Lesson 34: Shallan Chooses — Identity, Integration, and Wholeness
50 min
Student Lesson
Lesson 34: Shallan Chooses — Identity, Integration, and Wholeness
Student Learning Objectives
Content
Students will analyze how Sanderson develops character and theme through key details in Oathbringer.
Language
Students will use textual evidence from Oathbringer to support written and oral analysis.
Foundations
Students will apply foundational reading strategies — fluency, decoding, and vocabulary in context — while engaging with Oathbringer.
Essential Question
How does the Recreance ask readers to evaluate whether breaking a promise can ever be justified?
How does Sanderson use Dalinar's flashbacks to develop the theme of accountability without absolution?
Connections to
Knowledge-Building
Close reading "Oathbringer, Chapters 77-79: Shallan Chooses Herself — Accepting All Three Personas" builds the evidence base students need to analyze how Sanderson develops character and theme across Oathbringer.
Enduring Understanding
Close reading with annotation develops the habit of supporting claims with precise textual evidence — the same skill required in every writing lesson in this unit.
Future Lessons
Evidence gathered from this passage will be referenced in upcoming writing and discussion lessons.
Unit Performance Task
This close read directly informs the unit's performance task, which asks students to synthesize evidence across multiple scenes to argue what Oathbringer claims about its central themes.
Lesson Pacing
| Lesson Flow | Purpose of Learning Experience |
|---|---|
Launch5 Minutes | Orient students to the day's learning goals and activate relevant prior knowledge. |
Literacy Lab10 Minutes | Provide direct instruction on the day's focus skill before releasing students to practice with the anchor text. |
Learning in Action30 Minutes | Students apply the day's focus skill with teacher support through circulation, conferring, and targeted questioning. |
Vocabulary
Vocabulary Addressed in Lesson
Bondsmith
The rarest order of Knights Radiant; they bind people and Realms together, and only three Bondsmiths can exist at once, each bonded to a godspren.
Recreance
The historical event in which the Knights Radiant all abandoned their oaths simultaneously, leaving their spren as deadeyes.
Shadesmar
The Cognitive Realm on Roshar — an ocean of glass beads where each bead represents a physical object in the real world, and where spren live fully.
Additional Vocabulary
Not available for this lesson
Material List
- Text: Oathbringer, Chapters 77-79: Shallan Chooses Herself — Accepting All Three Personas
- Graphic organizer: Accountability tracker — action, consequence, response
- Handout: Annotation guide — tracking Dalinar's moral arc
- Student journals
Routines & Protocols
- Close Read & Annotation Protocol
- Think-Pair-Share
- Turn-and-Talk