Republic of the Philippines

Department of Education
Regional Office IX, Zamboanga Peninsula

9
Zest for Progress
Z Peal of artnership

English
Quarter 2 – Module 8:

Building Bridges

Name of Learner: ___________________________

Grade & Section: ___________________________
Name of School: ___________________________
 What I Need to Know
“But now I tell you: love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”- Matthew
5:44
Forgiveness is a difficult thing to give to the people who have wronged you. And
it is even more difficult to love and pray for them. However, it is through forgiving and
being forgiven that we can build bridges and heal ourselves from the deep wounds of
resentments that no medicine could ever do.
In this lesson, you will understand better the concept of forgiving as you build
relationships in your journey in this VUCA world. And to continue in your meaningful
journey, you are expected to:
• tell what point of view is used in the story,
• explain the conflict in the story;
• determine the values conveyed in the story; and
• write an apology letter.

What’s In

Activity 1: Judge Me Not

Directions: Imagine that you have a new classmate who looks weak. Can you just tell
your classmate that he/she is dumb and his/her goals or dreams in life will never come
true? Explain your answer.

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 What’s New
Activity 2: Reminiscing
Directions: Think of a friend who was once your enemy or someone you didn’t like at
first. How did you make friends with him or her? What good things about him or her
that have you discovered now that you are already friends? Accomplish the chart
below.
The Person How did you make What are the good
friends with him or her? things about him or her?

Activity 3: Filling In
Directions: Fill in the boxes with the missing letters to come up with the words being
defined.
1. to cut off or cut back parts of for a better shape or more fruitful parts (verb)

2. to gather, loosen, or smooth with or as with a rake

3. the act or process of making or becoming clear (verb)

l a g

4. to murmur complainingly or angrily (verb)

t r

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 What is it

In the Biblical quotation “Love thy neighbor,” what does neighbor refer to?
How can you become a good neighbor?
Motive Question: How did the Hinton boys make their presence known to their new
neighbors? How did Finn and the narrator react?
Let’s read the story The Clearing by Jesse Stuart and find out the answers to the
questions.

The Clearing
By Jesse Stuart

Finn and I were pruning the plum trees around our garden when a rock came
cracking among the branches of the tree I was pruning.
“Where did that come from?” I asked Finn, who was on the ground below
piling the branches.
“I don’t know,” he said.
Then we heard the Hinton boys laughing on the other side of the valley. I went back
to pruning. In less than a minute, a rock hit the limb above my head, and another
rock hit at Finn’s feet. Then I came down from the tree. Finn and I started throwing
rocks. In a few minutes, rocks were falling like hailstones around them and around
us. The land was rocky on both sides of the valley, and there were plenty of rocks to
throw.
One of their rocks hit Finn on the foot, and one of our rocks hit the largest
Hinton boy’s head.
“Think of it,” Finn said. “We fight before we know each other’s names! What
will it be as time goes on?”
We fought all afternoon with rocks. At sunset the Hinton boys took off up the
path and over the hill. We went home. When Pa asked why we hadn’t finished
pruning the trees, we told him.
“I told you,” he said to Mom. “You’ll see whether we can live apart!”
“Wait until we get to know each other,” Mom said.
‘But how are we ever going to know people like them?” Pa asked.
‘Oh, something will happen,” she replied calmly. ‘You’ll see.”
The next day, Mort Hinton was with his boys. They climbed higher on the hill,
cutting the briers and brush and tree branches and stacking them neatly into piles.
Finn and I pruned our trees.
“I’ll say one thing for the Hinton’s,” Mom said. “They’re good workers.”
When they don’t throw rocks,” Finn said.
On the fourth day, my guineas flew across the valley where the Hintons were
clearing land.
“Get these guineas back on your side of the valley,” Mort Hinton yelled. “Get
them back where they belong.”
I didn’t want to put my guineas in the hen house. But I had to. I knew Mort
Hinton would kill them. I wanted to tell him that they would help his land. They’d get
rid of insects that might destroy his crop. But I was afraid to tell him anything.

