{"id":5732,"date":"2025-11-20T14:13:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-20T14:13:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thesummitprep.org\/middleschool\/?p=5732"},"modified":"2025-11-20T14:13:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T14:13:08","slug":"why-does-this-book-exist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thesummitprep.org\/middleschool\/2025\/11\/20\/why-does-this-book-exist\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Does This Book Exist?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">This week, we are practicing metacognitive critical thinking and reading comprehension skills as we dive deeper into the meanings and intentions of the novels we\u2019ve read. It\u2019s at this point that one of my favorite questions \u2013 why? \u2013 guides us toward deep conversations of why the author wrote the text this way, why this scene is like that, why this object is there, why we interpreted it this way, why literature is studied, etc.. We discussed and questioned the elements of character, conflict, symbol, motif, and theme as students begin researching\/analyzing a few of these for an individual summative project.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">To engage with your student, you could ask them:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">the protagonist\/antagonist of the novel,<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">the conflict in the novel,<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">the difference between a symbol and motif,<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">an example of a symbol or motif from the novel, and<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">how these elements communicate the theme of the novel. <\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week, we are practicing metacognitive critical thinking and reading comprehension skills as we dive deeper into the meanings and intentions of the novels we\u2019ve read. It\u2019s at this point that one of my favorite questions \u2013 why? \u2013 guides us toward deep conversations of why the author wrote the text this way, why this [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-languagearts"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Why Does This Book Exist? - Middle School<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"We are practicing metacognitive critical thinking and reading comprehension skills as we dive deeper into the meanings and intentions of the novels we\u2019ve read.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.thesummitprep.org\/middleschool\/2025\/11\/20\/why-does-this-book-exist\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why Does This Book Exist? 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