of brown waters. It
reached below her knee and made itself almost a garment for her. And then she did it up again
nervously and quickly. Once she faltered for a minute and stood still while a tear or two splashed on the
worn red carpet.
On went her old brown jacket; on went her old brown hat. With a whirl of skirts and with the brilliant
sparkle still in her eyes, she fluttered out the door and down the stairs to the street.
Where she stopped the sign read: "Mne. Sofronie. Hair Goods of All Kinds." One flight up Della ran, and
collected herself, panting. Madame, large, too white, chilly, hardly looked the "Sofronie."
"Will you buy my hair?" asked Della.
"I buy hair," said Madame. "Take yer hat off and let's have a sight at the looks of it."
Down rippled the brown cascade.
"Twenty dollars," said Madame, lifting the mass with a practised hand.
"Give it to me quick," said Della.
Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed metaphor. She was ransacking
the stores for Jim's present.
She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else. There was no other like it in any of
the stores, and she had turned all of them inside out. It was a platinum fob chain simple and chaste in
design, properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by meretricious ornamentation--as all
good things should do. It was even worthy of The Watch. As soon as she saw it she knew that it must be
Jim's. It was like him. Quietness and value--the description applied to both. Twenty-one dollars they
took from her for it, and she hurried home with the 87 cents. With that chain on his watch Jim might be
properly anxious about the time in any company. Grand as the watch was, he sometimes looked at it on
the sly on account of the old leather strap that he used in place of a chain.
When Della reached home her intoxication gave way a little to prudence and reason. She got out her
curling irons and lighted the gas and went to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to
love. Which is always a tremendous task, dear friends--a mammoth task.
Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close-lying curls that made her look wonderfully
like a truant schoolboy. She looked at her reflection in the mirror long, carefully, and critically.

"If Jim doesn't kill me," she said to herself, "before he takes a second look at me, he'll say I look like a
Coney Island chorus girl. But what could I do--oh! what could I do with a dollar and eighty- seven
cents?"
At 7 o'clock the coffee was made and the frying-pan was on the back of the stove hot and ready to cook
the chops.
Jim was never late. Della doubled the fob chain in her hand and sat on the corner of the table near the
door that he always entered. Then she heard his step on the stair away down on the first flight, and she
turned white for just a moment. She had a habit for saying little silent prayer about the simplest
everyday things, and now she whispered: "Please God, make him think I am still pretty."
The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and very serious. Poor fellow, he was
only twenty-two--and to be burdened with a family! He needed a new overcoat and he was without
gloves.
Jim stopped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of quail. His eyes were fixed upon
Della, and there was an expression in them that she could not read, and it terrified her. It was not
anger, nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments that she had been prepared
for. He simply stared at her fixedly with that peculiar expression on his face.
Della wriggled off the table and went for him.
"Jim, darling," she cried, "don't look at me that way. I had my hair cut off and sold because I couldn't
have lived through Christmas without giving you a present. It'll grow out again--you won't mind, will
you? I just had to do it. My hair grows awfully fast. Say `Merry Christmas!' Jim, and let's be happy. You
don't know what a nice-- what a beautiful, nice gift I've got for you."
"You've cut off your hair?" asked Jim, laboriously, as if he had not arrived at that patent fact yet even
after the hardest mental labor.
"Cut it off and sold it," said Della. "Don't you like me just as well, anyhow? I'm me without my hair, ain't
I?"
Jim looked about the room curiously.
"You say your hair is gone?" he said, with an air almost of idiocy.
"You needn't look for it," said Della. "It's sold, I tell you--sold and gone, too. It's Christmas Eve, boy. Be
good to me, for it went for you. Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered," she went on with sudden
serious sweetness, "but nobody could ever count my love for you. Shall I put the chops on, Jim?"
Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded his Della. For ten seconds let us regard with
discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the other direction. Eight dollars a week or a million a
year--what is the difference? A mathematician or a wit would give you the wrong answer. The magi
brought valuable gifts, but that was not among them. This dark assertion will be illuminated later on.
Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the table.
"Don't make any mistake, Dell," he said, "about me. I don't think there's
anything in the way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that could make me like my girl any less. But
if you'll unwrap that package you may see why you had me going a while at first."
White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper. And then an ecstatic scream of joy; and then,
alas! a quick feminine change to hysterical tears and wails, necessitating the immediate employment of
all the comforting powers of the lord of the flat.
For there lay The Combs--the set of combs, side and back, that Della had worshipped long in a
Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure tortoise shell, with jewelled rims--just the shade to wear in the
beautiful vanished hair. They were expensive combs, she knew, and her heart had simply craved and
yearned over them without the least hope of possession. And now, they were hers, but the tresses that
should have adorned the coveted adornments were gone.
But she hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look up with dim eyes and a smile
and say: "My hair grows so fast, Jim!"
And them Della leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, "Oh, oh!"
Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present. She held it out to him eagerly upon her open palm. The dull
precious metal seemed to flash with a reflection of her bright and ardent spirit.
"Isn't it a dandy, Jim? I hunted all over town to find it. You'll have to look at the time a hundred times a
day now. Give me your watch. I want to see how it looks on it."
Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hands under the back of his head and
smiled.
"Dell," said he, "let's put our Christmas presents away and keep 'em a while. They're too nice to use just
at present. I sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs. And now suppose you put the chops
on."
The magi, as you know, were wise men--wonderfully wise men--who brought gifts to the Babe in the
manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise
ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to
you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other
the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all
who give gifts these two were the wisest. O all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest.
Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.

WEEK 3: DAY 2

Learning Task 2:

Directions: Answer the following questions about the story “The Gift of Magi”. Write your answer
on a sheet of paper

1. Who are the characters in the story?

2. Why did the characters sell their most valuable items?
3. What are magi? Relate your answer to the characteristics of Jim and Della.
4. How will you relate the story to your personal experiences?
5. How will you relate this story to the account on the three magi in the story of the birth of Jesus?
6. Does this world need more magi? Explain what life lessons can be derived/learned from the given
story.

Week 3: Day 3

Learning Task 3:

Directions: Accomplish the Notice, Wonder, Connect Organizer below using the story entitled “The
Gift of Magi”.

Notice, Wonder, Connect Organizer

Week 3: Day 4

Learning Task 4:

Reflection Questions:
1. What activity/task do you remember for this week?____________________________________.
2. How important is the lesson for this week in your daily lives?_______________________.
Week 4: Day 1 to Day 2

Directions:
Make connections with the text you read in Learning Task 4 by answering
g the Reflection Using Big Questions form below. Copy and complete the table in your notebook.
Week 4: Day 3 and Day 4

Directions: Read the article carefully. Then, in your notebook, answer the questions that follow.
Use annotations to get the main idea of the selection.
Questions:
1. What are the two main ideas of the article?
2. What do you think is the purpose of the article?
3. Do you know any similar circumstances experienced by Filipino firefighters and/or other risk-
reduction personnel in your community?
4. Complete the Community Connections graphic organizer on the next page.