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 A week had passed before my guineas got out and flew across the valley.
“If you don’t keep your guineas on your side of the valley,” Mort Hinton
hollered to me, “I’ll wring their necks.”
That night I put my guineas in fix again. I fixed the hen house so that they
couldn’t get out and roam the hills as they had always done. While Finn, Pa, and I
cleared land on one side of the valley, the Hintons cleared on the other side.
Though we’d never been close enough to the Hintons to talk with them, and
we didn’t want to get that close, we found ourselves trying to do more work than the
four of them. Each day, that early March, rain or sunshine, four Hintons worked on
their side of the valley, and Pa, Finn, and I worked on our side. One day a Hinton
boy hollered at us. “You can’t clear as much land as we can.”
“Don’t answer him,” Pa said.
When April came and the Hintons had finished clearing the hill and had
burned the brush, Mort Hinton brought a skinny mule hitched to a plow and started
plowing the new ground. He plowed slowly the first day. The second day my guineas
got out again and flew across the valley to the plowed ground. Mort Hinton caught
two of them. The others flew back home when he tried to catch them. Then he yelled
across to where we were plowing our new ground and told us what he had done.
“I feel like taking a shotgun and sprinkling him,” I said.
“Your guineas were on his land,” Mom said. “He told you to keep them off his
land.”
Mort Hinton plowed his new ground by working from daylight until dusk, while
the boys carried armloads of roots from the field and stacked them in great heaps.
By the first of May, they had made this ground soil like a garden. Then came a rainy
season in early May, and they carried baskets of tobacco plants and set them in the
newly plowed rows.
“They’re workers, all right,” Pa said.
On a dark night about a week later, I watched a moving light from my upstairs
window. It came from the direction of the Hintons, over the hill and down into the
valley below our house. In a few minutes, I heard Pa get out of bed and open the
door.
“I’m Mort Hinton,” a voice said. “My wife sent for your wife.”
I heard Mom getting out of bed.
“I’ll be ready in a minute,” she called out.
Neither Pa nor Mort said another word.
“I’ll be back when everything is all right,” Mom said as she hurried off.
The next morning, Pa cooked breakfast for us. He muttered about the Hintons as he
stood near the hot stove frying eggs.
“They are friendly enough when they need something over there,” Pa said.
We were ready to sit down to breakfast when Mom came home.
“Dollie Hinton’s got a healthy baby girl,” were Mom’s first words as she sat
down for a cup of coffee.
“What did they name the baby?” Glenna asked.
“They’ve not named her yet,” Mom said. “I think they plan to call her Ethel.
They’re tickled to death. Three boys and now a girl!”
“What kind of people are they, anyway?” Pa asked.
“Like other people,” Mom said. “They don’t have much furniture in their house.
They’re working hard to pay for their farm.”
“Will they be any better neighbors?” Pa asked.
“I think so,” Mom said. “That hill over there is not a fence between us any
longer.”
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 “There’s more than a hill between us,” I said. “What about my guineas Mort
Hinton caught? Did he say anything about ’em last night?”
“And what about the Hinton boy that hit me on the foot with a rock?” Finn
said. “I’d like to meet up with him sometime.”
By the time we had finished our breakfast, Mort Hinton was plowing the
young tobacco. His three sons were hoeing the tender plants with long-handled
hoes.
“You’d think Mr. Hinton would be sleepy,” Mom said. “He didn’t go to bed last
night. And the boys slept on the hay in the barn loft.
Pa, Finn, and I didn’t have too much sympathy for the Hintons. Through the
dining room window, we could look across the valley and watch Mort keep the
plow moving steadily. We watched his boys dig with their hoes, never looking up
from the ground.
“This will be a dry, sunny day,” Pa said. “We’ll burn the brush piles on the
rest of our clearing.”
We gathered our pitchforks, hoes, and rakes and went to the hill where we
had cleared ground all spring. There were hundreds of brush piles on our twenty
acres of cleared ground. The wind was still. The sun had dried the dew from the
leaves that carpeted the ground between the brush piles.
“It’s the right time to burn,” Pa said. “I can’t feel any wind. The brush has
aged in these piles until it is as dry as powder.”

