For students: We hope this guide will help sharpen your reading skills and deepen your understanding of this issue’s articles.

For teachers: We encourage reproduction and adaptation of these ideas, freely and without further permission from Saudi Aramco World, by teachers at any level, whether working in a classroom or through home study.

— THE EDITORS

Jump to If You Only Have 15 Minutes...

Jump to McRel Standards

Activities

This edition of the Classroom Guide is organized according to two topics and one skills section. The topics, Photographs and Portraits, relate closely to visual images, so the Visual Analysis section of the Classroom Guide is woven into these topics’ activities. The skills, under the broad rubric Understanding More of What You Read, aim to enhance reading comprehension by equipping students with skills they can use again and again.

Theme: Photographs

Why do you take photographs?
Before you delve into 150-year-old photographs, start by thinking about your own experiences with photographs. Do you take pictures? Whether you use a mobile phone or a camera, it’s likely that you do, and that you do so regularly. Look at some of your most recent photos and answer the following questions, sharing your answers with a partner. What are the subjects of your photos—people? places? events? Why did you take each of them? What did you do with them? Did you share them? How? Texts? Facebook? How did they make you feel when you took them? How do they make you feel when you look at them now? (If you haven’t taken any photos, work with someone who has or use the photos on a friend’s Facebook page, and adapt the questions accordingly.) After you and your partner have shared your answers with each other, step back. Having analyzed your photos, what generalizations can you make about them? These might include generalizations about why you take photos (for example, “I take pictures of things that make me laugh”); the subject matter in your photos (for example, “I take pictures of my friends,”); and/or what you do with them once they’re taken (“I post them on Facebook so everyone can see them”). Write your general statement, and hold onto it as you think about old photographs in the following activities.

Why do you take photographs?
Turn your attention to “A Legacy of Light,” which describes the discovery of large collections of very early photographs of the Middle East. Read the article, keeping in mind what you’ve learned about yourself and your photographs. As you read, underline or highlight the parts of the article that answer these questions: What made the discoveries of the photos so exciting? What is the subject matter of the photos? (In addition to the text of the article, examine the photos that accompany it to answer this question.) For what purposes have people been using the photos since their discovery? Compare what you’re learning about old photos with what you have learned about your own photos. Write a statement that explains how they are similar and how they differ.

Now focus specifically on some of the photos that accompany the article. Look first at the set of photos at the top of pages 16-17. Discuss them with your partner. Here are some questions to guide you. What do you notice about the photos themselves? How would you describe the place they show? What do you imagine, based on the images, motivated someone to take these photos? What makes these photos valuable today to a historian or “photo-archeologist”? Here is an exercise that will help with your answer: With your partner, write down three questions for which answers can be seen in the photographs. (For example, “What were most buildings made of?”) Finally, look online for a recent photo of the same location. How does it compare to these photos? Pay attention to both the content of the images and to the photographic form.

Theme: Portraits

What’s in a portrait?
So far you’ve looked at photos of places. What about people? Look at the spread at the bottom of page 17. Answer the following questions about these three photos: What do you notice about the photos? About the people in the photos? When do you think they were taken? (If you aren’t sure, read the caption.) What do you think motivated the photographer to take the photos in this style? What do you think the photos reveal about the people? What makes you think so?

To help with these last questions, find a recent photo—one that you took, or that you found on a friend’s Facebook page or elsewhere on the Internet—that shows one person. Compare that photo to the photos on page 17. How is it similar? How is it different? For example, is the recent photo you chose a posed photograph like the ones in the magazine, or is it a candid, unplanned shot? What about what the people are wearing and their expressions? How would you compare the overall “feel” of the two photos? What influences your sense of the “feel”?

Portraits, however, are not always visual images. “Interpreter of Treasures” focuses on portraits of a different kind, what author Tim Mackintosh-Smith calls “word-portraits.” Read the first of these word-portraits in the article. Then choose one of the photos on page 17, or the photo you took or found of a person, and create a “word-portrait” of the person in the photo. Have volunteers share their photos and word-portraits. Choose one or two to talk about. Did the word-portraits focus solely on what the person looks like, or did they also include descriptions of the person’s personality traits? Add to your word-portrait what Mackintosh-Smith calls “a few deft touches of character.” Then think about something a bit more difficult for a writer to accomplish: How can you “catch the spirit of a whole cultural setting”? Try a fairly straightforward example. Look at the group photo on page 20. What can you determine about the time and place where the photo was taken? How can you tell? Now return to your modern-day photo. What can you tell about the time and place where it was taken? For example, if the person in the photo is wearing a school uniform, that would tell you something. If, on the other hand, the person is wearing ski goggles and standing on a mountain, that would tell you something else. Once you’ve got a sense of it, add the context to your word-portrait. Display students’ photos and word-portraits, and examine each others’ work.

Compare the two types of portrait you’ve been analyzing: the visual portrait and the word-portrait. As the creator of the portraits, did you prefer one over the other? What about as reader/viewer? If so, which one, and why? What benefits do you see in both types of portrait? What drawbacks? Write your answers to these questions in a compare-and-contrast paragraph.

IF YOU ONLY HAVE 15 MINUTES... Zero in on improving your reading comprehension by focusing on “An Opera for Egypt.” Read the article. It tells a story, for the most part in chronological order. An important component of understanding such a story is being able to follow the order of the story. To help you do so, make a timeline, or list the events in order so that you have a summary of how Aida came to be written and performed in Cairo in 1871. Be as detailed as you can.

