5. The Lady and the Spider by Robert Fulghum
After reading the story, discuss the following in your groups:
What is a fact and opinion. What resources can you use to check facts?
What is tone and what factors can contribute to tone? What is the tone of this story?
What is an author’s perspective and how do you think Fulghum feels about his subject? Support your opinion with and example from the story.
What pronouns indicate first, second, and third person point of view?

6. What is a fact?
A statement that can be proved.

7. What is an opinion?
A judgment that can be supported but not proved.

8. What resources can you use to check facts?
Dictionaries
Encyclopedias
Reliable Web sites

9. What is tone?
The writer’s attitude toward his or her audience and subject.

10. Describe the tone of “The Lady and the Spider.”
The tone is humorous and informal.

11. What factors contribute to tone?
Word choice, sentence structure ,and sentence length.
Characteristics such as the use of complex sentences, sentence fragments, contractions, scientific vocabulary, or slang describe tone.
Ex. If you plan ahead, I promise you, you’ll have the best party ever!
(Notice how word choice can create a friendly tone.)

12. Tone
He uses repetition to mention the woman’s scream: “AAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!”

13. Tone: It is important to maintain tone within a piece of written work.
Chicago was a city ready to burn because of the errors people made when developing the city. Jim Murphy states that two-thirds of the buildings were made of wood and that many were “jerry-built affairs”. This mistake of building a city cheaply caused fire to demolish many buildings quickly. Wow, that was a really bad thing for those guys to do!

14. Author’s Perspective
Author’s perspective is his/her viewpoint. It can be influenced by the author’s background and beliefs)

15. How does the author feel about spiders? How do you know?
The author thinks spiders are amazing.
He describes how long they’ve been around, their number, and how they make webs.

16. Point of view
We see two different points of view(spider and lady) however it is TOLD in 3rd person.
First person (I, we)
Second person(you)
Third person(he, she, they)