Pa struck a match to the brush pile at the bottom of the clearing. The fire started
with little leaps over the leaf-carpeted ground. Finn, Pa, and I set fire to the bottom
of the clearing until we had continuous line of fire going up the slope. Then a wind
sprung up from nowhere. And when flames leaped from brush pile to brush pile, Pa
looked at me.
“This is out of control,” Pa said. “Grab a hoe and start raking a ring.”
“I’m afraid we can’t stop it,” Finn said. “We’ll have to work fast to save the
orchards.”
“Run to the house and get Sal and Glenna,” Pa yelled.
“Look, Pa, Finn,” said pointing down the hill.
Mort Hinton was in front. He was running up the hill. His three sons were
running behind him, each with a hoe across his shoulder.
“It’s out of control,” Pa shouted to Mort before he reached us.
“We’ve come to help,” Mort said.
“Can we keep it from the orchards?” Pa asked.
“Let’s run to the top of the hill and fire against it,” Mort said. “I’ve burnt
hundreds of acres of clearings on hillsides, and I always fire the top first and let it
burn down! I fire the bottom last. Maybe we’ll not be too late to save the orchards!”
Mort ran up the hill and we followed. Finn and I didn’t speak to his boys, and
they didn’t speak to us. But when we started raking a ring side by side, we started
talking to the Hintons. We forgot about the rock fight. Now wasn’t the time to
remember it, when flames down the hill were shooting twenty to thirty feet high. In
no time, we raked the ring across the top of the clearing. And the fire Mort Hinton
set along the ring burned fiercely down the hill and made the ring wider and wider.
Only once did fire blow across the ring, and Pa stopped it then.
As soon as we had this spot under control, we raked a ring down the west
side near the peach orchard. Mort set a line of fire along this ring and let it burn
toward the middle of the clearing. Then we raked a ring on the east side and fired
against the fire that was approaching our plum trees and our house.
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Soon the leaping flames met in the clearing. We had the fire under control. Our
clearing was burned clean as a whistle.
“How much do I owe you?” Pa asked Mort Hinton.
“You don’t owe me anything, “Mort said. “We’re just paying you back for the
help your wife gave us.”
“Then let’s go the house for dinner,” Pa said.
“Some other time,” Mort said. “We must go home and see about Dollie and
the baby.”
As we went down the hill, Finn and I talked with the Hinton boys about fishing
and wild-bee trees, while Pa and Mort laughed and talked about weather and crops.
Source: Linda D. Reyes and Lourdes M. Ribo, English Arts III Quezon: JTW Corporation,
2000, 219-224.

Activity 4: Checking of Comprehension

Directions: Analyze and answer each question based on the story you have just read.

1. How did the Hinton boys make their presence known to their new neighbors? How
did Finn and the narrator react?

2. Why was the narrator angry with Mort Hinton?

3. Did Mort have a right to do what he did to the narrator’s guineas? Explain your
answer.

4. What thing about Mort’s family did the narrator’s family admire? Cite instances of
this admirable trait of the Hinton family.

5. When did things begin to change between the two families?

6. What finally brought the two families together?

7. What values are conveyed in the story? Do you believe in cultivating them?
Explain your answer.

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 What’s More

Activity 5: Pointing Out the Conflict

One of the elements of a short story is conflict. It is a struggle between

opposing characters or opposing forces in the story. It may be an external
conflict, one in which a character struggles with another person, with a group of
people or with a force. It may also be an internal conflict which takes place in a
character’s mind.

Source: Eugenia R. Gorgon, Virginia F. Bermudez, and Remedios F. Nery, English

Expressways III Quezon: SD Publications, Inc., 2007, 317.

Directions: Identify the type of conflict present in The Clearing. Accomplish the chart
below.

Type of Conflict:
Questions Answers
1. How did the conflict start?

2. What worsened the conflict?

3. At the time of the conflict, how would

you characterize the Hinton family?

4. When does the conflict begin to

lessen?

5. What characteristic of the narrator’s

mother helps lessen the conflict?