Skills: Understanding More of What You Read

When you read, whether you’re aware of it or not, you are organizing in your head the ideas derived from what you’ve read, finding ways to understand them so that they make sense to you. Becoming aware of how you do that—and developing skills to do it better—will make you a better reader. The following activities focus on “Morocco’s Threads of Red Gold.” By completing them, you will both improve your understanding of the topic and practice some strategies that will help you increase your comprehension of other things you read.

For starters, read the article. Then, working alone or with a partner, go through the article again, this time segment by segment. (You can identify the segments because each starts with a large capital letter.) Write a one- or two-sentence summary of each segment. When you read the sentences, you will have a brief summary of the article.

Now you’ve read about Taliouine and its saffron production—but where exactly is Taliouine? It’s easy when you’re reading something like this article to take it at face value without bothering to locate the place. But finding the place on a map will change your understanding of what you’ve read. Find Taliouine on a map. Why does it matter that you as a reader know where it is? To answer the question, think about how your connection to the article changes—or doesn’t change—when you’ve found Taliouine’s location.

Try this location exercise in relation to the community where you live. Write a short description (one paragraph should do) of the place, similar to the description of Taliouine on pages 3-4. Imagine that you don’t know where your community is located—either in relation to physical features, such as mountains or rivers, or in relation to other places. Find a map to accompany your description. Your map will likely reveal something important about your community’s location. Say, for example, it’s a coastal town. It would be helpful to know that in terms of the area’s climate, economic base and residents’ lifestyles. Add to your written description whatever you think is most important about your community’s physical location.

Now return to Taliouine. The article explains the qualities that make its location ideal for growing saffron. Circle those qualities in the article. How can you record the qualities in a way that will help you remember them? Make a list? A web? A sentence to put in the appropriate section of your outline? Use whatever tool will help you integrate that piece of information about saffron-growing into your knowledge base.

On a world map, find the places where evidence reveals that saffron was used at different times in the past. Then, on a map that you can write on, identify where saffron is grown today. Find a way to distinguish today’s large-scale producer(s) and the small-scale producer(s). You might, for example, use different colors. Or, if you’re really adventurous, you can try making a cartogram. (If you’re not sure what a cartogram is, find out! Making one can be challenging and eye-opening!) Study your map as you read the last section of the article, which is about Taliouine’s efforts to promote its saffron outside of Morocco. Based on the information in your map, what would you advise Morocco’s saffron producers to do? Write your advice in an email memo, explaining how your evidence led you to draw the conclusions you have drawn.

In two different places, the article identifies different uses to which saffron has been put—both in the past and today. Find those places, and underline the uses. As you did with the qualities that make Taliouine ideal for growing saffron, find a way to organize for yourself saffron’s different uses. You might try a web, with “Uses of Saffron” in the center, from which you spin out past and present uses.

Look back at the different skills that you used to improve your understanding of “Morocco’s Threads of Red Gold.” List them. Next to each, write the benefits of using it. Then put an asterisk next to the skill or skills that you found most useful. Make some notes about what made them useful so that you can use them again when you’re reading other things.

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SO13 Standards Alignment
McRel Standards

Morocco’s Threads of Gold

Geography

Standard 11. Understands the patterns and networks of economic interdependence on Earth's surface

Standard 16. Understands the changes that occur in the meaning, use, distribution and importance of resources

An Opera for Egypt

World History

Standard 34. Understands how Eurasian societies were transformed in an era of global trade and the emergence of European power from 1750 to 1870

Standard 36. Understands patterns of global change in the era of Western military and economic dominance from 1800 to 1914

Music

Standard 7. Understands the relationship between music and history and culture

A Legacy of Light

World History

Standard 34. Understands how Eurasian societies were transformed in an era of global trade and the emergence of European power from 1750 to 1870

Standard 36. Understands patterns of global change in the era of Western military and economic dominance from 1800 to 1914

Geography

Standard 6. Understands that culture and experience influence people's perceptions of places and regions

Standard 10. Understands the nature and complexity of Earth's cultural mosaics

Interpreter of Treasures

Language Arts

Standard 6. Uses skills and strategies to read a variety of literary texts

Geography

Standard 10. Understands the nature and complexity of Earth's cultural mosaics

Between Salt and Sea

Geography

Standard 4. Understands the physical and human characteristics of place

Standard 10. Understands the nature and complexity of Earth's cultural mosaics

Standard 11. Understands the patterns and networks of economic interdependence on Earth's surface

Standard 13. Understands the forces of cooperation and conflict that shape the divisions of Earth's surface

Standard 17. Understands how geography is used to interpret the past

Common Core Standards for English Language Arts

These standards are correlated to activities in the Classroom Guide, rather than to articles in the magazine, because they emphasize skills, rather than content.

Theme: Photographs
Common Core: College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards for Reading

RL/RI.1. Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text.

RL/RI.7. Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse media and formats, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words.

RL/RI.10. Read and comprehend complex literary and informational texts independently and proficiently.

Common Core: College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards for Writing

W.9. Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research.

Theme: Portraits
Common Core: College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards for Reading

RL/RI.1. Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text.

RL/RI.7. Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse media and formats, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words.

RL/RI.10. Read and comprehend complex literary and informational texts independently and proficiently.

Common Core: College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards for Writing

W.4. Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.

Skills: Understanding More of What You Read
Common Core: College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards for Reading

RL/RI.1. Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text.

RL/RI.5. Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas.

RL/RI.10. Read and comprehend complex literary and informational texts independently and proficiently.

Julie Weiss (julie.w1@comcast.net) is an education consultant based in Eliot, Maine. She holds a Ph.D. in American studies. Her company, Unlimited Horizons, develops social studies, media literacy, and English as a Second Language curricula, and produces textbook materials.