The+Cold+Equation


 * This is the "What if you had to kill someone to save someone else or yourself?" unit. Sounds kind of crazy right off the bat, but this unit is designed to get you thinking about some crucial issues. We're going to be looking at morals. What are they? Where do they come from? How do we decide what is right and what is wrong.**

**The main text we will be using is called, "Cold Equations" by Tom Godwin. It's a science fiction story so we'll be doing some work with that genre.**



__**About "The Cold Equations"**__:

Tom Godwin’s science-fiction story “The Cold Equations” takes place entirely aboard the //Stardust//, an Emergency Dispatch Ship (EDS) headed for the frontier planet Woden with a load of desperately needed medical supplies. The pilot, Barton, discovers a stowaway: an eighteen-year-old girl. By law, all EDS stowaways are to be jettisoned because EDS vessels carry no more fuel than is absolutely necessary to land safely at their destination. The girl, Marilyn, merely wants to see her brother, a colonist on Woden, and is not aware of the law. When boarding the //Stardust//, Marilyn sees the "UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL KEEP OUT!" sign, but thinks she will simply have to pay a fine if she is caught. Barton explains that her presence dooms the mission and will result in the deaths of the colonists.

__**Unit Focus**__**:**

__Themes__:

This unit is designed to get you thinking about moral and ethical dilemmas. What is the right thing to do in a situation like the one from "The Cold Equations"? How do we decide the worth of a human life? Ultimately, who is more important? Me or you? What do we need to take into consideration to make that choice and why?

The unit is also designed to think about: How does this relate to me and my life? Of course getting shot out into space has very little to do with any of our lives, but by focusing on the themes of the story and not only on the story details themselves, we can better connect our lives to those of the characters. Hopefully, maybe even learn a little something about ourselves along the way.

__Skills__:

This unit will focus on the following skills-
 * Background knowledge (activating schema)
 * Making connections (text to self, text to text, text to world)
 * Questioning (fat & skinny questions. What's the difference and how can we use them to go deeper?)
 * Making predictions and inferences (what do I think will happen next? What can I figure out the missing details based on clues given by the author?)
 * Understanding how an author uses story elements and lit. devices to tell a story (how can we identify them and use them ourselves?)
 * Summarizing a text (re-telling just the important details about a text)
 * Vocabulary (what is confusing? How do I find the definition to a word I don't know? How do I remember the definition?)
 * Paragraph and essay construction (how can I use a structure to clearly express my ideas about something?)

**Click here for your 1st assignment**