Activity 6: Point of View

Point of view (POV) refers to who is telling the story.

Sometimes a writer tells a story with an I. This style of writing is called
first-person point of view. A story with this point of view tends to make the
reader believe in the truth or reality of the events and the persons although the
reader knows that the first-person narrator is a fictional invention.
Another point of view is the omniscient which is the point of view of the
author who knows everything that is happening and what every character is
thinking about. The author expresses this point of view in the third person.

Source: Linda D. Reyes and Lourdes M. Ribo, English Arts III Quezon: JTW Corporation,
2000, 154.

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Directions: Now go over to the story The Clearing once again, and tell what point of
view is used by the author. Cite lines from the story to support your answer.

Point of View:

Lines to Support Your Answer

What I Have Learned

Activity 7:
Directions: In this part of the lesson, you are going to write down the insights and
learnings you’ve had for the week. Don’t forget to include the lesson which you want
to continue learning. Do this in your notebook.

This week, I learned that… I will continue learning about…

What I Can Do
Activity 8: A Letter of Healing
Directions: There are times in your life when you experience having a conflict with
others. Knowing that the only way to resolve it is through asking for forgiveness, you
write a letter of apology to someone you have hurt or wronged. In writing your letter,
use the basic format, and be guided by these guidelines:
1. Say you’re sorry.

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2. Own the mistake. (Show the wronged person that you’re willing to take
responsibility for your actions.)
3. Describe what happened. (The wronged person needs to know that you
understand what happened and why it was hurtful to them.)
4. Have a plan. (Let the wronged person know how you intend to fix the situation.)
5. Admit you were wrong.
6. Ask for forgiveness.

Source: Karen Hertzberg, “3 Perfect Examples of How to Write an Apology Letter,”

Grammarly Blog, December 2, 2017, https://www.grammarly.com/blog/apology-letter/

Assessment
Directions: Read the statements carefully and encircle the letter of your answer.
1. Who are the neighbors of Finn’s family?
A. the Youngers B. the Hintons C. the Bucks D. the Butlers
2. How did the Hinton boys make their presence known to Finn and the narrator?
A. by throwing rocks C. by introducing their names
B. by shouting them D. by helping them

3. What worsened the conflict of the two families?

A. Mort Hinton burned the clearing of the narrator’ family.
B. The narrator’s mother did not help the Hintons.
C. Mort Hinton caught the guineas of the narrator.
D. The Hinton boys bullied Finn.

4. What brought the two families together?

A. The Hintons offered to help in pruning the plum trees.
B. Finn and his brother gave the Hintons some fruits.
C. The narrator’s mother helped Mort Hinton’s wife in giving birth.
D. The Hintons helped Finn, the narrator, and their father in saving the orchards
from fire.

5. Which do you think symbolizes the conflict between the two families in the story?
A. the hill B. the guineas C. the rake D. the clearing

6.
“They’re tickled to death. Three boys and now a girl!”
What does the italicized sentence above mean?
A. extremely scared C. extremely delighted
B. extremely frightened D. extremely anxious

7. Which element of a short story refers to the struggle between opposing forces?
A. character B. point of view C. theme D. conflict
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8. Which is NOT a type of external conflict?
A. character vs. self
B. character vs. nature
C. character vs. society
D. character vs. character
9.
The farther I traveled through the town, the better I liked it. Every step
revealed a new contrast – disclosed something I was unaccustomed to.
- from The Sandwich Islands

What point of view is used in the excerpt above?

A. second person point of view
B. first person point of view
C. third person point of view
D. omniscient point of view
10. Which is wrong when you ask for forgiveness?
A. Own the mistake.
B. Say you’re not sorry.
C. Accept responsibility.
D. Admit you were wrong.

REFERENCES
Books
Gorgon, Eugenia R., Virginia F. Bermudez, and Remedios F. Nery. English Expressways III.
Quezon: SD Publications, Inc., 2007.
Reyes, Linda R. and Lourdes M. Ribo. English Arts III. Quezon: JTW Corporation, 2000.

