Allusions

Do you want your students to see how one literary work is influenced by another?

Use when you want students to:

make connections between themselves and characters from a novel, short story, or other literary work, specifically focusing on character traits.
make connections across literary works.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.8.4
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.8.9

Disciplinary data literacy skills:

Data are interpreted, and we can even create it.
Data sets are built from individual data points.

About this network

Allusions are everywhere, from sports broadcasts to remakes. But not all students have the right set of references to find or understand the allusions in the sources they’re working with. Are there allusions in literary works that your students are reading that they struggle to identify? This network template supports students as they learn more about both familiar and unfamiliar allusions.

SUCCESS STORIES: Teachers who have used this type of network have found it successful for helping students work with one source that has unfamiliar references that connect to other readings.

TEXTS THAT WORK: Sources that are influenced by something else or have lots of references that students need to track. For example, *The Looking Glass Wars* is built on the framework from Lewis Carroll's *Alice in Wonderland*; Shakespeare plays often use biblical references; Percy Jackson uses Greek mythology as its starting point.

Play with a sample network

A sample network with data from varied student readings

Explore the network by dragging nodes around, looking at the details for a few nodes and edges, and opening up the Nodes and Edges tables.

Network Details: What should my students and I be tracking?

For any network, students will track nodes (things) and edges (relationships between things), each of which will also have "attributes" (which include mandatory info like citations and optional info like extra notes).

Nodes (things being connected)

In this network, the nodes represent the allusions identified within the work and who those allusions are aimed at.

Allusion
A quote that has a built-in reference to something else. For example, if we were reading *The Looking Glass Wars* (a 21st-century adaptation of *Alice in Wonderland*), we would enter “Alyss,” the name of the main character.
Example
The reference. If our allusion is Alyss from The Looking Glass Wars, then we'd enter "Alice in Alice in Wonderland."
Audience
The audience who would understand either the Allusion or the Example. For example, the audience for Alyss would be “21st-century Young Adults."

Edges (connection types)

In this network, the edges connect allusions to their original sources and to the audiences for both allusions and original sources.

Builds on
We'd use "Builds On" to connect the “Alyss” Looking Glass Wars node to the "Alice Wonderland" node.
Relates to
We'd use "Relates To" to connect the "People in 19th-century England" node to the “Alice in Wonderland” node to indicate that Alice in Wonderland was originally aimed at 19th-century English audiences.

What learning goals does this template support?

Disciplinary Standards
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.8.4	Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone, including analogies or allusions to other texts.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.8.9	Analyze how a modern work of fiction draws on themes, patterns of events, or character types from myths, traditional stories, or religious works such as the Bible, including describing how the material is rendered new.
Disciplinary Data Literacy Goals
Data are interpreted, and we can even create it.	Students will choose specific allusions that connect sources and enter them into a network, allowing them to explore their and their peer's interpretation of sources that refer to each other. Creating the network themselves can help them appreciate that all visualizations are created by someone with ideas, interests, and biases.
Data sets are built from individual data points.	Students will learn to integrate individual data points and aggregate data patterns. Individual data points may inform certain questions, while patterns within and across datasets help answer others.

Lesson-Specific Resources and Examples

The following files are in PowerPoint .PPTX and Word .DOCX format. If you use Google Docs, you should be able to import these into Google Slides and Google Docs with minimal formatting changes.

Allusions to Alice in Wonderland in Looking Glass Wars

Pop Culture Allusions to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream

How to integrate this lesson into your classroom: Two class periods. One to get students used to the network as they identify and enter allusions and their sources. The second class period provides time to revise/add additional allusions and discuss the patterns students see in the allusions they entered.

General Net.Create Tips, Tricks and Documentation

Quick Tips

Citations matter!	The *Provenance* tab can help your students find and vet evidence.
Your comments can guide students.	Use the *comment* feature to call student attention to specific actions they can take to understand the content and data-literacy learning you're doing
Break data entry and analysis into two lessons	Node-and-edge entry on day one can give you time to focus on student reading comprehension. A second lesson using node/edge gravity, tables and the "Analysis" tab can help with content analysis and data-literacy learning. Check out the “Why Use Networks” slide in the slide deck in Downloadable Resources section below.
Treat mistakes as valuable data-literacy and content-learning moves.	If you see nodes or edges that don’t help with your lesson, point them out and help students find a way to revise them to address the lesson plan.
Remember that data are about individual people.	Chat with your students about how to be respectful of their peers as they enter network data.

Downloadable Resources

Network-analysis teaching slides with terms, visual guides, and a "why networks" slide
Good questions to ask your students during a Net.Create lesson
Advice from Experienced Net.Create Middle-School Teachers: Our partner teachers who have used Net.Create extensively in their own middle-school classrooms prepped a short set of recommendations for getting comfortable with Net.Create, prepping effective lessons and handling common classroom-management needs.

Net.Create User Guide

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