1. Choose your quotation CD and write it on the Quotation lines on your Tchart.
2. Think of the lead-in by asking yourself, “What happens in the story right before the quote?”
3. Use one of these starter words to begin the lead-in and write it on the Lead-in lines on your Tchart:

1. After
2. Since
3. Although
4. When
5. As
6. While
7. Before

I tell the students that the test of a well-placed embedded quotation is that if I close my eyes and ask a student to read his or her sentence, I should not be able to tell when the writer’s voice ends and the quote begins.

Then, I take the students to YouTube and the AllState commercial where the AllState’s spokesperson’s voice replaces the speaker’s voice. It’s the same feel with embedded quotations.

Here are few examples:

High School Example:

Prompt: In Act 1, Scenes 5-7 of William Shakespeare’s drama, The Tragedy of Macbeth, Lady Macbeth is the driving force behind her husband’s resolve to murder King Duncan.  In a well-organized two-chunk paragraph (1:2+), analyze the extent to which Lady Macbeth rejects her femininity to further her pursuit of power. 

List of CDs Selected:

• “Bellona’s bridegroom” (Mac. 1.2.54)
• “You should be women,/And yet your beards forbid me to interpret/That you are so” (Mac. 1.3.45-47)
• “Against the use of nature” (Mac. 1.3.137).

“Pancakes” by Joan Bauer

Jill views herself as a perfectionist and has high expectations for herself. A teenager who works at Ye Olde Pancake House as a waitress, Jill is hired to replace a disorganized waitress because Jill is “a person of order” with a “system for everything [. . .], even alphabetizing condiments.”

Elementary School Example

Cinderella must do all the “cooking, cleaning, and sewing by herself” (2).

Keep Reading and Writing!

Warm regards,

Dr. D’