Online
“3 Perfect Examples of How to Write an Apology Letter.” How to Write an Apology Letter:
3 Examples You Can Use | Grammarly, December 2, 2017.
https://www.grammarly.com/blog/apology-letter/.

Development Team
Writer: Garend E. Temporada
Olutanga National High School
Olutanga, Zamboanga Sibugay
Editor/QA: Marjorie R. Daligdig
Reviewer: Evelyn F. Importante
OIC-CID Chief EPS
Illustrator:
Layout Artist:
Management Team:
Jerry C. Bokingkito
OIC-Assistant SDS
Raymond M. Salvador
OIC-Assistant SDS
Dr. Jeanelyn A. Aleman, CESE
OIC-Schools Division Superintendent

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My Final Farewell
And when the dark night wraps the graveyard
around With only the dead in their vigil to see
Farewell, dear Fatherland, clime of the sun
Break not my repose or the mystery profound
caress'd Pearl of the Orient seas, our Eden lost!,
Gladly now I go to give thee this faded life's And perchance thou mayst hear a sad hymn
best, And were it brighter, fresher, or more resound 'T is I, O my country, raising a song
unto thee.
blest
Still would I give it thee, nor count the cost.
And even my grave is remembered no
more Unmark'd by never a cross nor a
On the field of battle, 'mid the frenzy of fight,
stone
Others have given their lives, without doubt or
Let the plow sweep through it, the spade turn
heed; The place matters not-cypress or laurel or
it o'er That my ashes may carpet earthly floor,
lily white, Scaffold or open plain, combat or
Before into nothingness at last they are blown.
martyrdom's plight, T is ever the same, to serve
our home and country's need.
Then will oblivion bring to me no
care As over thy vales and
I die just when I see the dawn break,
plains I sweep;
Through the gloom of night, to herald the
Throbbing and cleansed in thy space and
day; And if color is lacking my blood thou
air With color and light, with song and
shalt take, Pour'd out at need for thy dear
lament I fare, Ever repeating the faith that I
sake
keep.
To dye with its crimson the waking ray.
My Fatherland ador'd, that sadness to my
My dreams, when life first opened to me,
sorrow lends
My dreams, when the hopes of youth beat high,
Beloved Filipinas, hear now my last good-by!
Were to see thy lov'd face, O gem of the Orient
I give thee all: parents and kindred and friends
sea From gloom and grief, from care and sorrow
For I go where no slave before the oppressor
free; No blush on thy brow, no tear in thine eye.
bends, Where faith can never kill, and God
reigns e'er on high!
Dream of my life, my living and burning
desire, All hail ! cries the soul that is now to
Farewell to you all, from my soul torn away,
take flight; All hail ! And sweet it is for thee to
Friends of my childhood in the home
expire ;
dispossessed ! Give thanks that I rest from the
To die for thy sake, that thou mayst aspire;
wearisome day !
And sleep in thy bosom eternity's long
Farewell to thee, too, sweet friend that
night.
lightened my way;
Beloved creatures all, farewell! In death there is
If over my grave some day thou seest
rest!
grow, In the grassy sod, a humble flower,
Draw it to thy lips and kiss my soul so,
While I may feel on my brow in the cold tomb
below The touch of thy tenderness, thy breath's
warm power.

Let the moon beam over me soft and

serene, Let the dawn shed over me its
radiant flashes, Let the wind with sad
lament over me keen ; And if on my cross a
bird should be seen,
Let it trill there its hymn of peace to my
ashes. Let the sun draw the vapors up to
the sky,
And heavenward in purity bear my tardy
protest Let some kind soul o 'er my untimely
fate sigh, And in the still evening a prayer be
lifted on high From thee, 0 my country, that in
(This is the 1911 translation by Charles
God I may rest.
Derbyshire of the Spanish original of José
Rizal's poem, Mi Ultimo Adiós)
Pray for all those that hapless have died,
For all who have suffered the unmeasur'd pain;
For our mothers that bitterly their woes have
cried,
For widows and orphans, for captives by torture
tried And then for thyself that redemption thou
mayst gain.

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