We’ve been talking about a new vocabulary word, symbolism.

First, we looked for the root word, symbol. Then, we started to make connections.

We knew that a symbol is something that represents something else.

Our class pair-shared their examples and shared as a whole class. Some of the connections we made were to the wolverine being a symbol of our state as our nickname, The Wolverine State, and the mascot for the University of Michigan. Other Michigan state symbols shared were, the white pine as our state tree, the robin, and the Petoskey stone.

We thought about our nation’s symbols, like the bald eagle and our stars and stripes flag.

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After this discussion, we looked at the end of Chapter 21 in, The Fourteenth Goldfish.

Ellie dreamed about candles.

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The students thought about what kind of symbolism this ending could have. We shared again with face partners and table groups.

Here are some of the ideas we came up with.

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What about you? What do you think about the symbolism in Ellie’s dream?

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Do you have any other examples of symbolism to share with us?